Rather than waste forum space, I grabbed two new shots tonight. Edit: did post production on em

 

Critique/Comments/Suggestions?

 

 

 

Seemed like a fairly interesting subject and was about time I got round to doing some more shots.

I'd still class these as practice shots, like all my other posts, but I'd like to think they are mostly fairly decent shots now; but I'm sure there's still stuff to work on.

 

Critique/comments?

 

[hide=Final Mask Shots]

[/hide]

 

[hide=Raw Mask shots]

 

[hide=Over Exposure Vs Normal Exposure]

[/hide]

 

[hide=Close Ups]

[/hide]

 

[hide=Wide Shots]

[/hide]

 

[hide=Rear Angle & Ribbons]

[/hide]

[/hide]

The shots are technically quite good, but your white balance is pretty [bleep]ed ;p

Just with auto levels, brightness/contrast, and a few high pass filters, you can see that there's a huge improvement colour wise:

before:

 

after:

 

I also cropped it a little bit as there was a lot of open space that negated from the overall aesthetic. It's really easy to not realise how orange some photos are though XD I've done it many a time.

To be fair:

sheet is off-white/beige

wall is beige

inside of mask is off-white sort of grey-sh

and my room light is rather yellowy (more so than normal lights)

 

So your edits have gone too far to the white/light imo.

But yea these r raw from cam n deffo need some post-production to de-yellow/orange them; thou I don't think I'd go as far as you have. I think I'd stop round about where the first pic is colourwise (the one I slightly over exposed) as that its pretty spot on for real tones and doesn't lose the fined black mottling on the mask.

 

Edit:

Done a bit speedily just for examples sake but I'd say this is what it should be like if you just correct the yellowing from lighting (It made the mask go a bit dark, but ignore that bit):

 

And this is more where I'd go with the post-production, similar to yours but not quite overpowering the brightness as much to force the bg to white (again done speedily for example sake so not perfect, prob needs a smidge more towards white but not much and tint has gone a bit green me thinks):

 

Would be good to hear other views on the post production direction to take though in terms of whiteness etc, I definitely think pushing it right to the white could work on some of the other tight shots perhaps.

The whiter shots definitely look better I think. Humus' example shot is a perfect example.

In the light of day after a good sleep I looked backed and decided Humus whiter version is deffo better; thou I still disliked the lose of the black and gold tones so I've played with that more. So I've gone through post-production (properly) on a few of the shots and I think they turned out pretty awesomely.

 

first I just brought blk/gold back to what it should be. The rest I exaggerated it which I think I prefer visually and I think makes the shots more interesting and less "oh a photo of a mask"

 

 

These two I'm not sure which I prefer focus wise yet, so I did both:

 

Beautiful. Keep up the good work. :smile:

Two New shots (reusing thread since its so recent.)

 

They seem a little out of focus, but these are good shots. MOAR. Also, try playing with the white balance. Try it on tungsten white balance, or fluorescent.

They seem a little out of focus, but these are good shots. MOAR. Also, try playing with the white balance. Try it on tungsten white balance, or fluorescent.

 

I get the feeling the motion blur from the cars has given the slight haze to the focus, as obviously the moving light and shapes does have a slightly impact on the slow exposure. Plus if you look at the tree tops on the un-editted and the left hand nubmer plate in the brake-lights shot they seem to be pretty crisp foucs and are areas tht would miss most of the motion blurring)

 

But I could be mistaken, I might of just got the focus marginally off, especially since this is my first time using this particular lens so I'm not accustomed to it.

 

But yeah I been using AWB for now so I could focus on focussing and exposure control, definitely need to look into playing with the white balance modes more so now I'm good with the others.

The best WB mode for night shots like this is tungsten, I think. It'll give quite a cold atmosphere which is what I think you are trying to go for here.

I dunno I could make em colder and wouldn't say i was going for tht look specifically, I liked the rich reddy and yellow tones that lights gave everything and the blackness.

You aren't getting an incredible amount of darker tones using AWB - urban lighting can make a lot of photos look dull and washed out. Try it on tungsten.

You aren't getting an incredible amount of darker tones using AWB - urban lighting can make a lot of photos look dull and washed out. Try it on tungsten.

 

I'm reluctant to try them again, just for the sheer fact I got EPICALLY lucky on the timing of cars with these shots.

Also I quite like the finished results (up top) where I cranked up the black and took the brightness down, I don't think they'd be any better if I retook them with different WB, the editting on the blacks wuld jsut require less power. And noway I'd get such perfect shots again on the car timing.

Might be worth shooting RAW if you're not doing so already. You can play about with white balance among other things to your hearts content. Not entirely sure why you used ISO 400 for a long exposure shot, the DOF is fine so you probably could've used a slightly wider aperture. You're long exposures are okay, they just feel quite cluttered. I quite like shots where the trails are the main point of interest or add something to the shot otherwise.

 

I've dabbled in light trails in the past and found using a low viewpoint and reasonably short focal length works well. I'll see if I can dig out a couple of mine.

 

EDIT:

Found them!

 

 

I just find the lower wider viewpoint to be more dramatic. Might be worth trying. 170mm seems a bit long for this type of shot IMO.

 

Love your mask shots though - very artistic. Again could benefit from being shot in RAW.

I do shoot in RAW and iso is on auto, since all I read/heard did not really clarify in my head wtf changin iso will do. And most stuff I read said to leave it on auto anyway.

 

And I couldn't get the angle any closer, I personally liked that it was slightly looking downwards and it was a shot I found from the bathroom window on the 1st floor (2nd for americans) of my house, but to get it meant shooting across the kitchen of our house, across the property we back onto and across the street tht runs parallel to my own. I did go look at the shot on ground level but I didn't think it worked as well as you lost the possiblity of the clear lines of light trail going near straight from foreground to background

I do shoot in RAW and iso is on auto, since all I read/heard did not really clarify in my head wtf changin iso will do. And most stuff I read said to leave it on auto anyway.

 

And I couldn't get the angle any closer, I personally liked that it was slightly looking downwards and it was a shot I found from the bathroom window on the 1st floor (2nd for americans) of my house, but to get it meant shooting across the kitchen of our house, across the property we back onto and across the street tht runs parallel to my own. I did go look at the shot on ground level but I didn't think it worked as well as you lost the possiblity of the clear lines of light trail going near straight from foreground to background

 

The ISO does make a difference. I always shoot with the lowest ISO I'm able to get away with (partly because my camera doesn't control noise very well). If you lower the ISO, you'll have to use a wider aperture to maintain the shutter speed.

ISO dictates the sensor's sensitivity to light. The higher it is, the more 'noisy' your shots will be.

Ah so on the slow shutters i could higher iso with slightly faster shutter or smaller aperture but it'd have more noise in it?