on a side note photoshop your photography skills have just doubled and doubled and doubled with every photo there !!! id love to know what youve either been reading or know how you process !
Cheers mate. Appreciate the kind comments.
I've only had my DSLR for around 2 months or so now and other than watching a few videos on you tube regarding aperture, lenses and modes, I haven't really read anything. I've posted a few threads over at AVF asking for advice and posted a lot in the Sony Alpha thread to learn about the A200 DSLR.
Those photos came out pretty good directly from the camera. All I have done is sharpened them using the "
Smart Sharpen" filter in PS with a setting of around
60%. On someone of them i have used the "
Auto Contrast" setting to make them just a tad darker. I find this helps make the foreground or the item in focus just stand out that little bit more without making it look processed.
The first picture is obviously touched up with HDR within PS. I've realised HDR is much easier and better with buildings and man made items/structures (because of the contrasting materials and straight lines) but not so good with still life and nature as the colours are more softer and blurred and applying HDR adds a lot of noise!. I wouldn't recommend HDR treatment for natural shots.
Obviously there is only so much you can do with post processing. The image has to be good out the camera really so i would just suggest use the best settings and always shoot in RAW.
I think most of those photos came out really well thanks to the Minolta 50mm f1.4!
Photoshop, with that second shot I see you used f/1.4 but the DOF looks MUCH more shallow, did you use a tilt-shift type effect in your Post-processing for that photo?
No mate. Other than some sharpening in PS i haven't done anything to that picture. I just got as close as I could to the stick and took the photo.
The lens is that good! Its a firm favourite of mine because I just love the
bokeh and the
DOF that can be achieved. I think every photographer should have one!
PS. what is tilt -shift?
I've a funny feeling that his name isn't photoshop by coincidence
but agreed his photography skills are very impressive for only having a camera a short time
Cheers Derek.
My PS skills are very limited to be honest with you. Other than using image resize, sharpening, auto contract/colour, adding border features I don't really know my way around PS. Picked up the HDR methods using the online tutorials but I wish I was a pro around photoshop. I mostly rely on my camera to do all the work. Now that I have got a few descent lenses it makes that a little easier too.
