Ridicule, Me! The thought of it.

A clever well thought out image, well composed and amusing. It just seems a touch flat. Perhaps just a brightness boost to add a bit of extra impact.

Paul

Very difficult to find the turtle. I would have stayed with colour, but the image is very unsharp and it has to be shake. You must get such images sharp somewhere and this is a result of the very low shutter speed and long lens.

You didn't need f22. For this, f8 would do, up the ISO to at least 200, giving a shutter speed around 1/30. Still not enough, though.

Paul

The focus issue, as Willie says, is almost certainly shake. When getting in close the magnification factor has the same effect as long lenses, it magnifies image size and camera movement. You do not mention flash, but the lighting looks like a quite strongly directional source from the front giving some reflective areas.

I would stay with f16 or so for depth of field. The lens should stand that.

Tilt the composition across the frame, roughly corner to corner.

Paul

A decent image and the crow helps. The problem for me is that I have seen a lot, and I mean a lot, of shots of Dunstaburgh from both north and south. I have a few dozen myself from the Craster end. As such it diesn't really stand out from the masses. I have no problem with the rocks and lighting, but they are the imagd rather than the castle, which is only just there.

Paul

A flight of pigeons. Feral probably. Not a bad image. I would crop the bottom 4 off leaving a landscape format.

Paul

Just too much going on and he half girl in the foreground would have been better focused on and made your main image with the rest as a background. Te general effect is all a bit heavy and dark for what should be a bright image.

Paul

Your comments suggest the tow rope cut notches are the reason for this image. As such, you have done a good job as they were the first things I looked at, and mono suites the idea that these will go back years to the days of horse drawn barges. As such, the lack of sharpness further back in the image is no problem as this is a foil to the notches.

I think you would have seen little difference at ISO400 in a mono conversion such as this, thus might be worthwhile to keep shutter speed faster. In such a case, tripod I must assume. Why not shoot a series varying settings?

Paul

You have a cyan cast. Easily corrected as you will know. Add red or reduce cyan in the channel mixer. Nice scan in general and I find it very interesting being a WW2 aircraft buff. Last flying Swordfish. I have shots ofthis aircraft. Effects of scanning to one side, I would guess Kodachrome, or at least, Ektachrome. All Kodak films had a blue bias which seems to boost when scanning.

Correcting colours make the grass a little greener too.

Well done and good to keep.

Paul

A nice picture and you are trying to deal with the wide tonal range. You have attempted to burn in the blank sky and ithas just gone grey. If there is no detail, there is nothing to darken. Better to crop it.

The kids are just a touch under exposed, so brighten them a bit with extra dodging on some of the dark shadows in the body area.

Paul

Willie says all. Snow exposure issues occur so often. Metering is a basic requirement of photography and there is no foolproof system. A diffusion cone on a hand meter for incident light is as near to totally accurate as anyone can get.

Cropping is also fundamental to a good final image and I think the near letterbox increases the impact here.

Paul

Good image considering. Wonder why you needed to reverse the lens as this is hardly macro? Thick black lines top and bottom not needed. Be careful with such techniques as you are asking for dust on your sensor.

Paul

Technically good, but you must have more where one or both boxers expressions are rather more visible. You need to see a face with pain or elation. This is extremely well done, but static.

First image I've seen at 20K ISO. Impressive.

Paul

A pleasant lamb image and you have done well in such low lighting. There is a slight softness evident due to the relatively low shutter speed to focal length, roughly equal and you should avoid such high ISO if you can. The result is very good at this size, but on an A3 print?

Lighting is all, and you must use what is available. The second lamb suckling and mum are a little distracting, as all three are a very similar texture and tone but composition generally very good for the main head and a fine first effort in this section.

Paul

An interesting striking viewpoint although the protest could be about anything. You don't mention processing, but you have done something as the colours are not right. There are also signs of a degree of over sharpening as there are haloes round the head and background objects.

I suspect you shot from the hip and the camera has failed to focus on the subjects face.

Paul

Nice image but not sharp enough for this kind of thing. They must be pin sharp over much of the bird if possible, but definately the eyes.. You need a much lower ISO, 400 probably for these high quality natural history images. Camera support, tripod or monopod and an aperture of about f8 to use the lens sweet spot and get some depth of field. Look through this site and you will find some excellent high tech bird images. Aspire towards those. Look at the details of how they were shot.

That's why we ask more experienced people using this section to give full details so that beginners can look and learn.

Paul

Strong initial effect, but sharpness is low. I would have come down to f8 and about 8 sec. Assume you were on a tripod but it looks like there were traffic vibrations or something shaking the tripod. Wind can adversly effect long exposures too.

Always try and keep night exposure times to a minimum

Paul

Now you are finally starting to think things through. Tight crop and the right projected image and clothing. Very proficient and interesting. Titles should always be related to the image, always, or don't title. Why put on an unrelated title?

Paul

Forgetting the orientation, the backlighting means the horse's face is a little under exposed. Needs brightening up a bit. A touch of flash fill with a powerful gun at the time of taking or you could try the dodge tool. A pity you needed to go to ISO1600 for an outdoor shot in decent lighting but a reasonable horsey shot.

Paul

Nicely done. As you are thinking, an even faster speed would improve things even further. By the way, would leave off the fancy frame here and for screen use. Just wastes image size.

Right. You are using flash. Your shutter speed at this aperture with no ambient to speak of is not 1/250 sec. That's the synch speed. Your actual shutter speed is the peak flash duration, which is likely to be rather faster than 1/250. Some very experienced natural history photographers use high speed flash to freeze insects flying giving effective shutter speeds of well over 1/10000 sec!STUDIO FLASH TENDS TO BE SLOWER THAN ON CAMERA GUNS, BUT IF YOU REDUCE POWER YOU ACTUALLY REDUCE FLASH DURATION AND, IN EFFECT, INCREASE SHUTTER SPEED.

Sorry, pressed caps button!

So, cut flash power and move the heads closer to compensate. Remember flash power falls off with the inverse square law, 1/d squared, where d is distance. The result is a faster shutter speed in terms of light duration, but this has the same effect.

So, the flash is your shutter speed, NOT the one set on the camera. It must still be the synch speed of course.

Hope this reads OK, but just play with lower flash powers and be careful of water on electrics and on bare flash tubes. They go with a nasty bang.

Paul

This is much stronger and more effective. I would prefer the images separate though. Not easy to look at together and then would also be bigger. Get in close and fill the frame is a good rule, and it works here.

Best yet.

Paul