Some piccies

[Pot Bellied Fool]

Not a patch on most that I see on here but you gotta start somewhere

Anyway, a few from the weekend...


With hindsight, not a very good job done on the lasooing of the spot colour area in PS. Them ragged edges caught me out.





And his mate upto his knees in it...

[Mrs Fish]

I really like the last one with the shadow

[fazz81]

Just a tip that I learned on here for spot colour.
No need to lasso the area, if you desaturate the picture then use the history brush on the area you want as spot colour, give much better control, especially at high mag.

ditto the last one.

Cheers

>> Edited by fazz81 on Tuesday 25th April 09:57

[_dobbo_]

The last one is nice, but the sky is a bit blown out and it could maybe do with a bit more contrast in the remaining scenery, which will blow out the sky even more, but will make the figure more of a silhoutte.

[marctwo]

The last one is great. Really unusual.

[Pot Bellied Fool]

Thanks all, the more I look at it, the more I like number 3 myself.

I suppose I could have locked the exposure on the sky to stop it going over but then the statue would've been under I guess.

Any advice on number 2 please? I can get depth of field to do what I want when I'm photographing small stuff fairly close up but can't get it how I want on outside shots.

Number 2 was focussed on the (near) statue, Focal Length of 45mm, 1/1000 F5.6 and couldn't get a wider aperture than that. (Using an Olympus E-300 with 14-45mm). Is there anything I could have done to reduce the DOF? I waned the houses at the back to be more blurred than they are.

Thanks for the comments so far & the PS tip, I'll try that next time!

[marctwo]

Pot Bellied Fool said:

Number 2 was focussed on the (near) statue, Focal Length of 45mm, 1/1000 F5.6 and couldn't get a wider aperture than that. (Using an Olympus E-300 with 14-45mm). Is there anything I could have done to reduce the DOF? I waned the houses at the back to be more blurred than they are.

There are at least 3 things that you can do to get this effect:

1. The aperture. The wider it is the shallower DOF you will get. f2.8 is better than f5.6 for this.

2. The focal length. The longer the focal length, the more blurred the background will be. 200mm f4 would blurr background more than 14mm f2.8.

3. The ratio of the distance between you and the subject, and the subject and the background. The closer you are to the subject, and the further the subject is away from the background, the more blurred the background will be.

[Pot Bellied Fool]

marctwo said:

There are at least 3 things that you can do to get this effect: 1. The aperture. The wider it is the shallower DOF you will get. f2.8 is better than f5.6 for this. 2. The focal length. The longer the focal length, the more blurred the background will be. 200mm f4 would blurr background more than 14mm f2.8. 3. The ratio of the distance between you and the subject, and the subject and the background. The closer you are to the subject, and the further the subject is away from the background, the more blurred the background will be.

Thanks for that. It's good to see that my understanding was pretty much ok.

I couldn't get a wider aperture than f5.6 (unless I had a moment of finger trouble that I hadn't noticed), the camera was in aperture priority mode & I was consciously trying for the largest aperture it'd accept.

I was using the longest focal length available - it's just the stock lens (14-45mm) supplied with the E-300 - so again, glad to know I was doing the right thing even if it didn't give me the image I wanted.

And yes, I was pretty close to the statue even allowing for the zoom. Probably only about 4 or 5 ft away.

Anyway, many thanks for the feedback, I was concerned in case I'd missed something elementary but looks like the only way I'd have got the pic I wanted would be a longer lens.