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Just walking around the country side near newcastle airport. Thought this was nice. Hope its enjoyable for all 
| Brand: | NIKON CORPORATION |
| Camera: | Nikon D3100  Check out Nikon Nation! |
| Lens: | 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR |
| Recording media: | JPEG (digital) |
| Date Taken: | 10 Oct 2012 - 5:00 PM |
| Focal Length: | 66mm |
| Lens Max Aperture: | f/5.3 |
| Aperture: | f/5.6 |
| Shutter Speed: | 1/60sec |
| Exposure Comp: | 0.0 |
| ISO: | 100 |
| Exposure Mode: | Aperture-priority AE |
| Metering Mode: | Multi-segment |
| Flash: | On, Return detected |
| White Balance: | Auto |
| Title: | Hungry? |
| Username: | 
willy03 |
| Uploaded: | 10 Oct 2012 - 7:05 PM |
| Tags: | Mushroom autumn, Wildlife / nature |
| VS Mode Rating |
103 (57.14% won) These stats show the percentage of wins and the rating score that your photo has achieved. You can go to the VS Mode by clicking on this icon. Signup to e2Signup to e2 to see which photo this has won or lost against in the vs mode |
| Votes: | Voting Disabled |
 | Critique Wanted |
| Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification) |
Comments
For this composition I suggest to crop the photo on lower side so the shade of your camera or the hood of the lens is not visible. In the same conditions to avoid the flash try to increase the ISO to maybe 400 so you will have a greater shutter speed and the flush is not required. Also using a large aperture like f/5.6 in your case makes the edges of the mushrooms not to be in focus. All the best!!!
Thank you very much for the feed back. Im still very Amateur to this and appreciate your help and critique advice loads. I noticed the shadow but thought others wouldn't (or hoped) ha ha ha Will increasing the iso setting make the picture look brighter instead of the flash?
Thanks
Billy.
Its quite a good shot Willy. That is likely to be a lens hood shadow, - it can happen when you use the on-camera flash, which I assume you did? If you have an external flash, it may not happen, - really depends on the length of the lens plus hood, as its mounted higher.
To avoid it, - simply take the hood off, - its not needed anyway in this type of setting/light.
Since you used the Aperture priority mode, you would have had to pop the flash up manually, and in this mode, the flash is used on a lower power to add to the ambient light, - so you did the right thing. It does appear though that the original scene was quite dark, and the flash used quite a bit of power. If you had a tripod, you could have set the shot up without flash, - it would have used a longer/slower shutter speed, and the result might have been more pleasing to the eye. So youve done all right so far.
If this was shot in JPEG, and not RAW, you would have had a Picture Style in use, - but we dont know that was as its not in the exif data. I bring this up as the colour, - especially the greens appears almost fourescent, and over saturated. Perhaps you boosted saturation during post processing, - either way it look slightly unnatural.
In the mod, Ive cropped as suggested, and toned down the saturation to try get the greens more natural, and sharpened slightly.
I think not a bad effort overall.
Regards
Willie
Thank you very much for the comment banehawi. I also thought i should have cropped and this is normally my fault it previous photos. I did however boost the sat before i uploaded it and it seems with crop it may have paid off to just upload my original file. The image was set in raw - fine on my camera but i do not know exactly what this mean ha ha i just tried to pick the best quality.
I will try and use the advise given as always and i thank you very much
Billy.
Willy, I suggest you read through some photography tutorials if you can't fully distinguish between shooting JPEG or RAW. There are many tutorials, including on this site, and I assure you you'd learn a ton of things in a short period of time. A few days ago I was such a novice I wouldn't have found anything wrong in the above picture, but after some reading, and some good critique (including from Willie above!) I learnt a lot already. That said, I'm still pretty much a newbie, as there's so much more to learn, but with enough practice and determination anyone can get there. That's what I believe anyway.
In a nutshell, RAW files will enable you to carry out more changes to the image, with very limited loss in quality (if any?) as opposed to JPEGs, where post-processing degrades the image quality almost immediately. RAWs are the digital equivalent to the negatives from the film days and give you more flexibility, but are larger than JPEGs in filesize. I suggest you always use RAW file format unless you're simply shooting for fun and intend to use the pictures straight out of camera. That said, if you're in the critique section I'm confident you want to get better and better pictures, so RAW's the way to go.
One more thing - using a higher ISO will increase the amount of noise, so I think you should go for a long-exposure here from a stable surface. If you don't have a tripod, try to improvise, sometimes you'll find a stable enough surface close by which you can use. Once I even balanced my camera's lens on the EOS neck strap and the shot came out very sharp regardless. You'd be surprised by what a little bit of improvisation can do to your options!
Yes i have a tripod and used it on this shot. I do try and look around the site as much as possible as ive been a member here for 4 years. Its just trying to remember each setting thats best when im out taken the photos and cant double check back here. Thank you for your comments. Much apprieciated
Billy
RAW files are exactly that...just raw data that the camera captures. There is no processing applied in camera, you have to do it all yourself in post processing. Jpeg is processed in camera (sharpening, contrast, colour balance and vibrancy etc), and is a compressed file to make it smaller. The quality setting determines how much it is compressed, with fine containing the most information and basic containing the least.
With your camera set to RAW+fine, you are saving both a RAW file (NEF) and a high quality JPG at the same time. Try opening both files together and seeing the difference, and adjusting both: you will find you can get far more info from the NEF file, though you usually need a RAW converter for Photoshop (Adobe Camera Raw) or Lightroom.
Willie's pretty much covered the rest, as far as critique is concerned.
Nick
Nick sums it up well.
You don't say which software you're currently using but if you want something to convert RAW (NEF) files to something else, FastStone will allow you to do it easily and it's free.
Bren.
If you use the built-in falsh on a Nikon with the 18-105 lens, there is always a dark spot at the bottom where the length of the lens makes a shadow. Using the other basic kit lens, the 18-55 does not because it is shorter. With the 18-105 you will need a separate flash unit either off camera or fitted into your hot shoe.
Frank
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