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Man, all this threa has shown me is how i'm a newbie of the higest proportions when it comes to photography. I've got a rough idea about compositions and stuff and i'm getting my head around technically using a proper camera (i got an EOS 450D as a gift), but while i know of very basic post processing, i've never dealt with RAW image formats before. I just got my camera and i was playing about with it in the DJ booth at my work, but i'm rather embarassed about uploading the images as they're horrendously newbieish (as in it's an awful pucture to start with). I'm looking for advice though so here's the original RAW:  And here's what it looks like after some playing about with the RAW settings  I basically just dropped the exposure (the blue LED was overexposed and giving a clipping warning?? when loaded into photoshop) and saturation while upping the fill light. Then it was kind of just a mishmash of me playing with the sliders until things came out looking a little bit better. What advice would you give for someone who's right at the beginning of doing all this stuff? Other than to take better pictures that is.
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Jan 16, 2009 02:28
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rigeek posted:@kin: I like the first one, honestly. Heh, thanks. The problem i have with it is that when i was physically looking at the mixer, there was a clearly defined "spot" of blue light on the black surface that looked quite cool, especially when you could make out all the details. I think i'm more disappointed that i've not captured exactly what it was that i saw, or my final image doesnt have the clearly visible "spot" and heavy blue colour while retaining the detail that you can make out in the second photo. I also think i left the UV filter on, but i dont know if that would have any effect on things. edit: I went back and tried to make it a bit closer to what i remember it looking like and ended up with this:  Then i got all cliche and did this:  This is without using any filters, curves or fancy layering shenanigans, so chances are that if i properly knew what i was doing, i could get these looking a lot better. Kin fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Jan 16, 2009 |
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Jan 16, 2009 03:23
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I took some pictures of a comedy gig that was on at my work tonight. Here's an image of one of my mates as we were setting up the stage:  I tweaked the exposure and darkness and all of that with the RAW editor in photoshop CS4, and cropped a little of the right hand side to perfectly centre my buddy. But i havent really done much on top of that. The light at the top of the shot is quite overexposed, but i suppose that's what'll happen when you've got a source of light directly in your image. Coincidentally, i've stumbled on a way of getting all my night shots on that stage to work out better. The mist that the hazer let out (that you can see in the picture) let me go from a shutter speed of 2 seconds to 1/25. I never really thought about how the mist would reflect the light and make the area that it hits a lot brighter. It was turned off during thw show though which made getting nice shots of the standup comedians rather hard. Anyway, my newbie ramblings aside, what would you experienced folks do to this picture to make it "better" if it was yours? I kind of like it, but it feels like it could be better.
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Jan 20, 2009 02:00
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plaguedoctor posted:I like this, but I think your first order of business is to crop it well. I especially like the green light at top, so maybe a portrait orientation rather than landscape would be a better way to work on it. That would cut out a lot of the unnecessary bit on the left side. I really like it too, the smoke has that, well, awesome visual look to it. I think my problem is that there's too much in it. Your eyes are drawn to the smoke because it looks really good, but you also have the stage presentation wher you crop the image to the right like you say so the focus is on the person as he's addressing the audience. But that means cropping out most of the green light which is a good visual of the photo. I've made a crop like you suggested, whilst trying to keep as much of the green in as looks acceptable (i have had to crop out the green on black swirls on the upper left that i think look amazing though), but waffle images is full, so i'll pop it up a bit later. I dont want to derail this into a "please critique and advise me on what to do" thread either, the photo a day thread could be used for that maybe.
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Jan 20, 2009 21:21
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