Hi Abi May,

Just read the description for your image and I can see what you were trying to create. I do like the line of rocks leading us into the image with the curve of the water and the boat you have managed quite a nice composition so well done there. However, the image just looks like it has a horrid overall purple colour cast rather than a dramatic sunset. The other problem is that there doesn't appear to be much in focus so the image is a bit soft and the shot is quite a bit underexposed the former being caused by your 8 second exposure time and the later by the evaluative metering. In this case I would suspect that the sun lighting the clouds has caused the camera to underexpose the rest of the image and something has fooled the camera into thinking that it needs to add a lot of blue to correct the light or you had white balance set onto Tungsten.

Your profile in EPZ says you are a beginner so the best advice is to join a camera club or enrol on a course and get someone to assist you into getting your camera off auto and take control of its operations. I don't want to put you off taking shots but with some help you will be able to get this shot right in camera and be really happy with your results. With a shot like this where your shutter speed is in seconds, you need to use a tripod or stand your camera on a rock. However, using f/22 with an 18mm (33mm on your camera) focal length isn't necessary and you could have used f/6.4 to get the same results which would have given you a much faster shutter speed and reduced the chances of a blurry shot. The reason is because different cameras, lenses, focal lengths, distance from subject and aperture settings all have an effect on depth of field (the amount that is in focus). So if you use a Canon 450D with a 18 - 55mm lens set at 18mm (33mm cropped sensor equivalent) with your subject at 10meters (the rocks), you would have had everything from 4.75mtrs in front of your lens to infinity in focus and because the aperture in the lens has been opened up the shutter speed will be increased to compensate and give you more control over camera shake etc.

I uploaded a mod where all I have done is adjust the white balance from 'As Shot' to 'Auto' in Adobe Camera RAW. This was just to show you how much of a colour cast there is.

I hope this helps and sorry if it is a bit overly complicated.

DaVeS

Dear Martin,

I guess by your username, Bassoonman that this is right up your street. I love the musical background, it fits really well with the subject. The background is also nicely out of focus (bokeh) and the subject seems fairly sharp if a little underlit. The depth of field looks okay but is just dropping off at the far end of the base but this sdoesn't really matter. I like the composition with the subject sitting down the left third and the fact that it almost fills the frame. There is a yellow cast to the image which was probably caused by the camera's white balance being fooled by the lights.

I think that reflecting a little light up using a reflector might have helped here and as you say you probably were at the mercy of display lights. You can lift the shadows a little using Adobe Camera RAW and give the white balance a small tweak. I have uploaded a mod where I lifted the shadows and changed the white balance slightly. I did some dodging of the darker bits and sharpened the image.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Mick,

Great capture with action and good focus, eyes look sharp and have a great colour. The Depth of field (DoF) also looks very goos with the background nicely blurred. Unfortunately it looks like that midday sun nthat takes no prisoners and in your case the cats white fur is overexposed and has lost some of its detail probably due to the spot metering picking up on some of the darker fur.

In a case like this especially when using spot metering, it is essential that you meter for the brighter areas in the image and lock your exposure before recomposing but I'm not sure how you would do this in a Lumix camera. It is always better to expose for the brighter highlights because once they are blown out, there is usually no detail to rescue. Also shooting in RAW can sometimes allow you to recover some data in post processing.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi John,

After reading the critique above and as usual, I thought I would add my little bit. It is all good and well to add a new sky but I would think you'd be better concentrating on why it overexposed in the first place. The last thing you need is to have to replace the sky in all of your landscape images. I support the old addage that you are better to get it right in camera than trying to fix errors in post production. Looking at the Exif data, i see you have used multi metering mode or matrix metering which means that your camera has looked at the entire scene and metered the best it could. now because the scene had more dynamic range than your camera can actually capture it has seen the darker land and exposed that correctly and because the sky is so bright it overexposed it and this is because it was out of the dynamic range that it was able to capture. Generally it is better to have a correctly exposed sky and darker foreground which can be brightened in post production because there is usually a lot more detail in underexposed areas than in overexposed areas.

If I was taking this shot I would have used centre weighted metering and fixed it on the sky using the exposure lock button (the blue star on most canon cameras)then recomposed to capture the scene. Alternatively you could use exposure bracketing (HDR) where the camera captures 1 x underexposed, 1 x on exposure and 1 x overexposed images which can be joined together in something like photomatix. Having said this, a lot of people will advise that you need at least 7 images of differing exposure to have a successful HDR.

I hope that this helps

DaVeS

Garreth,

In my opinion, it isn't critique about this photograph that you need but info on how to be prepared for taking quick reaction shots. You've received some great advice from everyone above but I like Trev's points about setting up your camera for a quick shot, this is great advice and something that I do all the time and is essential for nature photography as you never know what is around the next corner.

For e.g. I use a Canon 5D Mk2 with a 100-400 L series Canon Lens when I'm out wandering the bush or rainforests for wildlife photographs. Here in Australia it can be really bright sunshine but it can also be dark and gloomy especially in the rain forest so the problem that I have is that the maximum aperture for the lens at 400mm is f/5.6 which can mean some fairly slow shutter speeds. Therefore when the light is low I always put my camera onto AV mode with the widest aperture set and I also use my monopod to give me a bit more stability. I also may up the ISO but I do try to limit this to no more than ISO 800 and the lower the better in my opinion. Now I'm not a Nikon shooter so I don't know the D90 well but on my 5D I can have up to 3 preset camera setups. One I have set for HDR, the other two are set for brighter or darker nature shooting so I can switch between them quickly. The other thing is the focus settings and metering, I would suggest spot or centre weighted metering and continuous shooting mode with the dynamic focus mode (AI Servo in Canon). I think that the reason that your image has the squirrel dark is because you have more than likely had your camera on multi segment metering and a quick visit to the exif data confirms this, which has caused the camera to see the brighter sky and reduce the exposure to compensate. This causes the actual subject to be darker than it should have been. However, if you use spot metering the camera would have exposed the squirrel correctly (provided the centre spot is on the subject) but be aware, it would have probably blown out the sky so it is a bit of a compromise.

SO how do I approach shooting a sudden sighting of that rare animal? A couple of quick shots to capture the moment and then I try to reposition to imrove the shot, this usually means trying to find a better background or get closer. This is the point when you can switch from the quick shot setup to something more appropriate because you captured what you saw in the first instance and anything now is to improve on those initial shots.

I hope this helps as much as the above critique.

DaVeS

Hi Sue,


Quote: I love the old boat, Sue, and the newer one top left balancing the composition, with the lighter water running down the centre. I'm not entering into the grain debate

Agreed

However, I look at the image and something just doesn't gel for me and I can't quite put my finger on it. First of all I thought it might be the newer boat and I did think it was a bit bright so I darkened it but it didn't help. Then I thought it might be that I thought that the image was a bit busy so I cloned out the houses in the trees and a few things like the spotlight on the old shed. Still I couldn't put my finger on it. On my monitor there is a distinct purple tinge to the image so I reduced that but it still evades me.

Anyway, I've uploaded my mod with those changes just so you can see.

DaVeS

Hi Ian,

Great to see a shot of Queen after all these years and I guess you found out the difficulties of shooting bands in dark halls.

First thing I would do is to straighten the stage using the tool in PhotoShop however it will take off some of the detail at the edges. You can get around this by adding some canvas and then rotating the image within the blank canvas. You can then crop it and fill in the white corners using the clone tool or content aware fill. The you need to adjust the white balance a little because I feel that it has a green tinge overall which is hardly suprising given the circumstances. Then I would get to work with the spot healing or the patch tool and remove a few of the distractions in the background. Then lighten it up a little and add some colour. Sharpen is the last thing but be careful and don't overdo it.

I've uploaded a mod where I have done the above but I also lightened up Freddy using Viveza2.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Dear BG,

As Frank has pointed out this is a well balanced picture but for me even if that is the actual colour of the water, it doesn't do the image any favours. For me with a shot like this I think it is a case of less is more and I would crop this to a panoramic format and lose the highest bird from the shot. Also I'm not sure if you've cropped right in, lightened a dark image or that the ISO was just to high for the camera but it seems to be very noisy.

I have uploaded a mod where I have changed the white balance and temperature of the shot in Camera RAW. Then I straightened and cropped the image. I then loaded it into DeFine and reduced the noice before slightly sharpening the image.

Hope this helps.

DaVeS

Hi Dan,

The first thing I would point out is that the logo in the bottom right corner is not only unclear, it is too big. Also you are wasting your time putting logo's on images in the critique gallery, we are all photographers and not interested in logo's. If present (in my opinion) they should be on a white border around the image.

The image has a lot of very nice autumnal colours and the light is very nice indeed. The depth of field is also good and the image seems nice and sharp. However, for me there are a couple of problems. The lack of a main subject bothers me a little bit, there isn't anything there for my eye to settle on and I find I'm looking all around for something that isn't there. The leading line of the road is good but leading to what? It is at this point that some sort of subject such as a couple of walkers would have added hugely to the image.

I had a quick look at your website www.peakdistrict-photo.co.uk and I think you've got some great images on there however, don't forget about the viewer (and potential customer) when it comes to images like this. It isn't enough just to like an image, it has to stop someone in their tracks and make them say WOW!!! If you haven't got a couple of walkers to put in your image, find somebody and ask them to pose for you. Otherwise go back with a couple of people and shoot the scene again.

I hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Tareq,

It would be much easier to critique your image if you had added a description to at least tell us why you took the shot etc.

Having said that, I can really see why you took the shot, it must have looked like a very pretty sunset to you as you travelled along the banks of the Nile. However, this is where things change when we try to capture what we see, the camera just cannot do it. Your eyes can see around 16 stops of light and I have even heard that 24 stops is what we can see but whichever it is, the cameras ability to capture stops of light varies but it would be around 6 to 8 stops of light using a DSLR so a Powershot may only be as much as 4 - 6 stops. Having the setting sun in the shot which is really bright, the camera has looked at the scene and exposed as best it can for it and as a result the rest of the image is underexposed almost sillouette like. this is because the scene has too many stops of light for the camera to capture in one single image.

What you can do is to capture more than one shot at different exposures and then sandwhich these together as an HDR image. There are several methods of doing this but having a minimum of 7 images is the best way forward. This allows the camera to capture all the range of light in the scene and then put it together in software such a Photomatix, PhotoShop HDR or NIK HDR Pro.

With regards to taking this scene in one shot then I would consider re-composing and removing the sun from within the image and concentrate on say the boats in the foreground allowing the camera to capture more of the range of tones. The shot that you have here is a little flat and could probably do with some contrast as well as either darkening to sillouette or lightening the buildings etc.

I have done a quick mod where I added a little more colour, darkened the buildings to sillouette, removed some bright spots on the buildings and cropped. I removed the majenta from the flare on the buildings and sharpened.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Paul,

I have to say that having looked at your portfolio, you obviously like football however, I have noticed that most of your images have slanted horizons and this one is no exception. Yes I know the edge of the field isn't the horizon but it annoys most viewers when lines aren't straight.

With this image I would say that there are a couple of things that you need to look at, one is composition and I think that both having the ball almost out of shot and cutting off the guys feet spoils the image completely. I can only presume that you were at the widest angle of your lens and the 115mm focal length refers to the 70mm with the crop factor of 1.6 added. It isn't a good idea to chop off limbs like this aspecially at the joints i.e. ankles, knees, elbows etc. The other is that his shoulder is slightly overexposed so try to meter for the brightest parts of the shot which would have been his shirt and use fill flash or bring the darker areas up in post production.

However there are things you can do to the image as I've shown in my mod. Straightening the horizon in Photoshop has cropped the image but I added some canvas first and then increased the area around the ball slightly. I have then cropped right in close, desaturated the reds and greens in the background then blurred the background more to make the player pop from the background. I then sharpened.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Dear Nick,


Quote: OK another bird for you to pull to pieces.

What's the story here then, I think you've frightened everyone away. The fact is that if you don't want critique then don't post to the Critique Gallery or was it just a joke?

Any way, you've posted it here so I will have a go at critiqueing it for you. Well firstly you've have added a description so that sets you ahead of 50% of the field already. With regards to the image I prefer version 2 because it simplifies the background. However I will critique image number 1.

The shot is well lit with nice colours and some great interest and good exposure and the bird appears sharp. The only thing that I would say is that its eye is a little dark but that is neither here nor there. I think you were right to crop it slightly. What a lot of people forget, and I get this from circuit judges all the time is that wildlife doesn't pose for you and unless you are prepared to sit for days waiting for the right shot you have to put up with what you can get. So every wildlife shot isn't perfect an we have to put up with the situation as it arises and if that means some overexposed areas or harsh light or whatever then so be it.

I would advise taking your camera off program mode and trying Aperture Value (Av) instead and depending on the light try to set your aperture to f/8.0 or larger (smaller number). Set your metering to either spot or centre weighted and your ISO to 100. Use a tripod or preferably a monopod to steady the camera because that is a heavy lens you are using. Have the focus set to AI Focus or AI Servo and shutter to continuous. This will allow you to capture 2 or 3 shots without having to refocus but I would advise against blasting away until your card is full because at the end of the day, they have to be sorted on the computer and that takes time. However, I would advise shooting in RAW rather than JPEG to maximise your ability to edit the images.

Hope this helps and that I haven't ripped your image apart.

DaVeS

Hi Pradyoth,

Again you haven't added description to your images but it is important that you do this because if we are going to write a critique for you then you should at least help us with a description.

Overall I like the image, the arches are very photogenic but unfortunately you have hit on the big problem with shooting in dark areas on a bright sunny day. Your eyes can see at least 16 stops of light and I've heard up to 24 stops of light so your brain has no problems in seeing this scene. We can see bright light and dark shadows without much of a problem. However, your camera can't, it can only see around 8 stops of light which means that it cannot capture the range of tones that are in this scene. Hence the bright overexposed external light and the darker shadows of the arches.

The shot is also not very sharp either and in fact I can't see anything that is sharp in the image and this is probably because of the slow shutter speed and a little bit of movement in your hands.

To be successful in these types of shot you need to use a tripod or put the camera on a stable base, expose for the bright ourtside light and use flash to light the inside. Alternatively you could use exposure bracketing (HDR) which use a minimum of three images to create a wider tonal range by taking 1 shot under exposed for the highlights, 1 shot on correct exposure and 1 shot over exposed for the shadows and then sandwhich them together in PhotoShop or other software like NIK's HDR or Photomatix.

I used exposure bracketing to take this image HERE so you can see the results that you can create. These arches were just as dark as the ones you took and the external light was very bright.

I've uploaded a very quick mod to show what you can do, I toned down the overexposed areas as best I could in the 2 minutes that I had, raised the shadows added a little colour, used the warp tool to straighten the pillars and sharpened.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Paddy,

You need to add a description when uploading to the Critique gallery, it helps us know what you were trying to take etc. Also I wouldn't put a logo in your image when uploading here as the majority of pople are photographers and aren't interested in logos. Having said that, as logos go it is small and out of the way but probably should be in a border rather than on the image.

The image is very moody and the sky is is nice, there is foreground, midground and background interest and the depth of field also looks good. However, The horizon is a bit too central for my liking and there are some overexposed areas of the sky. Overall the image for me is a little flat and could do with some contrast. I also think that a crop from the bottom and right side would bring those rocks right into the foreground and away from being a bit too central and get the horizon back onto the bottom third making it a bit more asthetically pleasing.

I did create a mod where I cropped the bottom and right sides, adjusted the curves, lightened the rocks and removed some yellow that became apparent upon adjustment. I also the sharpened a little.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Graham,

I'm with Pamela on this one, I agree that the central horizon would work and I also think that the sun would have looked nicer offset in the frame.

Where I don't agree is with the cropping, I feel that you could be really harsh with your croppinf amd go all the way up to the bottom of the reflection and down below the top of the cloud. I also think that the boat needs to be a little more of a sillouette instead of having that detail because in this case we don't need to see that detail only that it is a boat in a glorious sunrise. If the image were mine I might have a go at removing some of the weed from the water but probably not all of it.

I really like this shot and hopefully you took plenty on the day. I have uploaded a mod where I cropped the image, recovered the blacks to get more sillouette and then sharpened a little.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Douglas,

I'll jump straight to the point here if that's okay, I like the idea of the shot, the composition and the background etc. however, for me the depth of field is what lets this image down. The nearest petals are not in focus nor is the stem and for macro or close up work, f/2.8 is a very very narrow depth of field which is what has caused this problem. You really need to be closing down that aperture to say f/11 to get the flower sharp and still blur out the background. Remember you can always blur the background more in post production but you can't sharpen the flower if it is out of focus.

If you are really serious about close up or macro photography I would suggest you invest in a ring flash to give enough light to be able to get the depth of field right and this will make a huge improvement to this type of image because the whole flower and stem need to be pin sharp against such a blurred background.

Also remember when you have a subject like this that won't move, you can be very selective with your background. It isn't always possible but you need to ensure that there are no big distractions that will draw the viewer away from the subject.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Oliver,

What a great description and just what is needed here in the critique gallery, well done.

Why were you using shutter priority on this image, there is nothing moving so shutter speed is the least of your problems and the light was more important? Using the shutter speed to darken an image isn't the correct way to manage a shot like this and you would have got a better result if you'd used aperture priority and let the camera handle the shutter speed. The exposure compensation is there to allow you to adjust the image on the fly so set the camera to aperture priority a choose a F number that gives you enough depth of field, I would have suggested that f/4.5 would have sufficed in this image. Try to set the ISO on the lowest setting (100 on your camera) and work from there. Use a tripod if the shutter speed is slow or place the camera on a flat surface etc. to hold it steady. Then take a shot and if it is too bright adjust the exposure compensation down to darken it or if it is too dark then raise the exposure compensation to brighten it. If you can't get a suitable shutter speed them raise the ISO to help with this but only as a last resort. Remember that ISO increases the sensitivity of your cameras sensor to light but the trade off for the increase in shutter speed is digital noise, the higher the ISO the more noise you will see in the image and with a 300D I would suspect it would become apparent after ISO 400.

With regards to the image, well it is definately too dark and it is hard to guess exactly what happened but I would suspect that the camera has metered for the sky and exposed that okay but couldn't get the shadows bright enough hence the underexposed lower half. There are several things that you need to consider with this shot and the first is composition, I presume that all of the water and the front of the boats are in the shot because you were wanting to capture the reflection of the crane however, the bows of the boats on either side don't really add to the shot and therefore are a distraction in the image for me so I would have moved until I had a clearer shot or included them more as foreground or cloned them out altogether. It isn't easy with an object like this to control what is in the image but the background is important for a shot like this and moving around the scene looking at the background might have helped get a better result. The green shed and the white objects to the left of the crane don't really add to the image either so trying to elimate them from the shot would have been good. You may have tried this already and this was the best you could get so apologies if you did. Going over to the yard where the boat and crane are might have been an option so you could shoot along the river/canal with the crane to the side. When I turn up at a location the first things I look for are where is the light coming from and what is the background like.

Secondly is the light, being in Australia I'm not sure what time it gets dark there but at 9.33pm I would have thought that it was well on its way to getting dark and the sun may well have already set and that is why the sky is still fairly light whereas the ground is much darker. You really need good neutral light for a scene like this and I would suspect shooting earlier when there was more light might have been a better option. You can tell that it was fairly dark because the exif data says that you were using an aperture of f/5.6 at 1/25th second, ISO 400. If you arrived for the night and it was dark, then shoot first thing in the morning before the workers arrive.

I hope that this helps and I apologise for the critisism but hopefully it will get you thinking about the shot a bit more.

DaVeS

Hi Gordon,

Very nice action shot of a Spitfire, I was reading canonshots comments above and where he says "I like to crop out some of the empty sky to fill the frame better" some would say that the plane needs somewhere to fly into otherwise it is flying out of the frame. For me I like it how you have it. One thing though is that the sky is plain and bright and the Spitfire has some dark shadows on it, perhaps you could experiment in making the plane brighter and the sky darker. Not sure how this would look but it is always worth a try.

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Philip,

I don't have very much time to comment but I think you haven't done bad considering the situation. The shot for me lacks contrast and it looks better without that big white fence. The shot looks good in a square format so if you ever get chance go back and spend more time with it and shoot it in better light not midday sun as you have here. Late afternoon or early morning with nice big long shadows would be great.

I've uploaded a very quick mod

Hope this helps

DaVeS

Hi Mark,

great image on its own and as Pamela has said they always take off before we get there so you've done well. I also see this as a missed opportunity because a shot with both birds in the frame would have been a great composition even if it does break the odd number of subjects rule. Of course though you have a shot with both and you're going to post it next (I hope)

As Pamela has also said the bank in the foreground is not necessary for the shot and for me neither is the bank in the background. Of course that isn't as easy to deal with as a simple crop from the bottom but I think you need to make this bird really pop out of the image so a simple blur may do the trick. Apart from that all that is missing is the obligatory fish in the mouth and bob's your uncle (or aunty these days)

I've attempted a mod myself where I have cropped the bottom and left sides slightly. Cloned out the banks and a couple of distracting items added structure to the bird and lightened its eye slightly and added alittle more yellow. I then sharpened.

Hope it helps

DaVeS