kd's noob to not so noob thread

[King Damager]

Ok, so whilst I could continue to keep on posting occasional images in the 'post your picture here' threads, and occasionally get feedback, I've decided perhaps the best option would be to create my own thread which can track my success (and more likely failures).

Hopefully I'll get more feedback, advice, and help etc... this way, and maybe in future, other members can see progression as and how it's worked.

So, I've recently got CS6 and Lightroom 4, so now I have the post processing stuff.

I'm still using my Panasonic Lumix FZ45 (Bridge), as frankly, until I get more into it, I don't see much point investing huge amounts into DSLR's and lenses.

I'm currently reading Understanding Exposure, and have subscribed to DigitalRev's Youtube channel.

The next aim is to get out as much as possible to get photos really. This I'm finding is actually harder than I expected at uni, but I am just trying to take a camera out when walking down to the shops and the such like, to try and get the photos as and when I want

I also have a couple of places I want to get to in the near future for shots, so shall see how that pans out with free time.

Then obviously I'll have to spend a reasonable amount of time in Post processing, but have no idea how the shooting/post processing balance should be... If anyone has any advice on this, great

The aim really is to not necessarily pile loads of images in the thread, but rather post fewer images, and spend more time explaining the thoughts/processes behind them in this thread, rather than just the standard images.

First shot to follow in a few minutes (want to keep first post clear of photos)

kd

 

[King Damager]

So first photo.

This is the first one I've done in RAW, and then edited fully in both LR and CS6.

So here goes:


Light Portrait by King Damager, on Flickr

Original (no Post processing)

Spoiler

Thoughts (Personal)

I was just sitting on the couch when I figured I'd try this. Turns out to be harder than I thought, but I'm sure there are many many better versions of this.

I underexposed the original photo (looking back, I feel far too much), so that I could get the detail in the light itself. I can't quite remember how much I felt I needed to underexpose, but yeah, was a bit annoying.

Then to post processing.

So I brought the shadows up, but tried to maintain the same lighting in the original photo, so that it wasn't 'over bright as such'. Seemed surprisingly hard to get the shadows to come out, but not overbrighten the light itself, and still get the detail in the light (and filament). I still feel the image as a whole is a bit too dark, but ultimately I think it's still quite an improvement over the original.

I'm not fantastically pleased with it, but it was certainly useful to show me the limits of post processing lighting wise, and in fact the power of bringing detail back out of black.

Comments and help appreciated.

kd

 

[King Damager]

The white balance is wrong, the photo is wonky, it actually looks unprocessed.

Once you fix the 2 above then start going off a tangent to add the style to it.

Yeah, getting the white balance does seem to be quite annoying in that. I think I actually had that one pre-set, rather than just leaving it on auto.

The wonky-ness, looking at the light now, definitely seems, down to the way the light is hanging, that said, it's definitely something I should have sorted out...

Explain the tangent comment?

kd

 

[King Damager]

Shooting straight into a very bright light will never really give you a good photo unless you want a silhouette or know how to use flash photography to overpower it and use it to the desired effect. Personally, I'm not sure why you are recovering the shadows on this in the first place. Personally I'd have sorted the white balance out, then increased the black point to quickly turn the shadows black and very dark, bringing out just the light itself as the focal point with no distraction.

If you want to try and photograph the light but have the ceiling exposed properly, you need to use either a reflector or a fill flash, with the former probably giving a better and more natural result, given the bulb colour anyway.

Hmm, yeah, I had no idea how well it would go. Great to know this now though

I know I am biased! But the monthly competition would probably help you to explore a little with your photography and try new and interesting ideas, techniques and gain some feedback on this, although monthly it maybe good start.

Yeah, I'll be looking into this starting next month. I've been thinking for a few days about triptych, and haven't come up with anything yet. XD

But yeah I'm thinking

kd

 

[King Damager]

If I'm understanding you right... was this more just a test to see how you can shoot something bright while dealing with the rest of the image?
If that's the case, I think it would have been a far better test to have shot something a bit more meaningful, say a whole room and then see how you can recover the details, as that is both a test and you could try and create a more pleasing image.

Generally yeah, just trying to see what was possible. Admittedly yes, something more imaginative from an image perspective would have probably been a better choice, but yeah, was just trying to see how it would work. I'm well aware it's not anything that makes you go wow really, and that's not what it aimed to be.

At the moment, I'm not expecting the subject of photos to be particularly fantastic. I'm restricted by weather at the moment it seems... So at the moment, I'm just trying to nail the technical side of things. Picking something simple as an image seemed the easiest way to mean I had to focus on the technical side. Hopefully this won't take too long!

kd

 

[King Damager]

Ok, so this one's a few days old now, finally got time to going over stuff, and looking what I've taken in the last few days.

Again nothing spectacular. This one I fiddle with tone and stuff a bit. Nothing major though. More an experimentation with Aperture than anything else.


Rear Garden Parasol-1030255 by King Damager, on Flickr

kd

 

[King Damager]

Why don't you take a picture of something with alittle more life in it, Best way to learn is just go out on the street and take Photo's, You'll learn a lot faster that way.. ?

Ah, that is actually the next plan. Either go to the massive graveyard across the road and try and find some wildlife, or head down to campus and turn up the super zoom. Also going to centre parks this weekend, so hopefully there will be something to shoot there!

Out of interest, does anyone have tips in taking street candids/random portraits of people? Just a bit worried that I'll take a photo of someone and they'll become all aggressive and such like....

kd

 

[King Damager]

Where abouts are you from, I go manchester sometimes taking pictures.

Well, Norwich ATM. London/Essex from next year.

kd

 

[King Damager]

Saturday market is great for learning your camera inside out, its AF system and metering will shine and fail here because people are constantly moving, the lighting may also shift depending on if you're shooting under a market tent or whatever else. You have to think quickly or you miss a shot as well.

There's quite nothing like going in deep early, it's rewarding

You'll soon figure out correct composition and then learnt to ditch those rules for the right photo too. Processing can be an afterthought as far as white balance/colour goes because those can be fixed in RAW later but it always helps to see your final image in your head before you even release the shutter.

Hm, ok, thanks for the advice. Will certainly try this. Norwich market is all day every day, so am not even restricted to weekends only. So will definitely have to try that at some point...

I've learnt that my DoF seems absolutely dire. Well not fantastic anyway. Even at f8 (camera max) if I focus on something up close, it epically fails to focus on the background. On the other hand I find that the bokeh isn't great... Even down at f2.8

kd

 

[King Damager]

With small optics and sensor you won't be getting dof to rival a dslr unfortunately but that camera will allow you to be creative although the three Ps are essential!

Yeah, that kind of clicked quite quickly

Then again I remember Raymond talking about his first camera being limited and it teaching him a lot learning to work with and around the limitations. So going to try it, I like the zoom distance at the moment, and hopefully this will be interesting.

Parents have a Canon DSLR (can't remember which), and I think just a kit lens, but might try it out and see how it goes, if I'm still going strong (hopefully) I might look at investing in a DSLR come January student loan. If I do, one of the first lens' would probably be a fixed lens (nifty!), as that's the opposite and seems like an experience well needed.

kd

 

[King Damager]

Ok, so latest image.


Center Parcs Tree by King Damager, on Flickr

Looking at this the massive issue is clearly the sky -> leaves transition. I very much like the bottom of the image, just not so fond of the top of the image...

Not quite sure how the sky interacting with the trees has caused so much issue. Tried to create quite a difference in saturation of the bottom of the image compared to the top to try and draw the eyes away from the top, but not sure how well this worked. The upper left I still feel is weak, which is ultimately where eyes look first I feel.

No idea what's going on under the right hand branch, may just plain erase that out in photoshop...

kd

 

[King Damager]

Is it me or is that camera particularly noisy?

Yeah. It is. Does my head in....

Whilst it's something like 14mp shooting RAW, I could never actually blow anything up to full size because of the noise. It's fine for images here, or even a normal photo size, but yeah, I doubt I'd get away with anything bigger than A4. I've noticed that the noise is horrific, and the shot above was only on ISO400...

Clashes between sky and foliage like leaves works well with shallow depth of field, I think it works but you could try some presets in lightroom, a nice contrasty B&W for example and then play with split tone sliders.

Also in Lightroom the RGB curve slider (as opposed to the normal tone curve) can result in excellent results, to get it press the button bottom right of the tone curve pane

If you ever use any of the brushes in lightroom to heal etc then press h to show/hide brush point markers - Else it's a mystery wtf they are on brush heavy images!

Might indeed try some of these then, as I hadn't yet found the RGB curve slider!

kd

 

[King Damager]

Ok, apologies for the double post, but we have yet another photo from the recent trip out

Promise that next time I'll upload more at once rather than uploading as they're done!


Squirrel by King Damager, on Flickr

Turned out reasonably well, I think. I'm not quite sure about the tone balance. Lightroom didn't seem to like it xD Did consider bringing out the green a bit more, but it slightly overpowered the squirrel. Not sure how I feel about it, it was the most in focus one I got, but is quite a bland pose...

Just to add to the discussion about noise, again ISO 400,

Spoiler

Full size crop of just the head. As you can see, noise is quite an issue But that again comes down to a camera issue rather than anything else, and there's not much I can do about it.

kd

 

[King Damager]

Presumably the camera has 200 or even 100 iso modes, though i'm not sure what shutter speed you're using at 400, so it might not be viable to go lower.

I find the square crop of this shot quite odd, and someone is going to comment on the missing tail.

I can't comment on the PP as I use Darktable in Linux.

Yeah, I agree on the crop. The lack of tail was due to trying to get the shot rather than anything else. Same with the square crop really, it's as shot, and haven't cropped it one bit from that, but couldn't work out what else to crop out to get away from the very sq focus.

I do aim for ISO 100/200, it's f4, 44.5, and 1/100. Camera set the ISO auto. That said its auto choice seemed dire. It never seems to stick it high in low light, but with the ISO at 400 noise is bad enough, so I guess that's a good thing... Shutter speed was a necessity really due to the squirrel wanting to run around a bit, and was shot wide open.. So yeah :s it was slight underexposed pre-pp anyway xD so had to bring up the exposure more so in LR.

Damn that's quite strong noise indeed!

Yeah I didn't realise quite how bad it was until recently. Yet another reason to look at a dslr I feel...

kd

 

[King Damager]

A week and a bit later, but I've finally found time that isn't dedicated to coursework to do some more PP.


Thetford Station by King Damager, on Flickr

kd

 

[King Damager]

Looking good but I'd have removed the purple fringing on the left section lights, takes seconds in Lightroom using the lens profile section > colour > purple slider up one mouse wheel.

Yeah, it bugged me slightly, but again, being stuck with a bridge, means whilst I know the lens is made by Leica, I frankly have no idea which lens it is. Meaning I can't actually enable the lens corrections.. I tried fiddling with saturation etc, and a select area brush edit, but whilst I can get rid of some, I can't get rid of a huge amount of purple still...

As for the angle, I was just experimenting, but quite like how it turned out xD

kd

 

[King Damager]

You can, lens profile doesn't need to be enabled because the color tab of that section works regardless to combat purple/green fringing.

Huh. Did not know that...

Mind you still can't work it out... How does it work? If I mouse scroll it just seems to like to move up and down the menu xD If I click on 'Purple' or 'amount' I can then use +/- to reduce/increase, but even reducing doesn't seem to a make a major difference.

kd

 

[King Damager]

Definitely feel like I'm not doing something right XD

kd

 

[King Damager]

Small adjustments I do love how quick LR is...

kd

 

[King Damager]

Weather's actually looking suitably glum today that whilst any sky in photos are going to be dull and grey, sunlight will be favourable....

Yeah, 4.2. Just LR in general to be honest. Having spent years with PS. Just the ability to quickly brush brush brush, and then make quick edits to things like saturation etc... Plus, I have a massive love of the HSL stuff.

To be fair I've still got a huge number of pictures to process. The Tree + Squirrel + Station were just those I'd stuck as highest on the ratings list xD

kd