New Orleans: C&C, guidance needed for a noob

[nola.ron]

Please keep in mind I am a total noob! I am looking for guidance to see how I am doing so far. This is my 2nd week with my camera and really the first planned day I had to go shooting. These pictures are in full manual mode. I did take 1 picture in auto mode just to compare to my manual settings, but I don't believe that 1 picture is included here.

Looking for specific guidance on the following:
- How am I doing in manual mode?
- How is my general exposure?
- How is composition?
- Could my photos be more clear/crisp?
- How is focusing?
- How is my PP?
- Am I doing anything right?
- What am I doing wrong?

Thank you everyone!!

1. I didn't pull this off the way I wanted... I wanted the leaves to be sharp and in focus with the skyline OOF. How could I have fixed this? Lower aperture?

Fall by nola-ron, on Flickr



2.

Cathedral by nola-ron, on Flickr



3.

Cathedral 2 by nola-ron, on Flickr



4. This was a pain. There was a lot of traffic because of the tourism boom for NYE, and I couldn't get far enough back to get the top of the roof.

Cafe Du Monde by nola-ron, on Flickr



5. Not sure about this one... I had a vision for it, but didn't execute. Not sure how I could have made it better.

Repairs by nola-ron, on Flickr



6. I know I blew the sky out here in the top right... I tried to correct in post. Is it acceptable, or should I just trash it?

Lucky Dog by nola-ron, on Flickr



7. Not sure on composition here. I think this is worthless, even though it is "pretty" to my eyes.

Jax by nola-ron, on Flickr



8. Underexposed and poor framing, right?

Jax River Side by nola-ron, on Flickr



9. Just not sure what is wrong here...

GNO River by nola-ron, on Flickr

 

[pic_chick]

Looking for specific guidance on the following: over all
- How am I doing in manual mode? as good as me
- How is my general exposure? nice
- How is composition? kinda boring but not bad to you have the grid turned on in your camera it should have a thirds grid
- Could my photos be more clear/crisp? yes and no I think the tree is fine but I would have blurred the background to make the tree pop
- How is focusing? nice
- How is my PP? nice
- Am I doing anything right? your wb looks spot on in this one
- What am I doing wrong? a bit busy hard to choose the main subject

Photo two-6 I like It all looks good to me

photo 7

looks like a snap shot
the whites in the upper left are blown
A tighter crop would help

I love NOLA you going to Jackson square tonight?

 

[nola.ron]

Looking for specific guidance on the following: over all
- How am I doing in manual mode? as good as me
- How is my general exposure? nice
- How is composition? kinda boring but not bad to you have the grid turned on in your camera it should have a thirds grid
- Could my photos be more clear/crisp? yes and no I think the tree is fine but I would have blurred the background to make the tree pop
- How is focusing? nice
- How is my PP? nice
- Am I doing anything right? your wb looks spot on in this one
- What am I doing wrong? a bit busy hard to choose the main subject

Photo two-6 I like It all looks good to me

photo 7

looks like a snap shot
the whites in the upper left are blown
A tighter crop would help

I love NOLA you going to Jackson square tonight?

Tyvm for all the input! Won't be there tonight. Family party in Lakeview. Will be there tomorrow on another shooting expedition though lol. Have some more shots I missed that I want to try again.

 

[TCampbell]

Good for you to get out and start using the camera in manual mode. There are a lot of photos, so I wont comment on all of them, but can offer a few things to look at.

If you look at your shots of buildings (e.g. 2, 3, 6, etc.) you'll notice the buildings are "leaning" back. That's caused by the perspective of your lens. A tilt-shift lens (Nikon uses the term "perspective control" lens) can correct the image in-camera as you shoot, but they are VERY expensive lenses. This particular type of perspective is corrected by using the "shift" feature of a tilt-shift lens (shift controls perspective, tilt controls the focus plane). Since you only need to fix the perspective, you don't need a tilt-shift lens... Photoshop can fix this and it's actually pretty easy to do.

The primary tool in Photoshop for doing this is called the "Transform" tool (and there are lots of modes that this tool can use depending on the type of correction needed.) There are numerous free tutorials on using the tool. I went to YouTube, did a quick search for the term "photoshop transform" and this video popped up: Distort, Warp, Perspective & Transform in Photoshop - tutorial from myPHOTOSHOPsite.com - YouTube

You'll also find that in the Photoshop "Filter" -> "Lens Correction" panel you can click the "Custom" tab and you'll find a "perspective" correction in that menu as well.

In #8 you've composed the shot to view the top of the building, but the base of the building isn't "grounded" to anything because the image is cut off at the bottom. Photographers will talk about "rules" of composition. Think of them more as "guidelines". They suggest ways to approach composition BECAUSE when the guideline is followed the image will often look better than if the guideline is ignored. But there's a big difference between "often" and "always". Sometimes you should ignore the rules.

I want to pick on #6 a bit because it's an interesting problem. The bright background of the building in the upper right is quite obviously over-exposed and blown out. This MIGHT lead one to accuse you of having over-exposed the shot. The histogram for the shot confirms that it is over-exposed. EXCEPT, take a look at the wheels on the food cart as well as the black pants worn by the person standing just to the right side of the cart... the darks are so black that they're clipping in shadow -- so now the image looks like areas are under-exposed.

So what's going on with #6? #6 is an example of an image that actually requires two different exposures. The food cart requires one set of exposure settings and the background requires another. I can tell you that the background needs a "Sunny 16" exposure because it's in full sunlight. The cart is ISO 800, f/8, 1/60th and the background could be ISO 100, f/16, 1/100th. That's a difference of about 4 stops (the background is nearly 16 times brighter than it should be to get a correct exposure.)

How do you fix it?

You cannot control the light in the background caused by the sun on the building. But you MIGHT be able to do something with the foreground by adding a LOT of light. If you can enough lights to brighten up the food cart then the exposures wouldn't be so radically different and the shot would look balanced. The pop-up flash on your camera isn't going to do it. If a movie company were shooting this as part of a scene, they'd bring in a lot of light, but that's not practical for you.

The "other" way to fix it is to shoot this using a bracketed exposure and then merge them together -- HDR (high dynamic range). The camera actually takes several exposures (usually 3). One exposure is the middle exposure and will correctly expose the midtones but both highlights and shadows will be lost. One exposure is deliberately under-exposed... the midtones and shadows are lost, but it causes the highlights to NOT be blown out... they actually look good. One exposure does the opposite and deliberately overexposes the image. It's mid-tones and highlights will be blown out but it's shadow areas will actually look good. Computer software then grabs the pixels that represent shadow regions from the "over-exposed" shot and the pixels that represent the highlight regions from the "under-exposed" shot and merges them into the middle exposure to create a final image that has better balance. While not strictly required... it's easier to get better results when using a tripod to take those bracketed images. There are numerous tutorials on how to create HDR images (some cameras have a built-in feature, but you can actually do it with any camera by taking "bracketed" images and merging them on the computer. "bracketed" simply means you hedge your bets by taking the exposure you think is correct ALONG WITH two more exposures... one deliberately under-exposed and the other deliberately over-exposed. (and sometimes it's not just 3 images.) When doing this, alter the exposure by changing the shutter speed -- not the aperture (f-stop). That's because you want the depth of field (the focused area) to be consistent across all of your bracketed images.)

 

[Mully]

Keep shooting manual and after time you can get within one stop of your meter ...sometimes better

 

[Derrel]

Too many shots to comment on individually, for me, but thanks to the tireless work of some folks, like TCampbell, we "usually" have somebody willing to step up to the plate on these large "How am I doing?" type posts. Props, TCampbell!!!

OP--I think you are doing "okay", or a little better than OK. Luckily, you live in an area whee there seems to be a lot of decent light...many parts of North America have months on end of sucky, directionless,overcast lighting outdoors. For much of the year. I live in such a place. Keep at it. I have seen MUCH,much worse efforts. These show a baseline level of skill that ought to make a good foundation for advancement. "Keep on clickin'!!!"

 

[runnah]

Composition is the biggest problem with these. #5 is the only one I'd say was composed well. The rest aren't level, or weighted correctly for the frame.

 

[The_Traveler]

You don't get any props for shooting in manual if 1) your composition is not good and 2) you don't know why you are shooting with the settings you're using.
In most of these shots, all you are doing is you are looking through the viewfinder and centering the bar.
The ISO is usually inappropriate and that means the shutter speed and aperture aren't optimum.

Post the best picture, tell us why you used the ISO, the aperture and shutter speed and why you think the composition is good.

 

[Geaux]

My city/home!

I'm not sure why people think shooting in full manual vs one of the priority settings is any better. With today's DSLR's minus a few occasions, it's not like you can actually tell which mode you shot in. I shoot in Aperture priority majority of the time and when I can't get a shot to look the way I want to, I throw it in manual and get it done. Manual is also used for my strobist stuff too.

Agreed with most of the comments here, composition, composition, composition. As far as exposure goes, everything seems fine to me.