PLEASE, re-upload your pics, ticking the (store original) box, so we can see the shutter speed you ended up using.
The first shot in particular could really use some lighting coming from below to lighten up the chins. Maybe a reflector?
And do remember that 16x24's are meant to be viewed while hanging on a wall, several feet from the viewpoint.
Want to pixel peep? Print a 4x6.
I believe boberic is 100% correct in this case. Your shutter speed is just not fast enough to freeze the action. All the other stuff mentioned although correct in many cases is just not what is going on here. You need a faster shutter speed!
boberic wrote:
I have looked ay these shots again. I am certainly not an expert photographer but I do know dogs. I noticed that the dogs were panting. If you look at any panting dog their heads as well as the bodies are constantly moving. A smaller dog is moving even faster ralative to their body size than a bigger one. The loss of sharpness when enlerged to more than 8X10 is related to subject movement here. 1/60 is simply not fast enough. I do not think that it is any more complicated than that.
Bottom line; the photos are not that good. The lighting is poor, shutter speed is to slow and the ISO is to high. It's time for a reshoot with a flash.
Here's two of my pet photos.
Our Japanese Bobtail kitten: Pillows were covered with my wife's jacket. Camera was set at manual plus Raw at ISO 200, shutter @ 1/180, lens was 72mm @ F11. Lighting was natural and flash and measured with a Minolta flash meter from the eighties. The flash was a Ascor light 2 from the eighties and was just laying on a bedside table pointed at the white ceiling. the shot was handheld. My wife was entertaining the kitten with a laser.
[quote=The Watcher]Bottom line; the photos are not that good. The lighting is poor, shutter speed is to slow and the ISO is to high. It's time for a reshoot with a flash.
Watcher... not to offend, but did you read the full chain? I do not use "strobe" for a reason... so, it is not an option....
These are not snapshots of a cat... which are easier to entertain and to shoot... these are freshly groomed dogs, with a level of excitement because of what is happening to them... they are all a bit hyper... and in a lot of shots you have more than one dog to entertain.... not as easy as shooting a playful kitten on the sofa...
The original Q was how to improve the enlargement, not to find out how to do Pet Friendly Photography... and I have had plenty of responses that have helped... and some that were just off base... like yours...
I am new to digital but not to photography, having been a pro for over 30 years.... I have run my own studio and commercial business... and I have made great money as a pro... and I don't do weddings, lol.
So... please understand that 1... the photos, to the client, are beautiful!.. 2... the lighting is calculated and is sufficient, the studio is set up just for the Pet Photography... 3... the shutter speed has be increased by baring a bulb in one of the softboxes and adjusting the AV to f8, which as it turns out, gives me just the right DOF... I have moved the focal point away from the backdrop a few feet, so the backdrop in not in focus...
What I am saying is, thanks to this forum and the good advice of some members, I think I have solved the problem... which in the end has nothing to do with lighting or shutter speed... it had to do with me using hi Jpg instead of RAW and saving as Jpg instead of Tiff or PSD...
Because the problem was not "bad" photography... it was bad enlargements to 16x24.... but, even those, when viewed from a proper distance look good.
In the future, I suggest you are careful with your wording of a critique so it doesn't come across as an insult....
Merry Christmas to you and yours...
beaux
TheDman wrote:
No, I'm saying the number 72 never had magical meaning. It is no more significant than the number 62 or 52 or 32. And as far as the PPI meta tag in a digital file goes, it it completely meaningless. Too many people today think images on the web are 72 PPI, and I want to kill that myth.
I've often wondered where that came from.
I used to use 72ppi for supposedly optimizing photo files for websites I was making in the 1990s. Microsoft FrontPage also resized to a 72pppi file after you WYSIWYG-sized the photo on screen and pressed the "resize" button. Then I read that some people were manually optimizing to 75ppi to get more clarity on websites and not letting FrontPage do the resizing. But lately I've used Xara Web Designer and they use 96ppi.
So apparently the 72ppi number is either a randomly chosen old wive's tale that has lingered through the decades, or maybe that actually was optimum for the sickly tube monitors with .52 and .39 dot pitch of the 1980s and 1990s.
[quote=beauxPatrick]
The Watcher wrote:
Bottom line; the photos are not that good. The lighting is poor, shutter speed is to slow and the ISO is to high. It's time for a reshoot with a flash.
Watcher... not to offend, but did you read the full chain? I do not use "strobe" for a reason... so, it is not an option....
These are not snapshots of a cat... which are easier to entertain and to shoot... these are freshly groomed dogs, with a level of excitement because of what is happening to them... they are all a bit hyper... and in a lot of shots you have more than one dog to entertain.... not as easy as shooting a playful kitten on the sofa...
The original Q was how to improve the enlargement, not to find out how to do Pet Friendly Photography... and I have had plenty of responses that have helped... and some that were just off base... like yours...
I am new to digital but not to photography, having been a pro for over 30 years.... I have run my own studio and commercial business... and I have made great money as a pro... and I don't do weddings, lol.
So... please understand that 1... the photos, to the client, are beautiful!.. 2... the lighting is calculated and is sufficient, the studio is set up just for the Pet Photography... 3... the shutter speed has be increased by baring a bulb in one of the softboxes and adjusting the AV to f8, which as it turns out, gives me just the right DOF... I have moved the focal point away from the backdrop a few feet, so the backdrop in not in focus...
What I am saying is, thanks to this forum and the good advice of some members, I think I have solved the problem... which in the end has nothing to do with lighting or shutter speed... it had to do with me using hi Jpg instead of RAW and saving as Jpg instead of Tiff or PSD...
Because the problem was not "bad" photography... it was bad enlargements to 16x24.... but, even those, when viewed from a proper distance look good.
In the future, I suggest you are careful with your wording of a critique so it doesn't come across as an insult....
Merry Christmas to you and yours...
beaux
Bottom line; the photos are not that good. The lig... (
show quote)
You'll find a lot of crass wording on here. It takes time and self-discipline to actually stop, go back and read what you typed, and carefully search for words that could be misconstrued before pressing the Send button, and many here won't/don't. I try to always do so but when I'm in a hurry or very tired I slip up and come across incorrectly.
There are also some on here who are purposely acidic, obnoxious, condescending, egotistical, are looking for ways to start a ruckus, are proud of their repulsive ways - and will even say so. I pity the people who live with or near them.
So if you're going to stick around you might as well get used to it.
Merry Christmas morning...I am not too upset with the "critique"... I just consider the source and let it go... some think that photography is an absolute science, but too many variables... I do appreciate the "good" advice.... and this forum....
Ho.... Ho... Ho....
beaux
guess what i discovered...
use the "crop" tool on left sidebar and set W x L x Dpi... i use 16x24 at 300 and photoshop interpolates the image to new size.... then I use topaz plug-in for details... i get a perfect print...
and a giant file???
beaux
beauxPatrick wrote:
guess what i discovered...
use the "crop" tool on left sidebar and set W x L x Dpi... i use 16x24 at 300 and photoshop interpolates the image to new size.... then I use topaz plug-in for details... i get a perfect print...
and a giant file???
beaux
Good resolution takes lots of pixels. Pixels take up file space. Therefore, good resolution image files are BIG.
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