Park at sunset by a newbie
Discussion
Hi,
I'm newish to all of this photography lark. For several years I have had a Minolta DImage Xi which is very compact (for its time anyway) and has (in its time with me) taken some surprisingly good photos. I've always felt interested in photography and had a few plays with my trusty Minolta but it never gave the control I wanted.
About a month or so ago the urge got the better of me and after scouring the web for DSLR reviews and also speaking to Fordo (a long standing friend and winner of the Photoshop competition!) I decided on a Nikon D40x. Very pleased with it and have had a few plays around, mostly with night/long exposure stuff as that was the only time of day I had free (after work, before the clocks sprung forward).
Now the evenings are getting longer, I'm often caught thinking about that golden hour. We didn't have too great a one here this evening but I had some time on my hands and the sun was going down so I thought I'd wander out to the park which backs onto our house and take a few pics. Ended up taking 70+ !
These are the select few I would like to show you all. It is amazing even with a good DSLR the contrast ratio is terrible compared with the human eye. I'd appreciate any tips on getting a better photo in this kind of light - facing the setting sun with trees in the foreground. The only way I could bring some kind of light and detail back was using the 'Fill Light' feature in Photoshop's Camera RAW plugin. It works (lightens the almost black grass in the foreground) but at the cost of detail where the shadowed branches meet the burnt out sky. Maybe there is no way round this (as I suspect) but maybe someone out there has a tip or two...?
Enough jibber jabber, here's what I took tonight:
1) Quite a bit of Fill Light added here to get the grass to be green instead of black, also cranked up the Vibrancy which I find really adds colour so much better than increasing Saturation:
2) Similar to #1
3) Looking through the undergrowth into the "Walled Garden"
4) Getting a bit arty now, came out pretty much as I wanted:
5) Dirty chav-ruined bench vs lovely spring blossom:
6) Attempted close-up of blossom with litter bin blurred in background due to shallowish DOF. Not the best time of day to be doing this kind of thing I think as the shutter gets quite slow and I didn't take tripod with me. This took a few attempts at differing zoom lengths (is that the right phrase??) and F stops. At first I had the apeture wide open because it was getting dark but the DOF was so shallow that you couldn't make out the writing on the bin at all (ETA: you still can't on this version!!), so had to close that down but lengthen the shutter which increased potential blurring. Looking back I could have put the ISO up more (it was on 400) - didn't think of that at the time:
That's it for this evening. I've got a few (what I think are!) cool night shots if anyone's interested in seeing those. Once my 'new' car is up and running I think I'll be going out quite a bit more of an evening to see what I can snap, but for now I'll just have to make do with what's nearby.
Any questions, please ask away and if you have any critisisms or suggestions I am more than listening!
Thanks for looking,
Leo
I'm newish to all of this photography lark. For several years I have had a Minolta DImage Xi which is very compact (for its time anyway) and has (in its time with me) taken some surprisingly good photos. I've always felt interested in photography and had a few plays with my trusty Minolta but it never gave the control I wanted.
About a month or so ago the urge got the better of me and after scouring the web for DSLR reviews and also speaking to Fordo (a long standing friend and winner of the Photoshop competition!) I decided on a Nikon D40x. Very pleased with it and have had a few plays around, mostly with night/long exposure stuff as that was the only time of day I had free (after work, before the clocks sprung forward).
Now the evenings are getting longer, I'm often caught thinking about that golden hour. We didn't have too great a one here this evening but I had some time on my hands and the sun was going down so I thought I'd wander out to the park which backs onto our house and take a few pics. Ended up taking 70+ !
These are the select few I would like to show you all. It is amazing even with a good DSLR the contrast ratio is terrible compared with the human eye. I'd appreciate any tips on getting a better photo in this kind of light - facing the setting sun with trees in the foreground. The only way I could bring some kind of light and detail back was using the 'Fill Light' feature in Photoshop's Camera RAW plugin. It works (lightens the almost black grass in the foreground) but at the cost of detail where the shadowed branches meet the burnt out sky. Maybe there is no way round this (as I suspect) but maybe someone out there has a tip or two...?
Enough jibber jabber, here's what I took tonight:
1) Quite a bit of Fill Light added here to get the grass to be green instead of black, also cranked up the Vibrancy which I find really adds colour so much better than increasing Saturation:
2) Similar to #1
3) Looking through the undergrowth into the "Walled Garden"
4) Getting a bit arty now, came out pretty much as I wanted:
5) Dirty chav-ruined bench vs lovely spring blossom:
6) Attempted close-up of blossom with litter bin blurred in background due to shallowish DOF. Not the best time of day to be doing this kind of thing I think as the shutter gets quite slow and I didn't take tripod with me. This took a few attempts at differing zoom lengths (is that the right phrase??) and F stops. At first I had the apeture wide open because it was getting dark but the DOF was so shallow that you couldn't make out the writing on the bin at all (ETA: you still can't on this version!!), so had to close that down but lengthen the shutter which increased potential blurring. Looking back I could have put the ISO up more (it was on 400) - didn't think of that at the time:
That's it for this evening. I've got a few (what I think are!) cool night shots if anyone's interested in seeing those. Once my 'new' car is up and running I think I'll be going out quite a bit more of an evening to see what I can snap, but for now I'll just have to make do with what's nearby.
Any questions, please ask away and if you have any critisisms or suggestions I am more than listening!
Thanks for looking,
Leo
Edited by LeoZwalf on Wednesday 9th April 22:57
You're kidding?! I know that road very well. I'm just round the corner - house backs onto that park. You may well have seen my car around, silver Rover 420 turbo.
I did shoot these in RAW (thank goodness, would never have been able to get them as good as they are otherwise) and noticed the sky is almost completely burnt out. Thing is though that the foreground is almost all black so I would have thought that taking the exposure down even more would, whilst bringing out detail in the sky, lose all or most of the detail in the foreground grass.
Perhaps some kind of filter on the lens is necessary? Would a polarisor help?
I did shoot these in RAW (thank goodness, would never have been able to get them as good as they are otherwise) and noticed the sky is almost completely burnt out. Thing is though that the foreground is almost all black so I would have thought that taking the exposure down even more would, whilst bringing out detail in the sky, lose all or most of the detail in the foreground grass.
Perhaps some kind of filter on the lens is necessary? Would a polarisor help?
LeoZwalf said:
You're kidding?! I know that road very well. I'm just round the corner - house backs onto that park. You may well have seen my car around, silver Rover 420 turbo.
are you in field end road?in the little bit thats set back form the road?
you might of seen me to, ive got 2 bright red GTMs (see profile)
sorry dont know anything about photos though
doug
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