[nesgran]

I went ahead and looked him up on facebook. He appears to be mainly a landscape photographer (lots of HDR) who is doing some people shooting as well. He’s actually got a few more bad shots in the same series or rather lots of mediocre ones and a couple of blurry disasters. I wouldn’t call him a faux, just not a very good tog or at least well out of his depth. I suspect he could benefit from working as a second shooter for a few weddings as he is a far better landscape phbotographer than people photographer

I just wish someone would tell him to ease off on the HDR though

 

 

[nesgran]

Right, are you a professional photographer, aspiring or a happy hobbyist? It sounds like a company name on your flickr

To start off, I like your Welsh lake pics in BW, I like the composition of the shot with the geese and the pic of the kid with the camera is cute. Most of your BW landscape pictures work except maybe not the one with the church and the one with the bench.

Your portfolio has a number of problems though, first off would be the first four people shots. They are severely over edited and do not look good. It looks like you’ve tried to do lots of fancy things with a jpg which has completely fallen apart during the manipulations. Highlights are blown and the tonality has gone completely wonky. From looking at them the two outdoor shots have a massively overexposed sky, a fill flash would be your best friend in this scenario. The self portrait looks weird because of the background that doesn’t seem to belong and the  photo of the guitarist looks like it was done with a cell phone anno 2006.

Of your portrait pics I would say the only ones I think work are the kid, “benjamin blake” and “skyward”. The rest have the same blown highlight and serious overediting or end up in the category of snapshots (like the kids dancing). The snapshotiness of a lot of the pics like all the kids dancing, the swan and a few others drags the overall quality down. Nothing wrong with snapshots, in fact I took several hundred today, but it isn’t something I would have put in a portfolio looking for critiques. Not every shot can be great after all.

I can see that you are a sound photographer however your editing and your selections are letting you down a bit. If I were you I’d re-edit the editing disasters if you have RAW files for them, if not in the bin they go. Then get rid of the snapshots and add a few more high quality shots and you’ll have a solid portfolio.

[nesgran]

why not just edit your facebook profile out of the post?

[nesgran]

What I’m trying to do is cut through the noise and explain what is really causing the effects we see. That a crop sensor actually crops, that the density of photo sites on the sensor affect the size an item in your image appears when viewed on your monitor at 100%, and that if you keep everything else exactly the same and just change a full frame sensor for a crop sensor, DOF does not change because all you are doing is cropping. You could take the photo with a full frame body, then print it and get out scissors to crop it… you would not expect DOF to magically change in the print, why would you expect the crop sensor to change DOF, if you were doing the same by changing bodies?

I agree with you but the effect is that of a shallower DOF in FF because of the difference in focal length needed at a distance. We suddenly won’t start framing our shots differently because it is a crop sensor, this is the important part. The effect gets more obvious the closer you have focus to the camera

[nesgran]

Oops, forgot to include the link http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm

Well, that is why we say the equivalent rather than anything else, with the different angle of view necessitating different focal length or subject distance the effect is that for the same aperture the dof is thinner on a ff cam. Didn’t you post some photos in another thread, I seem to recall the last one showing the effect quite well

 

 

[nesgran]

A crop body does not change the focal length of a lens. It does not affect depth of field, regardless of what some defective DOF calculators may indicate. The reason little point & shoot cameras and cell phones have such deep depth of field is their lenses are very short. The apparent length of their lens is due to packing far more very small pixels onto their tiny sensors. They take “crop” to the extreme, making very short lenses seem long by cropping with a very, very small sensor. Look at the PowerShot ELPH 330 HS, for instance: 4.3 (W) – 43.0 (T) mm (35mm film equivalent: 24 (W) – 240 (T) mm). If they actually gave you a 240 mm lens, you could get very shallow DOF, but since they actually give you a maximum of 43 mm, you really have to work to get shallow DOF. Really, since they give somewhere between 36 and 50 mm, it should not be too hard to get shallow DOF if you could open it up enough, except the crop is such that you couldn’t get a person’s face in the frame when working at the distances you would use for 50 mm on an SLR.

In a way you are right but the effect of the smaller sensor is that the angle of view is smaller, hence lenses act as if they are longer. The result of this is that at the same equivalent focal length (i.e. effective angle of view) a crop lens will have a longer depth of field. That is why people say that a FF camera has a shallower DOF than a crop camera. Check the DOF requirements section

[nesgran]

You’re right, I was a little heavy on the vignette. That accounts for the glow-y look.

That makes sense, I can see it now that you’ve pointed it out

[nesgran]

Why not just say to him that his HDR portraits are dead in the water and they are an atrocity to photography? Well, maybe leave out the last bit.

Maybe we should mention to him that it is far easier holding the camera the right way around…

 

 

[nesgran]

Actually, I was going to write a little about minimising noise. Using ETTR (expose to the right) you can get away with pretty low noise, or at least not too intrusive. I have an ancient 40D still going strong (lovely camera actually) and when it came out ISO 1600 would look bad. With ETTR though and some modern noise reduction the results are still very good even at ISO 1600 with very little colour noise.

ETTR: overexpose deliberately by 2/3 stop and then pull back in post. It minimises shadow noise as on Canons at least that is the most troubling bit. Only downside is that one has to keep looking at the histogram to make sure highlights aren’t clipped.

As for lugging kit, I think I win 🙂 . I brought a 350D and a sigma 18-125 lens mountaineering in central asia. Nearest road was two days walk and nearest people at least five days away at an altitude  topped out with the rebel at about 4300m. I’m still kicking myself I didn’t bring a better camera and lens. Next time I’m thinking 6D, 24-105, 580EXII flash, carbon fibre tripod, flash bracket and an umbrella. These trips need to pay for themselves after all.

 

 

 

 

[nesgran]

BEG, what is up with the weird glow around the guy? Did you dodge and burn in post for better contrast?

[nesgran]

Actually your beer is LAGER. Beer comes out of pumps warm and is drunk by the pint by people in bowler hats.

I’m more a tweed and flat cap man myself

There is also the classic joke: What similarity is there between American beer/coffe and making love in a canoe? It is fucking close to water.

[nesgran]

I don’t think her skin is edited, I just think it is a combination of direct light straight at her face, probably with a reflector, and the slight overexposure which tends to make blemishes disappear.

As for the colour, a good lens will do that. That and some very selective saturation boosts. It is obvious this is someone with high end gear that knows how to use it

 

 

[nesgran]

I’m personally not a fan of the 50mm 1.8, I’d rather recommend the 85mm f1.8. It gives a more flattering compression to people, build quality is far superior, it has a USM motor (silent and you can grab the focus ring even when in AF mode) and with the longer focal length you get better subject isolation. The 85mm is more expensive admittedly but it can usually be had for a few hundred $ on the used market. It will be a bit front heavy with your rebel body but not too bad.

As for your photos, looking at the Melissa series. You’ve made her feel happy and confident, that is obvious from the photos. They have come out well, what lets you down is your framing of the photos. Here is a quick guide for better framing http://www.gieson.com/school/photos/. There are other problems, some of the shots aren’t sharp, make sure you look at the photos at 100% magnification. They don’t have to be completely sharp unless you plan on printing them at bigger than 8×12″ but when it is obvious from the facebook shots that they aren’t sharp they should go in the recycling bin sadly. Shots like this has great lighting https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=583123481718519&set=a.583123458385188.1073741856.561775373853330&type=1&theater whereas shots like this doesn’t https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=583123831718484&set=a.583123458385188.1073741856.561775373853330&type=1&theater . Consider how the light falls on the subject’s face, the first shot her face is lit properly, you can see her eyes clearly. In the second shot it is the opposite, her face is shadowed and you can’t make out here eyes clearly. In fact, next point, the eyes when shooting portraits is the single most important bit of the photo. They are what should be sharp, they are what should follow the rule of thirds. Reason is that our brains are hard wired with recognise faces, in fact there is a small bit of the brain that lights up when looking at a face and eyes is the natural focal point.

Here’s a laundry list of things you shouldn’t do again (teal vignette) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=583124065051794&set=a.583123458385188.1073741856.561775373853330&type=1&theater (colour balance completely off, too warm) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=583123475051853&set=a.583123458385188.1073741856.561775373853330&type=1&theater (the frame and the green tint) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=583123685051832&set=a.583123458385188.1073741856.561775373853330&type=1&theater (don’t ever do this fake starburst again) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=572511536113047&set=a.561778680519666.1073741827.561775373853330&type=1&theater (green looking kid) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=573347076029493&set=a.573347039362830.1073741848.561775373853330&type=1&theater (red eyes) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=572874286076772&set=a.564987040198830.1073741833.561775373853330&type=1&theater (grey kid, when you selectively colour like that people look grey and dead, in fact, don’t selectively colour because it almost always looks tacky) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=573347099362824&set=a.573347039362830.1073741848.561775373853330&type=1&theater (pop up flash, it is not a flattering kind of flash) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=576830469014487&set=a.576830395681161.1073741851.561775373853330&type=1&theater (out of focus, way too out of focus and there’s some white balance issues going on as well) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=581245678572966&set=a.581245558572978.1073741854.561775373853330&type=1&theater (way too saturated and blown highlights) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=581245811906286&set=a.581245558572978.1073741854.561775373853330&type=1&theater

You have a few over exposed shots, do you look at the histogram? Do you use raw? You should look at the histogram to make sure the highlights aren’t blown out. Here is a little tutorial to understand the histogram, you get it by pressing the info button while looking at a picture http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm . Using raw you’d be able to rescue one or two of the over exposed shots and you would be able to change saturation in a more natural way.

I honestly think you have a good eye for it, the big things that let you down are A) you aren’t selective enough in the shots you post B) Your editing, teal vignettes and selective colour etc isn’t good C) Out of focus shots and D) your lack of an external flash. I saw you had one in one of your posts, read the lighting 101 and preferably 102 on http://www.strobist.com . With a minimal investment since you have the flash already you’d be able to light your shots better when natural light isn’t on your side. Everything listed you can pick up on ebay for $100: Lightstand $25, umbrella holder $15, white shoot through umbrella $15, pair Yongnou radio triggers RF-603 $40, batteries for triggers $5. This would have let you lit up Melissa’s face in that photo when she is resting on her elbows.

 

As for using manual focus on a rebel body, don’t do it. The focus screen isn’t made for it and the tiny viewfinder makes it excessively hard to achieve good focus. If you want to do manual focus get a full frame 5D mkII or a 6D and get the focus screen designed for manual focus.

Good luck and keep at it!

[nesgran]

Over here escalators are meant to be walked up and down. I rarely stand still on it, it just take forever and you inevitably miss the train by seconds if you stand.

[nesgran]

WCS, that list was all too true. I’m not even born British and I’ve only lived in Britain for six years yet I do basically all those things. The last one annoys me to no end but then that is what I do after all.

I live in London and for some reason some people, well tourists really, always seem incapable of understanding certain unspoken social quirks or even things which have notices put up about them. For example, if there’s a sign every five metres when going down the escalator to the tube (erm, underground or metro, incidentally named so world wide after one of the London underground lines) saying “Stand on the right”. Why not do that then? Why stand on the left whereby when I’m walking down on the left I have to stop and loudly say “Excuse me”, get a blank stare and nothing. Fortunately this is one place where you can be a little impolite without getting that sinking feeling in your stomach and continue walking. That seems to be understood.

Brits are awkward, another example would be how most supermarkets now have a self service check out. In the bigger supermarkets there’s usually two lots of these but since no one is impolite enough to ask whether they are queueing for the right hand side or both sides everyone usually form up an orderly queue on one side. There is a lot of tsking when someone swoops in from the left and goes to the left hand check outs without standing in the queue, even if there were more than one empty till on that side. And no one wants to tell the person first in the queue if they’ve missed that there is an empty till on the left.

A few gentle tips if you plan on visiting London in Britland. Don’t walk three abreast and most certainly don’t do it slowly. Don’t put your rucksack back to front, it only looks like you have something to steal in there. For the love of God never stand on the left of the escalators. Never wave two fingers at a barman, it is considered very rude. Expect people to snigger if you have an American accent and if you are at a pub you order at the bar but make sure you know your table number if it is a pub with table numbers marked on the table.

 

 

[Author]

Posts