Composition and exposure C&C please :)

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

***RESHOOT POSTED FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE***

So I know none of these are superb... Here is what I was working with...

Canon XSi w/ 50mm lens... Did not use on-board flash. Only had standard yellow light bulb room lighting (hence the yellow tinge ...)

These are PRIOR to any PP and I am at work so do not have the ability to do any pp right now... If anyone wants to do some PP on them, feel free... I would like to know if these are okay compositionally for the most part... I also want to know if I have the focus on the right place... If you don't want to PP yourself, at least give me some kind of idea of what I can do for PP when I get home tonight

I took probably a total of 50 pictures, saved 10, and am only posting the 5 that I think are the best out of the 10

Thanks

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ETA: I had to use manual focus on these because the 50mm wouldn't autofocus... I will admit that I have NOT looked through any manuals yet... :/ No bashing on me for that!

Early · Feb 24, 2010

The exposure's good, and I like the colors. I would have opted for a wider lens though, stopping down to get more in the shot with increased depth of field.

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

Early said:
The exposure's good, and I like the colors. I would have opted for a wider lens though, stopping down to get more in the shot with increased depth of field.

AFter the kids are in bed tonight, I'll put my 18-55 on and see what I can do with that

Thanks for your input

billy_the_kid43 · Feb 24, 2010

I find the leaves in the foreground very distracting. When you do your re-shoot, I would suggest either pinning the leaves down in front, or putting smaller leaves closer to the bottle so they don't over power the image, or shoot from a higher angle.

Good luck.

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

billy_the_kid43 said:
I find the leaves in the foreground very distracting. When you do your re-shoot, I would suggest either pinning the leaves down in front, or putting smaller leaves closer to the bottle so they don't over power the image, or shoot from a higher angle.

Good luck.

So you think it would be okay if the leaves/flowers weren't blocking so much of the subject?

I was trying to use them to hide the stem of the glass because I tried doing the shots without the leaves at all and it looked like crap...

bazooka · Feb 24, 2010

Having the leaf just leaves me wondering what the label says and what the rest of the glass looks like. I also think portrait perspective is the best choice. Your focus on #1 looks good, but the others are not.

Exactly what is your intended subject? Is it the glass? The label? The entire bottle? I isn't clear to me with any of these what you want me to get out of this shot.

Also, your shutter speed is too slow for handheld, so I assume you used a tripod?

PerfectlyFlawed · Feb 24, 2010

I would turn the bottle to the left a little... the side of the label ( small print ) is hidden and the main print is more centered. And i would show the base of the glass... you cant tell what type of glass it is...

7/24 · Feb 24, 2010

#1 is my favorite. Since you didn't want to show all of the stem of the glass, try and move the foreground flowers (which work for me) so that you just get a taste of the stem. My only other note would be focus should be on the label with the glass a bit soft. Keep playing with it. Great start.

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

bazooka said:
Having the leaf just leaves me wondering what the label says and what the rest of the glass looks like. I also think portrait perspective is the best choice. Your focus on #1 looks good, but the others are not.

Exactly what is your intended subject? Is it the glass? The label? The entire bottle? I isn't clear to me with any of these what you want me to get out of this shot.

Also, your shutter speed is too slow for handheld, so I assume you used a tripod?

The wine bottle and glass are what I was trying to focus on more... I think I really want you to be able to read the label on the bottle more than anything else... I haven't figured out yet if it will be possible to get the focus on the glass and bottle at the same time... I thought portrait looked better too rather than landscape, but I was playing around trying to see what I could do..

I definitely don't have a tripod yet so I was kinda stabilizing myself on the floor and with a blanket... I am going to try out my wireless shutter release tonight to see if that helps... If I need to I can use that and just a box or something to stabilize the camera to keep the shake down from hitting the shutter button...

bazooka · Feb 24, 2010

They both appear to be in focus or very close to it on #1. Your aperture is f/1.8 on that one so assuming you dont' want to move the glass and/or bottle so they are lying on the same plane, or if you want to make sure to get the entire bottle and glass (front to back) in focus, you'll probably need to use a smaller aperture (higher f/#). This will increase your DOF. If you go too high though, the foreground leaves and background leaves will start to be in the DOF as well.

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

Anyone else? I will be doing my reshoot in the next hour or so. Trying to get my kids in bed now

jvillaire · Feb 24, 2010

Try putting the leaves in the background or maybe around the base of the glass/bottle

JeffieLove · Feb 24, 2010

Okay, so I did the reshoot with the 18-55 lens on the camera this time... I tried different modes... Av, Tv, Manual... Manual worked the best... when I had it in Av it was trying to do 30 second exposures and I can't hold my hand still for 30 seconds... I am still tripodless... I can't order my tripod until I get my car fixed up...

So... I put the flowers kinda behind the glass and bottle... I turned the bottle a little bit... and I think this should be a little better? Let me know what you think

Again, these are cropped, but no other PP has been done as of yet

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Is it just me, or do all 3 of these look exactly the same? Sorry to bore you all with my boring set up... I'm trying to get the hang of "staged" composition

I will be reading through my manuals and stuff tonight

Oh, and something else I noticed with these pics... All the reflections in the bottle... are they good or bad? Is there a tool in PSE8 that I can use to edit them out?

Jacki · Feb 24, 2010

The reshoot looks much better. I like 3 the best, because you didn't cut off as much of the bottle and glass as in the other two. The arrangement in your reshoot also does not look as boring as the original. Good improvement! :thumbsup: