Photo Assignment: Weekend 12/8/07

[testinglogin]

It was a dangerous walk across my driveway to get this photo. We have received a good amount of freezing rain, today. My driveway is a solid sheet of ice. Some of the ice buildup can be seen in my photo, as well. As usual, NO editing has been done, aside from rotating it to be upright and scaling. I feel the angle is a bit off, and it blurs sooner than I would like it to. I think that's due to the photo being taken with the camera "on end" instead of "flat". The latter would lead to a wider photo. I tried that but it was giving me even less of what I wanted.

[Threeteas]

Series IV Carbon

[Threeteas]

C&C please. I couldn't seem to get the yellow in focus and it kept picking the red or black as the focal point, despite much trying. I'm also tempted to go back to the torch/mouth trick, as the yellow from the reading lamp bulb is too yellow/warm for my taste. So sharper colours and better focus C&C please.



Here it is again colour corrected (touch too blue maybe) but how could I have achieved this without software?

[Voni]

This became the pattern of my birthday ride.

I'd stop for just one more picture . . .

[Voni]

And then Paul would come back to remind me that we were going to run out of daylight. Maybe we shouldn't have gone all the way to Candaleria.

[wmubrown]

Here it is again colour corrected (touch too blue maybe) but how could I have achieved this without software?

Just a guess, but it's probably the lighting throwing off the exposure. Many digital cameras have lighting control to compensate for white balance: you can usually select tungsten, florescent, outdoor, indoor, etc. They also usually have a white balance adjustment also, which is probably a more effective way to compensate for lighting, especially given how much white is in your subject. To get the yellow, white, green in focus would require a larger (smaller? I can never keep it straight) f-stop (deeper depth of field) which many pocket digital cameras don't let you adjust.

[wmubrown]

These are once again resized due to the extremely large size of the originals from the Canon D10 but are otherwise untouched:

Lots of patterns in this photo, but I'm not particularly fond of the focus, I think having the foreground balloon in focus would have been more effective:


The next two were taken outside Bell's Microbrewery here in Kalamazoo and are a long line of bicycle racks. I was lying on the ground, and people stopped more than once asking if I was OK before they noticed the camera. Guy lying down on the ground outside a bar, I could see how that could raise the question...

I think this image could have used more depth of field (hard to tell on the tiny 1.5" LCD) C&C?


While interesting, I didn't find this nearly as appealing as the image above, it too would have benefited by more depth of field:

[Sportrider]

wave pattern (or an ill-disguised effort to show off my bike).

[MLS2GO]

Just been lurking the last couple of weeks. I have two to post and please feel free to comment on either one you would like to. In previous posts I have described them, to mix it up no description given.

[MLS2GO]

A definite 100 bonus point for anyone who can tell what the pattern behind the pattern is.

[Threeteas]

Just a guess, but it's probably the lighting throwing off the exposure. Many digital cameras have lighting control to compensate for white balance: you can usually select tungsten, florescent, outdoor, indoor, etc. They also usually have a white balance adjustment also, which is probably a more effective way to compensate for lighting, especially given how much white is in your subject. To get the yellow, white, green in focus would require a larger (smaller? I can never keep it straight) f-stop (deeper depth of field) which many pocket digital cameras don't let you adjust.

Konica Minolta Dynax 7D -Sony 18-200 lens.
AWB set, also tried with WB button pressed down and then the little flower one.
Should I have used a flash?

[SNC1923]

Just a guess, but it's probably the lighting throwing off the exposure. Many digital cameras have lighting control to compensate for white balance: you can usually select tungsten, florescent, outdoor, indoor, etc. They also usually have a white balance adjustment also, which is probably a more effective way to compensate for lighting, especially given how much white is in your subject. To get the yellow, white, green in focus would require a larger (smaller? I can never keep it straight) f-stop (deeper depth of field) which many pocket digital cameras don't let you adjust.

I think John's comments here are right on. It's definitely your white balance. Color is rated in temperature. . . . Daylight is 5000 degrees, tungsten lamps are 3200 degrees, etc. In the old days, if you shot indoors without a flash (daylight film) your pics were yellow, much like your first one is. In the old days we attached a blue filter. Today, you either set your white balance to "tungsten" or take a white balance with a white card. Frankly, I rarely if ever mess with my white balance.

Insofar as the depth of field is concerned, two things:

To have a greater depth of focus, you need to have a greater depth of field. If adjustable on your camera, you need to stop down. That is, from f/8 to f/16 for example. If you don't understand these numbers, I'll give it a try. They are fractions. It's actually 1:8.0 or 1/8. Here 1 is the length of your lens and 8 (1/8) is the diameter of your aperture. It would take 8 aperture diameters to equal the length of your lens. Therefore, the larger the number (8, 11, 16, 22) the smaller the aperture and the greater the depth of field. 1/8, 1/11, 1/16, 1/22, etc.

Anytime you start messing with shutter speeds and apertures, especially indoors, you almost necessarily have to be on a tripod. Because stopping the aperture down decreases the light entering the lens, the corresponding shutter speed must be slower.

So one thing to fix the depth of field is to stop down the lens. The other is to focus on whatever is in the foreground. You would want to focus on the yellow paint receptacle. You can lock the focus on your camera by pointing the focus indicator at the intended subject, depress the shutter release part way, then recompose and shoot. In other words, the intended point of focus (the subject) does not have to be in the center of the finished picture, but it needs to be in the center when you focus. Your camera has a small oval, circle, or set of brackets to indicate where focus is determined.

Clear as mud? When school's out I'll actually have time to take some pictures to make all of this less abstract. If you have any questions, don't hesitate. This all seems complicated at first, but is actually easy to master and it fits together like a simple puzzle.

[SNC1923]

A definite 100 bonus point for anyone who can tell what the pattern behind the pattern is.

Kevlar? Cordura?

[Threeteas]

A definite 100 bonus point for anyone who can tell what the pattern behind the pattern is.

Is it snow covered pine trees through a sieve?
Don't have any idea other than a space hopper frosted for the orange one.

[testinglogin]

A definite 100 bonus point for anyone who can tell what the pattern behind the pattern is.

Windows screen with ice buildup?