Photog Feedback

NicAdams
January 2009
I just uploaded two photos to the gallery. They are both the same image taken at the hoek today with my Canon G9, the first one is the original frame converted from RAW to JPEG with Canon's Zoombrowser using 'as shot' settings. I haven't messed with any colours other than whatever happens in the conversion to JPEG. The second image I cropped, rotated, mucked with the colours a little and converted the image to a web colour space (I think???) using Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Camera RAW.

Now I'm no Photoshop expert but I like to dabble, professional dabbler if you will. I'd just like to get some feedback from whoever cares to give it in the whole photographyness of the situation. Just some basic things you know, like how to best setup the cam depending on conditions and the best colours to aim for in post-processing (blue seas compared to green say).

Hoek was cranking today and I got heaps more shots to upload but just want some feedback first. I want them to be worth the blerry sunburn before I throw some substandard, unedited pics in the gallery blackhole.

Maybe if we get some tips together you guys at Sixty40 Mag can put a segment together as there defs seems to be a lot of interest in the subject.

Cheers

Bodyboarding 733 views

4 Replies

dcmike
January 2009
Wow Guy! Looks like a cracker day!
Books have been written on this subject so it's going to be pretty hard to answer in this space but as you said - it's a subject that lank okes are interested in so let's get this thing rolling.

I had a quick look at the G9 specs and it's top of the range compact digital so you won't have technical camera issues at all. The lens length of 210mm at full zoom might be a bit short for some breaks but at 12.1 mega pixels you have plenty of room to play with.

At your best resolution your image should be 4000 x 3000 pixels. That means you could fit about 48 Sixty40 gallery size images into one of your frames! Of course this is a different ball game when you are talking about printing the shots... Online images are 72dpi and print images are 300dpi the result is that your full frame image in print is just shy of a double page spread in the mag which is perfect for gallery submission.

But back to your online image questions... Try this:
Open your image in photoshop, select all, copy, open new and set the image size to 600 x 400 pixels at 72 dpi (ideal Sixty40 online size and will speed up the upload time), and paste your copied image... You'll find that you're so zoomed in that you don't even recognise what you're looking at! That's how radically reduced the online galleries are! Now you can resize and rotate at will and select the part of the shot you feel has the most impact and best reflects the moment you photographed. For the benefit of those not so familiar with photoshop you find the resize function under / menu / edit / free transform - grab a corner and you can freely change the size and move it around (just remember to hold the shift key when resizing to make sure you don't squash or elongate the image).
How much you resize and what part of the image you decide to keep and what to crop out is entirely a matter of taste and circumstance. Getting the horizon straight is always a good idea.

As far as colour correction goes, I would say there is one rule only. Portray the scene as it was. If the water was brown and murky, well, that's how it was... You can't make it look like Indo if it was onshore pea soup after the river flooded... That being said, there is room for interpretation. We all tend to exaggerate when we recall the session and that comes into play with images too. Adjusting the levels of your image is done quite often. By making the whites a bit whiter and the darks a bit darker adds contrast which translates as a 'punchier' shot (just don't overdo it or it will look fake!). This is where RAW vs JPEG comes into play. RAW records everything whereas JPEG loses a lot of information in the compression process so any post adjustment you make to levels, colour, white balance etc in JPEG is going to show up sooner in the form of 'noise' and steps in the smooth colours.

Still on the subject of colour. From the specs I read on your camera it has several 'white balance' presets. Experiment with these. Try shoot the same scene using the different settings and see what works best for your situation. The ocean is a difficult subject to photograph because of the blue sea and sky and bright white foam/spray. You know that if you use your daylight camera setting and photograph something using your desk lamp for lighting that it comes out all orangy yellow. That's cos the light bulb IS orangy yellow - your eyes and brain can accommodate this and adjust for it but your camera needs to be told. By the same token, a cloudy day shot using a daylight setting produces blueish images but you could use the cloudy setting to shoot a sunny day and get much warmer images...

I see your camera has 2 custom white balance settings. This is where you tell the camera what pure white is at your break. Read the section in your manual but it boils down to photographing a white piece of paper or a white bodyboard slick to let the camera know exactly what white is at that time of day and location. It takes a bit of effort but will produce the most consistent colour correct images.

I can't tell what time this was in the day but it looks like mid day by the shadows. Unfortunately we have very harsh sunlight in SA which tends to make the images a bit 'flat' and lifeless... There's not much you can do about this except shoot early morning and late afternoon when the sun is lower and not quite so harsh and use midday to score some pits of your own.

So, on the whole, I would say you have a cracker image there but you could get a bit closer with a tighter crop. Also, your adjusted image, although you have cropped it to a wider format which I like, the top half is only sky which (according to my taste...) leaves the image unbalanced with all the interest only in the bottom half.

Okay now - before this turns into a book - let's hear from the other okes!

Keep up the good work and good on ya for starting this topic!
Kelly
January 2009

dcmike wrote:
Open your image in photoshop, select all, copy, open new and set the image size to 600 x 400 pixels at 72 dpi (ideal Sixty40 online size and will speed up the upload time), and paste your copied image... You'll find that you're so zoomed in that you don't even recognise what you're looking at! That's how radically reduced the online galleries are! Now you can resize and rotate at will and select the part of the shot you feel has the most impact and best reflects the moment you photographed. For the benefit of those not so familiar with photoshop you find the resize function under / menu / edit / free transform - grab a corner and you can freely change the size and move it around (just remember to hold the shift key when resizing to make sure you don't squash or elongate the image).
How much you resize and what part of the image you decide to keep and what to crop out is entirely a matter of taste and circumstance. Getting the horizon straight is always a good idea.

Ja, nice work on the image - but I'm echoing Mike's comments as my first impression was that it could be cropped further for web. As Mike says cropping pretty much works like "zooming" into the shot and if you're only shooting for web then shooting at a higher resolution allows you to do do this and guys will think you are shooting with a big lens.

Just wanted to highlight on this because with a little work - a lot of guys could be posting good quality shots to the gallery even if you don't have the greatest camera.

Mike has covered most - but if you want more reading, check out the following link where I just tried to give an example of how cropping can improve an image:

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=858&p=3643&hilit=crop#p3643

For a few extra tips on photography, read DC's article OVER EXPOSURE from issue 04:

http://issuu.com/sixty40/docs/sixty40-issue04/47
dsc
January 2009
Excellent topic guys and sick feedback DC and Kelly! DC hit the nail on the head - the light at the Hoek is extremely difficult to work with after ealry morning and late arvo. Obviously this also goes for quite a stretch of the Western Cape coastline and SA in general.

Nic, I was also shooting there on Wednesday and must have left not long before you got there... wishing i didn't now cos there were some A class waves coming thru and some sick riders getting in/already in. I probably should have shot from a side angle to try and get the sun's angle to my advantage, but stuck with the usual rock position; so that would be point 1 from me - use the landscape to your advantage to "create" the kind of light you want; like for example, shooting from 5pm onwards going for a specific back lit type shot.. or walk around and find a different angle that matches your camera's capabilities.

Then, second point. I got some rad images too but had similar issues with the light on the shots looking rather kak. SO, second point is to get creative with what you have. I took this shot of Josh and stuck it into sepia. I initially wanted to give it a grainy feel, almost like a 16mm film type vibe but it just didn't look right. Naturally you could also bring in black and white although colours and subjects will dictate its usage. I find sepia much easier to work with.

The sepia distracts the eye from the glare on the face of the wave - believe me it looks siff in colour. Luckily Josh is entirely in focus here and he will probably take up most of your eyes concentration before you move on to looking at the lip and so on. Here I as the photog win cos the shot is intriguing in itself and you wouldn't have even thought twice how bad it may have looked in colour until I told you/showed you.
craigtrilivas
January 2009
Hmmm i seem to have the problem the other way round
Got to sum dabbling with my 400d & 300mm lens and i just cant seem to nail the shots
Practice practice practice i skeem then yes?

I was under the impression that i should also be using my highest aperture setting and fastest shutter speed?
My problem is that my images r underexposed.
If only they were overexposed LOL!!!

But in hindsight i was shooting at around 1:15pm so.....

any hints for a rookie?

Safe.

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