Concrete Legs and Steel Arms
Portsmouth has two famous piers on the seafront but tucked away out by Langstone Harbour entrance is a short, narrow concrete pier most often used for fishing. It makes for a great view out to the Solent.
Portsmouth has two famous piers on the seafront but tucked away out by Langstone Harbour entrance is a short, narrow concrete pier most often used for fishing. It makes for a great view out to the Solent.
03/29/2010
Love, love, love the first shot.
How do you find a dslr compared to shooting film? Are you shooting RAW and what kind of post production have these photos been through?
03/29/2010
The weirdest, most confusing thing is white balance, to be honest. It’s the reason why a bunch of this first batch are a little all over the place, colourwise. That is pretty much all of the post-procesing. But just as everyone says, it is nice being able to shoot loads and then work through them right away. Saying that though, I shot 3 rolls of film yesterday on Hasting beach and it felt ‘right’. Although I haven’t got them developed yet! So might all be rubbish and/or ruined.
P.S. These were JPG but I shot some portraits a few days later in RAW which seemed better, a little
03/30/2010
This is a bit long winded for a ‘comment’ but I’ll stick it up here rather than email it over as someone else might see it and find it useful.
To be honest I’ve gotten over my anxiety about how I ‘should’ be shooting and just get on with it.
I shoot JPGs even if it is a cardinal sin: Sod it, RAW confuses me and the extra work just means I’m more likely to put of processing the files anyway.
White balance… OK so, outside, I just leave my camera set to Auto 99% of the time because it knows what it’s doing much better than I do. However, once indoors it’s not so hot. Mixed lighting is the worst. The Pre-sets for the various colour temperatures are pretty good but sometimes you just have to try and take a reading and set your own WB (I need to practice doing this more).
I almost always shoot in Aperture priority mode so that I can rely on the camera do do the hard work for me (and because I mostly shoot with fully manual lenses nowadays).
All the black and white shots I’ve produced over the last year have been produced in camera (another big No No from the big book of pedantic photographers). Besides, it’s just the same as dropping in a B&W film.
I’ve tweaked my settings enough that I can usually get the colours I want straight out of the camera (that is until I start mucking with cross processing etc.).
The one thing I would really like to learn is how to tweak contrast with colour images. I’m fine using curves for B&W but I’ve no idea how to fiddle with colour without cocking up the colour balance.
So to wrap it up: Don’t be afraid to use some auto settings (why not let these machines take the strain, the cost enough and it’s what they were designed for) especially if it lets you concentrate on the bits the camera can’t do like composition, depth of field, choosing focus and so on.