Detroit Skyline

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

Looking for C&C on 2 pics I have uploaded that I took tonight. Trying my hand at some night Photography. This is really the only pic that turned out tonight.

f5.6
20sec EX
On a tripod
Please let me know what you think. 1st one will be what it was like in color and the 2nd one will be in B&W.

JeffieLove · Feb 19, 2011

Your horizon is a little tilted. There's a couple ways you could fix it. What program(s) do you edit in?

Also a higher contrast BW conversion would be nicer as well. Right now you have a lot of black and gray and not really so much white...

Played with the BW a little bit and straightened the image.

(Assuming you edit with Photoshop)
Make sure your brush colors are selected with black in the foreground and white in the background.
Make a gradient map adjustment layer
Make a levels adjustment layer and bring in your white point to the end of the histogram. This will brighten up the lights a little bit and make them whiter and a little more crisp.

That's all I did

rickabobaloey · Feb 19, 2011

Detroit at night looks a heck of a lot better than it does during the day!

The B&W could definitely use some use some contrast, I agree with Jeffie on that one. I'm not to sure that cityscape photos will work that well in B&W, at least I don't recall seeing any.

JeffieLove · Feb 19, 2011

Now that I've had a better look at it, it looks a little bit soft. The focus isn't as sharp as you would want it to be for a cityscape shot.

I see you used your tripod which means you should have been able to set your aperture to more like f/8 or f/10 or even f/11 or so... That will give you a wider depth of field and more of the image will be in focus. Also, turn the flash off! Your pop up flash would not have affected the outcome of this image at all. It's not strong enough.

This is about all I can come up with for now

I'm at my point of the night where I'm so bored I'm commenting and/or helping on every thread I feel like I can actually provide useful information for... Generally that means bed time, but there is too much crap on my bed right now for me to go to sleep and I don't feel like cleaning it off yet... So I'm going to sit here and ramble on people's threads after I finish giving them at least half way useful information

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

JeffieLove said:
Your horizon is a little tilted. There's a couple ways you could fix it. What program(s) do you edit in?

Also a higher contrast BW conversion would be nicer as well. Right now you have a lot of black and gray and not really so much white...

Played with the BW a little bit and straightened the image.

(Assuming you edit with Photoshop)
Make sure your brush colors are selected with black in the foreground and white in the background.
Make a gradient map adjustment layer
Make a levels adjustment layer and bring in your white point to the end of the histogram. This will brighten up the lights a little bit and make them whiter and a little more crisp.

That's all I did

I use lightroom 3 and photoshop cs5. I edited the photo with Lightroom 3.

I will try what you have said. I think I might have lost some of the quality when I saved it to Photobucket and uploaded it to the sight.

Cheers.

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

rickabobaloey said:
Detroit at night looks a heck of a lot better than it does during the day!

The B&W could definitely use some use some contrast, I agree with Jeffie on that one. I'm not to sure that cityscape photos will work that well in B&W, at least I don't recall seeing any.

That is for sure

JeffieLove · Feb 19, 2011

mswiech said:
JeffieLove said:

Your horizon is a little tilted. There's a couple ways you could fix it. What program(s) do you edit in?

Also a higher contrast BW conversion would be nicer as well. Right now you have a lot of black and gray and not really so much white...

Played with the BW a little bit and straightened the image.

(Assuming you edit with Photoshop)
Make sure your brush colors are selected with black in the foreground and white in the background.
Make a gradient map adjustment layer
Make a levels adjustment layer and bring in your white point to the end of the histogram. This will brighten up the lights a little bit and make them whiter and a little more crisp.

That's all I did

Click to expand...

I use lightroom 3 and photoshop cs5. I edited the photo with Lightroom 3.

I will try what you have said. I think I might have lost some of the quality when I saved it to Photobucket and uploaded it to the sight.

Cheers.

That is very possible. Photobucket does butcher photos quite a bit... Have you tried using flickr? It doesn't compress the files as much..

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

JeffieLove said:
Now that I've had a better look at it, it looks a little bit soft. The focus isn't as sharp as you would want it to be for a cityscape shot.

I see you used your tripod which means you should have been able to set your aperture to more like f/8 or f/10 or even f/11 or so... That will give you a wider depth of field and more of the image will be in focus. Also, turn the flash off! Your pop up flash would not have affected the outcome of this image at all. It's not strong enough.

This is about all I can come up with for now I'm at my point of the night where I'm so bored I'm commenting and/or helping on every thread I feel like I can actually provide useful information for... Generally that means bed time, but there is too much crap on my bed right now for me to go to sleep and I don't feel like cleaning it off yet... So I'm going to sit here and ramble on people's threads after I finish giving them at least half way useful information

Thanks for that bit of information.So with regards to aperture, what would be caused if it was at say f20...I tried it at that setting, but it was all out of focus and just looked like crap. This is when I put it to f5.6. It was getting too cold out, so once I shot it at that setting I called it a night. I will try an f8 or f11 next time.

Thanks again.

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

nope I have not tried it with that...flickr that is.

JeffieLove · Feb 19, 2011

mswiech said:
JeffieLove said:

Now that I've had a better look at it, it looks a little bit soft. The focus isn't as sharp as you would want it to be for a cityscape shot.

I see you used your tripod which means you should have been able to set your aperture to more like f/8 or f/10 or even f/11 or so... That will give you a wider depth of field and more of the image will be in focus. Also, turn the flash off! Your pop up flash would not have affected the outcome of this image at all. It's not strong enough.

This is about all I can come up with for now I'm at my point of the night where I'm so bored I'm commenting and/or helping on every thread I feel like I can actually provide useful information for... Generally that means bed time, but there is too much crap on my bed right now for me to go to sleep and I don't feel like cleaning it off yet... So I'm going to sit here and ramble on people's threads after I finish giving them at least half way useful information

Click to expand...

Thanks for that bit of information.So with regards to aperture, what would be caused if it was at say f20...I tried it at that setting, but it was all out of focus and just looked like crap. This is when I put it to f5.6. It was getting too cold out, so once I shot it at that setting I called it a night. I will try an f8 or f11 next time.

Thanks again.

f/20 is just a more narrow aperture which means that more of the image will be in focus.

I like to shoot in aperture priority so that I can set my DOF and let the camera choose what it thinks it the right shutter speed. If I think the picture looks too dark or too bright I will go into manual and set the same aperture but a slower or faster shutter speed depending on whether the image needs more or less light.

So basically, I let the camera set my "guidelines" and then I take it on my own from there.

rickabobaloey · Feb 19, 2011

At f/22 you'd have to use a slow shutter speed, so if you were hand holding it then chances are it would have been camera shake.

Since it was on a tripod, it makes me wonder if the IS (image stabilization) was on.

mswiech · Feb 19, 2011

rickabobaloey said:
At f/22 you'd have to use a slow shutter speed, so if you were hand holding it then chances are it would have been camera shake.

Since it was on a tripod, it makes me wonder if the IS (image stabilization) was on.

No I turned off VR on the lens. I had it set to f22 with a shutter speed of 20 seconds and yes it was on a tripod. Could it have been caused by the mirror when it flicked I know with the d3100 there is no mirror lock up. Just wondering.

JeffieLove · Feb 19, 2011

what?!?!? There is no setting for mirror lock up like deep down in your menu AT ALL!!?!?!?!? That's craziness... Wow..

Oh, but to answer your question, camera shake from the mirror is a very likely culprit as well