PhotograClare » Technique

Odd One Out

Clare Topping — Sun, 01 May 2011 09:08:20 +0000

The sun was shining, the dandelions ringed the edge of the field, and there was one that did not conform. In amongst all of the golden flower heads there was one that stood out – it had done its flowering and was now a delicate seed head.

I wanted to get the details of the seed head whilst showing it in context with the bright, sunny flowers. I also wanted the contrast in the colour and difference between one and many.

I am not sure if this would have been improved if I had reduced the depth of field or not – s0metimes it does make the subject stand out a lot more, but then there is nothing more likely to ruin a photo than a bright out of focus object right at the front of the picture.

I had my much loved and new favourite (move over macro lens) 50mm lens on the camera, set on aperture priority. The settings therefore used were ISO200, 1/250mm at f/14 ( I made the decision to go with a large depth of field).

Trees

Clare Topping — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:35:33 +0000

This is another shot taken using my new lens. I was originally lookinng at the differences in depth of field for the different aperture settings, zooming in and taking a look at how sharp the centre of the picture was which is where I had set the autofocus.

However, when I zoomed in on the tree on the left I was struck by how sharp it was and how much detail had been captured (although it is not entirely obvious from this crop).

Whilst I like this group of trees I have since decided that I do not like the crop – I think that it is unbalanced, all of the trees are in the centre, but there is nothing to hold the picture in. In the original picture there were more trees to the left and I think that helped with the balance.

I have included more of the picture in the shot at the bottom. This is an improvement in terms of balance, but because the field slopes to the right, and there are no strong features on the right I think the photo is falling out of the frame. What do you think?

Camera settings 1/200secs, f/8.0, ISO100, 50mm focal length using my EOS 400D.

Triangulation

Clare Topping — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:15:14 +0000

This is another snapshot picture where I was trying to put into practice some of the compositional rules that I have been reading about.

In the first instance I have broken the usual rule and have put the main focus of the photo in the centre. Also, the border between the fields and the trees breaks across the centre of the air shaft (which links down to the canal below).

However, the idea I was looking for was to have three points in the picture which then form a triangle which I have achieved using the two fence posts and the air shaft.

What I liked about the photo on the day was the fluffiness of the clouds which made the sky more interesting. What I didn’t notice but what I like now is the way that gap in the posts leads the eye into the picture and the post that had fallen over in the foreground.

The photo was taken with my EOS 400D kit lens at 72mm ISO200, 1/100secs at f/22 (handheld of course).

More on camera sharpening

Clare Topping — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:37:26 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I posted a couple of pictures taken with my EOS400D with and without in camera sharpening. Now that I have my shiny new compact camera I thought I would look at the sharpening. The compact has less of a range of sharpening levels available, so I tried most sharp, standard sharp and least sharp in that order – I took the pictures in not so good light indoors. (I would like to claim it was because I wanted to test the sharpening in low light conditions, but, in truth, it was where I happened to think of it). A crop of the pictures is shown below:

As you can see there is a substantial difference in the quality of the photo with the standard sharpening (in the middle) proving to be the better of the three.

The sharpened version seems to be the worst, suffering from the low light making the picture noisier. (I set the camera on automatic (and macro) and let it choose its own settings. Interestingly it chose a slightly higher ISO setting for the standard photo.)

Always learning something new.

Clare Topping — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:44:11 +0000

Although I love my macro lens I have often been frustrated that my images are not as sharp as I would like them to be. I know this can be fixed in Photoshop and Lightroom, although I have still to master this technique, but it still felt as though something was not right. This weekend I accidentally found the reason.

I was looking at some reviews for compact cameras and found one comparing the Canon Powershot S90 and the Panasonic Lumix. Within the review they compared the sharpness of the two images at various ISO settings. It turns out that Canon set their images to be softer so that there is less noise at higher ISO settings, Panasonic choose sharpness over noise. That was a bit of an A-ha moment. It turns out that you can change the sharpness settings in the camera. So I did – the EOS400D has a number of different settings, standard, faithful, portrait etc which set the emphasis on different sets of colours as well as the sharpness. I have my settings on Faithful which has a level of 0 for everything.

A brief glimmer of Spring sunshine this lunchtime sent me hotfooting into the garden with camera in hand to photograph the crocus that are surviving being trampled by pigeons. As I can be a bit dim sometimes, it did not occur straight away to change the settings. However, I got there eventually and I upped the sharpness to 4 (from a maximum of 7) and these are the results.

The one on the left is before I made the sharpening adjustments. Whilst it is not immediately obvious that there is a difference, it is very evident once you zoom in. I much prefer the sharpened image, so will keep the levels higher, unless I am shooting at a higher ISO setting.

Oh, and I opted to buy the Powershot S90 – I will let you know how it works out.