I took about 10 shots - -

[Ron Evers]

I took about 10 shots of this Rose-of-Sharon using different aperatutes, focal lengths & exposure levels in the late afternoon. Of them all, I prefer this one:
ISO 200
f 8.0
t 1/800
exposure comp. -2/3

This shot is right off the camera with some cropping.

Your opinions please.

 

[manaheim]

Ron, is it a bit underexposed perhaps? It looks dark and somewhat ... noisy? Not sure. Something's up with it.

Very pretty flower though. We have a gigantic one of these on the side of our house. The thing blooms for months.

 

[Ron Evers]

Interesting comment Chris, I found the normal & 1/3 cut over exposed. I understand how under exposure can give a grainy appearance that I am not able to see on my monitor.

 

[manaheim]

Yeah, I dunno... I can't quite figure it out. It might just be a combination of bright light and underexposure.

 

[Don Kondra]

Hi Ron,

I prefer shooting in raw, that gives you a little more lee way to correct the exposure.

Took your image and resized it to 700 x 525 so you don't have to scroll to see it :mrgreen:

Adjusted the brightness, contrast and +2 sharpness with FastStone Image viewer and just for the heck of it to see what would happen, ran it through noiseware...

Cheers, Don

 

[Don Kondra]

And this one is Noiseware first, adjusted light and contrast in Light Box Plus and sharpened in Fast Stone :mrgreen:

Cheers, Don

 

[manaheim]

Don's first edit looks better to me, personally.

 

[Iron Flatline]

I prefer the second edit.

None of this means anything as a tiny JPGs on a 72 dpi monitor. The print is what matters.

 

[Don Kondra]

Back to the original image...

Did you shoot this hand held Ron?

It does look a little soft, just a little out of focus.

Maybe f 11 ish and can you tell us what the metering and focus points were?

Cheers, Don

 

[Ron Evers]

Don

Took your image and resized it to 700 x 525 so you don't have to scroll to see it :mrgreen:

Strange, the pic fits fine on my 17" monitor.

I know I could have improved the image but I wanted folks to see how it came off the camera. As I said it was the best but it looked strange. I would prefer something in between your two edits Don.

My camera does not support RAW.

Yes it was hand held & the metering was centre weighted. f8 is the smallest aperture on my camera.

 

[Ron Evers]

Well, I tried again today under overcast sky, between showers & using a tripod. No exposure compensation was used with this shot:
ISO 200
f 5.6
1/80s
Off the camera -

After a little tweaking -

I kept chasing a fly away but I see it got in the pic in spite of my effort. I did not notice until I downloaded the pic. :x

I now assume the weird pic yesterday was the result of me under exposing trying to outwit the bright sunlight.

 

[manaheim]

^^^ hey that was my original guess. (underexposing in bright sunlight) Woot.

These do look better but still look like they were underexposed. I like the angle much better too, btw.

What are you metering on? You obviously have the dark red and the green and the white at the extremes... you want to try to bring that red up as much as possible without blowing the whites entirely... my guess is you're going to wind up with some still underexposure on the green leaves, but the flower is key anyway.

I'm kind of making the assumption that you are not only showing what it is like off the camera, but trying to get it right at the time of exposure with little or no PP, yes?

 

[Ron Evers]

^^^
I'm kind of making the assumption that you are not only showing what it is like off the camera, but trying to get it right at the time of exposure with little or no PP, yes?

Yes, just like in the film days when I was much much younger. I bought a Minolta SLR back in the late 50s but life got in the way of photography until recently.

When daughter came home from collage several years ago she brought with her my SLR & Lunasix light meter broken. I sure miss manual focus & meter reading with digital. Now I am cursed with glasses to add to the problem of using the viewfinder.

 

[manaheim]

Yes, just like in the film days when I was much much younger. I bought a Minolta SLR back in the late 50s but life got in the way of photography until recently.

When daughter came home from collage several years ago she brought with her my SLR & Lunasix light meter broken. I sure miss manual focus & meter reading with digital. Now I am cursed with glasses to add to the problem of using the viewfinder.

I use the light meter in my camera constantly, though I know it's not always as ideal as a handheld meter would be. Your digital may also not have a meter in it?