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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Thanks, Helen.
Yes, covid has caused a lot of change. We are getting partly back to "normal" again here despite the increase in infections at the moment, as all older people are vaccinated here now and most younger ones too. Mortality and the load on the NHS are dropping also as a result. So internal travel, indoor meetings, entertainment and so on have few restrictions. Whether we'll rue that, we'll have to wait and see. International travel is still a problem though. It works both ways - I've only spent a few hours in the USA and would much like to spend a few months there! One day, perhaps. We have a friend who bought his motorhome to the USA a few years ago and went coast to coast over about 3 months I think - sounds a great idea to me, as many of your must-see places are a long way apart! |
Jul 24th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
It's long been a rule of thumb that to avoid camera shake when seeking a sharp photo, then the longest shutter speed to use is 1/mm where mm = the lens focal length.
So for a prime lens of say 50mm, a lowest shutter speed of 1/50 sec (or more likely 1/60 sec) is recommended.
If the lens is a zoom, then mm = the larger end of the zoom range, regardless of the focal length actually in use.
Nowadays you can modify this as built-in stabilisation allows longer shutter speeds with no more risk of blurring from camera shake, but even so it's a useful rule of thumb.
Of course if you want blur, eg panning to give an impression of speed, you can toss that rule out of the window! |
Jul 23rd |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Thanks, Michael. It's often a surprise to me that I put an image onto DD, thinking it's more something of interest rather than something worthy of complements, and people complement it! It's rather nice, and makes such a change from many club competitions where they seem to take your best work and criticise trivia in order to create a finishing order. :-) |
Jul 22nd |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
I suppose it (the curvature) does give it a greater sense of size. |
Jul 19th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Thanks for your comment, Stan.
It really puzzles me how it kept the verticals vertical, as I had expected all sorts of a mess after the stitching. Being close to and looking up to a high building, we've got converging verticals and leaning of the highest parts towards each other. Magic! The downside is that some straight lines have become curved, such as the roof ridge and eves. I wouldn't be surprised if the "liquefy" persona in Affinity could do some manipulation of that too, but it's beyond my experience to try that. This is getting into graphic design territory! |
Jul 19th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Indeed, it would be interesting to know the mass of stone used to make it! Enough to compete with most castles, I would think. The internal ceilings are complex and fabulous too, but not really mono subjects as they are painted, and there's plenty of colourful stained glass.
Yes. It's often the case that cathedrals are surrounded by buildings, being usually in city centres, and getting far enough away can be a problem. So I actually took five side-by-side portrait orientation images and stitched them in Affinity Photo, although when processing I realised that the right-most one was detracting rather than adding and I removed it from the group. I gave plenty of overlap and so the result isn't the usual long and thin pano, it is 7244 x 4707 px. Cut down for posting here, of course as the 100% quality jpg is 20.7MB!
Here is the original of the centre section - |
Jul 11th |
 |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Thanks. European cathedrals are magnificent feats of building when you consider when they were built, and what tools they had. This is one of many, of course, but certainly one of the better ones. |
Jul 10th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
You're welcome, Jerry, it was fun! It's amazing the number of different "looks" we can get with mono conversions.
Hoping here too. We only get to know the ins and outs of illnesses when we or someone close have them, so that's one I know little of. Keep up your good spirits, they are as good as medicine. |
Jul 10th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
"Street photos clear lines" |
Jul 10th |
 |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
"FX relief" |
Jul 10th |
 |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
"Artistic scrapbook"
Previous was "Artistic old photo" |
Jul 10th |
 |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
Well, I guess I'm simple minded too. My obsession is clouds - I just love the patterns and colours. But all mono photographers like patterns surely, they are great.
I thought this was some fine tendrils dangling in front of the rock, at first.
I've put a screen shot of your original into Franzis black and white projects 6 (since my NIK seems to be playing up in Affinity at the moment) and got several interesting results from the menu of styles it offers. Far too many styles, really! I'll post a few to amuse you! A bit limited by the poor screenshot resolution, but interesting!
ICU??? I hope that's not what I think, but if it is, I hope your medical care is good and you are out soon. My best wishes and hopes for you.
|
Jul 10th |
 |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
Yes, it has great perspective with that lens. Great subject for mono conversion, it wenhances the feeling of age as well as being graphically ideal.
It doesn't look desperately sharp to me. 1/15 sec should be OK as it follows the 1/mm rule, so I wonder why. |
Jul 10th |
| 64 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
My first thought was "can't see much of the lighthouse", but on thinking about it, why not?? It's an interesting scene, not just a straight lighthouse shot.
As Jerry suggests, the shadows are a bit blocked. Perhaps a bit more could also be extracted from the sky. RAW or jpg? The Z6 has a great sensor I read, I'm sure the RAW would have a lot further to extract. |
Jul 10th |
6 comments - 8 replies for Group 64
|
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
But it's dark now! |
Jul 11th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
We can do better than that! If you go to the PSA main site and log in, then go to PSA Education / Webinar recordings, then look towards the bottom of the list and you'll see "Creative macro photography with Charles Needle, July 15 2019". It's good! I saw it live and then went and bought his book. |
Jul 11th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
Thanks. Yes, I guess a bit off the right would be better. I like a bit of blur to give it some 3D, but this is too much. To be honest I was in the garden snapping things and not expecting to get anything useful so I didn't pay enough attention to the aperture, as with the flash you can have most what you like. This lens goes down to f32 at "80mm" (its highest magnification) although whether that's physical or includes for the magnification I don't know. The iris isn't changing size when it's "zoomed" (using depth of field preview to see it) so maybe it's the effective aperture. Either way, I could have done better! I wonder if it's still there..... |
Jul 11th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
Well analysed and said, Carol. I looked at this yesterday before you commented and thought,"What can I say, I don't really like it but I don't know why", so I left it. Now I do know. That's not to say it's a poor picture, not at all, it is interesting, but it is the varying light and hard shadows that I find disquieting.
I've found Kathleen's web site and they are pretty! I don't know how some people can concentrate on a narrow topic, though. I guess that's why I'm a jack of all trades and master of none.
Definitely a category 2 macro!(see Tom's entry, this month) |
Jul 11th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Reply |
What I meant was that macros are more usually straight shots without "creative" post processing. I've never tried anything like this. As Carol says, it's now clearly art through a macro medium.
I'm thinking now that macro can be divided into 3 sections -
1. Scientific, where accurate depiction of the subject is key
2. Pictorial where we are trying to convey a feeling, rather like Carol's this month, or a "pretty picture", and
3. Art, where the original becomes obscured and the result might be unrecognisable without explanation, such as here.
Would you agree? Maybe there are more varieties. |
Jul 11th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
I really like the dreamy sort of feeling this gives me. I reminds me of some of Charles Needle's work.
You might have been able to drop a stop or two on aperture as our Olly's have great image stabilisation. Whether the bigger depth of field enhanced it or not is a matter of taste of course - nothing wrong with this one. Or you could have reduced ISO if that was your priority.
You might find that noise reduction in Adobe would help the noise, but it looks worse that I'd expect at 1600ISO. Have you cropped in a lot?
I'm still finding that my new ringflash transforms hand held work, you get massive control of the exposure triangle because you are making it an exposure square, having then got control over the incident light. |
Jul 10th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
Well who said macrophotographers aren't creative? No lack of creativity here. I see you're getting to grips with your Laowa. Well done! |
Jul 10th |
| 95 |
Jul 21 |
Comment |
Hi EK, and welcome to our little group of myopic photographers!
I like your photo. The rimlight makes it very striking. I'm always criticising the bird photographers on another site that I work with that "birds on sticks" are a bit boring after a while even if well done. I suppose the same could be argued for insects on plants, but not here as it is cleaning itself, which give rise to an interesting "pose". Early morning is a good time to go out hunting such scenes.
I like the clarity of the fly. The far wing and legs are blurred due to the aperture, but I usually find that adds to a photo as pin sharp front to back often looks a bit clinical or scientific rather than pictorial.
I wonder if a bit of cropping of the blurry background would focus interest more on the fly? |
Jul 10th |
4 comments - 4 replies for Group 95
|
10 comments - 12 replies Total
|
