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Would f/5.6 - 8 - 11 Been A Beter Choice?
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Jan 13, 2019 03:55:07   #
Delderby Loc: Derby UK
 
foxfirerodandgun wrote:
Aslways Thomas902 thank you for your input. I wanted to get out much earlier that I did and catch some of the earlier light but other things took priority. Here is a shot taken about 2:00 pm the of a building not far from my home that once was a bustling business before I-95 came along. It also has a full basement. If I interpret the histogram correctly it seems to be exposed OK I guess, however, the entire shot just looks to dark to me. Comments?


IMHO you and your camera have done well with a high contrast subject. The shadows are long for 2pm and the risk was blown highlights or black shadows. You have neither, and have produced a pleasant picture.

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Jan 13, 2019 13:12:25   #
foxfirerodandgun Loc: Stony Creek, VA
 
Delderby wrote:
IMHO you and your camera have done well with a high contrast subject. The shadows are long for 2pm and the risk was blown highlights or black shadows. You have neither, and have produced a pleasant picture.


Thank you for the kind words. Since this building faces East, and when I can be assured of a clear sunrise, which we haven't had many of recently, I plan to use the warm early light to capture a few more images of it and post a couple here.

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Jan 19, 2019 16:53:32   #
E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
 
The choice of aperture (f/stop) has very little to do with any perceived underexposure, lack do shadow detail or bluish color cast in the gray barn wood. I suspect it is a simple matter of "subject failure" which oftentimes occurs in back-lighted objects or scenes. The cameras metering and auto white balance system "sees" the sky and the bright colors and highly reflective elements in the surrounding areas and adjusts for those thereby rendering the darker tones a bit muddy.

I don't think there's all over underexposure or that you have gone beyond the dynamic range of the system. I did not refer to the metadata but simply downloaded one of the images- seems all the necessary informant is there and just require a bit of post processing tweaking- nothing extreme.

The shaded area are illuminate by the open shade blue skylight and therefor tend to go a bit blue or colder. So...I dodge a bit and warm up the image and pumped a bit of blue into the sky- because it when greenish whe I added yellow.

In landscapes like this, the f/stop is gonna effect the depth of field but at theses working distance with normal or wider focal lengths, it is not critical nor is the occurrence of diffraction at moderate rates of enlargement. All of this theory and optical gremlins in zoom lenses rear the ugly heads is critical work and high level of enlargement. i'm sure you cam pull, at least a 16x20 out of that f/16 image with no loss of quality

When you are shoot theses kinds of structure, you might consider allow the came to take a spot reading of the neutral gray wood and use it a a "gray card" lock in the exposure and white balance and the back up or zoom out for the shot. Bracketing exposure also helps.

In term of color balance and issue of warm, neutral or neutral tones- that's up to you. Unless you are after exact color matching to the actual scene, it is a matter of taste. Also temperature change with the time of day adn weather conditions. "Daylight" can go from 3100 Kelvins to 12,000! If the camera "thinks" it's 5500K you are gonna run int strange results, so you may want to set custom color balances depending on the conditions.

Personally, I don't always go by or refer to metadata, histograms and color targets unless I am doing a commercial job that requires color matching. In landscape and othere artistic endeavors, that stuff can drive you nuts. And...just lie fine custom printing used to be the key to great color prints back in the olden-film days, a little post-processing is not a dirty word. Shift you color palette to fit the mood. "tu es l'atist" excuse my French (you da artist) so play with the colors, saturation, contrast and set the mood.

So...I love old barns and dilapidated rural buildings. If I had my way, I would live in one but my lovely wife (neat-nick that she is) would object! Therefore, I took the liberty of messing with one of your shots. Go put in you PhotoShop program or wahtever and make a big print and hang it on your wall- Nice shot!


(Download)

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Jan 19, 2019 18:05:41   #
E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada
 
There is nothing wrong with technical excellence, precision and accuracy in imagery. I just feel that ofttimes photographer become so preoccupied with many finite technical issue that the do so at the expense of creativity, self expression and uniqueness in their photographs.

For a shot time, I studied photography at an art college- they threw me out after they discovered I coud not draw, paint to sculpt. There was one professor there, however, that I wanted to learn from so I hung in for a semester. He would complain that "y'all are making too many "picture post cards". He would patrol the "life" classes and remark "those are breasts- sonny, not water-wings"! He encourage what we now call "jumping out of the box" and looking for textures, subtleties, different points of view, doing exercises and experimentation in different areas and not necessarily just always producing perfect finsihed work.

So...here I am, many decade later, doing commercial work and producing catalog and website images, kinda like picture post cards. Then, I run into so may photograph here and in person that want lenses that can "see the bacteria on someones face" and spend so much time looking at their histograms that the are kinda neglecting their subjects. I also do a good volume of portraiture and so many of my lovely lady subjects (clients) are not interested in seeing their pores in a head-shot- let alone the germs! Some of my best work is done with old beaten up lenses that have more aberrations than a psychopath.

Of course, all good photographers should understand the rudiments of exposure and image management, perspective, color space, tonality , dynamic range all that good stuff but on a beautiful sunny day, or in a moody haze, or wahtever. While out and about doing landscapes or still life, or casual portraits, or whatever strikes their fancy, sometimes the old f/16 rule or the data on those little pieces of paper that came packaged with the film would suffice so we can concentrate on the mood, the theme, the textures, the expressions and the body language and the ambience.

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Jan 31, 2019 14:06:36   #
foxfirerodandgun Loc: Stony Creek, VA
 
E.L.. Shapiro wrote:
The choice of aperture (f/stop) has very little to do with any perceived underexposure, lack do shadow detail or bluish color cast in the gray barn wood. I suspect it is a simple matter of "subject failure" which oftentimes occurs in back-lighted objects or scenes. The cameras metering and auto white balance system "sees" the sky and the bright colors and highly reflective elements in the surrounding areas and adjusts for those thereby rendering the darker tones a bit muddy.

I don't think there's all over underexposure or that you have gone beyond the dynamic range of the system. I did not refer to the metadata but simply downloaded one of the images- seems all the necessary informant is there and just require a bit of post processing tweaking- nothing extreme.

The shaded area are illuminate by the open shade blue skylight and therefor tend to go a bit blue or colder. So...I dodge a bit and warm up the image and pumped a bit of blue into the sky- because it when greenish whe I added yellow.

In landscapes like this, the f/stop is gonna effect the depth of field but at theses working distance with normal or wider focal lengths, it is not critical nor is the occurrence of diffraction at moderate rates of enlargement. All of this theory and optical gremlins in zoom lenses rear the ugly heads is critical work and high level of enlargement. i'm sure you cam pull, at least a 16x20 out of that f/16 image with no loss of quality

When you are shoot theses kinds of structure, you might consider allow the came to take a spot reading of the neutral gray wood and use it a a "gray card" lock in the exposure and white balance and the back up or zoom out for the shot. Bracketing exposure also helps.

In term of color balance and issue of warm, neutral or neutral tones- that's up to you. Unless you are after exact color matching to the actual scene, it is a matter of taste. Also temperature change with the time of day adn weather conditions. "Daylight" can go from 3100 Kelvins to 12,000! If the camera "thinks" it's 5500K you are gonna run int strange results, so you may want to set custom color balances depending on the conditions.

Personally, I don't always go by or refer to metadata, histograms and color targets unless I am doing a commercial job that requires color matching. In landscape and othere artistic endeavors, that stuff can drive you nuts. And...just lie fine custom printing used to be the key to great color prints back in the olden-film days, a little post-processing is not a dirty word. Shift you color palette to fit the mood. "tu es l'atist" excuse my French (you da artist) so play with the colors, saturation, contrast and set the mood.

So...I love old barns and dilapidated rural buildings. If I had my way, I would live in one but my lovely wife (neat-nick that she is) would object! Therefore, I took the liberty of messing with one of your shots. Go put in you PhotoShop program or wahtever and make a big print and hang it on your wall- Nice shot!
The choice of aperture (f/stop) has very little to... (show quote)


Thanks for your input, suggestions, and tips. I meant to respond to this much earlier but overlooked doing so. I like what you did to the image that you tweaked. I have discovered several other interesting buildings that I plan to capture as soon as it warms up a bit. That's one advantage of living in a rural environment, with farming on the down turn, there are many of these buildings being totally left to rot & fall down. I have film images of a number of these that were once here but now gone. Thanks again.

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Nov 30, 2019 16:32:56   #
Bill P
 
[quote=Linda From Maine]In aperture priority, every time you changed the aperture, the camera changed the shutter speed so that you ended up with the same exposure. You would have to use the exposure compensation feature or go to all manual settings as user autofocus suggests.

Linda, you are right.

I will repeat an answer I used in another post. Get a handheld incident meter. Use it. Problem solved.

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Nov 30, 2019 16:38:14   #
Bill P
 
ChrisRL wrote:
foxfire, and gents, hello!

I have a question. Why is it that when shooting digital we're still set on conventions that were instigated by color transparency film stock, and analog color separation technology?

We now have the most incredible darkroom and lightbox tools ever. Why not use them?

I guess you know about dodging and burning areas of your image? In Photoshop, or in a darkroom, under and enlarger?

You are aware that most of the photo giants of the past used darkroom post-processing on a daily basis?

It's only when we came to slide shows or the color separation of color transparencies for print purposes (print as in magazine, newspapers etc) that we had to be exact about exposures, since the transparency / slide films were shot, then went to processing, then came back mounted and ready to project or go into color separation - no post processing color or image manipulation was readily available at that time.

Nowadays, that's still the case - if you were showing analog negatives or color slides to other people.
But we're not. The computer is at least two stages away from the original JPG or RAW file that came from your camera.

So what is wrong with tweaking your images to suit your exact needs, if they are exact for a particular shot?

I don't get it. Yes, finding the sweet spot of a lens is obviously great - most of mine are a stop and a half, or two stops in from wide open. But not always. My old PC-Nikkors, that have tilt and shift, settle in at 11-16 where as most of the others are blurry due to diffraction by then, for instance. One of my macro lenses ditto.

Yes, testing is best, to find the best lens / zoom / aperture combo for any given common focal length.
For example, at 85mm, I have a 70-210, a 24-85, a 24-120, and a very old 85/1.8 prime lens that will cover 85mm. The best by far is the prime lens at f/8. How did I get to that? By setting every lens at that focal length and shooting the exact same subject at all available apertures (off a big tripod, obviously, and time release/mirror lock-up)

But photography always had a shoot phase, and a lab/develop/post phase.

Why is it, that even after all these decades, and all this accumulated body of knowledge, that we're still concentrating on point-and-shoot?

I mean, nobody will contest that nowadays we can totally miss the optimum aperture by a stop or two and still be able to recover most of not all the image data from the camera original, without missing a beat, just by moving a slider or three.

So why get so concerned about 1/3 stops any more? With all this latitude we now have at our fingertips?

Sorry, I don't get it.
foxfire, and gents, hello! br br I have a questio... (show quote)


I get it. Today's photographers do not want to spend the time to study photography and practice techniques. They want the lazy man's solution, fix it in post. When you do that you are not a photographer, you are an IT tech.

I know, many of you will respond that why not use the new solutions and question the definition of a photographer. So do whatever, it's your time to waste.

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Dec 2, 2019 10:23:42   #
flyboy61 Loc: The Great American Desert
 
foxfirerodandgun wrote:
... Yes, I struggle to fully understand the exposure triangle and its interactions. Along with aperture= +/-DOF, I was also thinking narrower aperture=less light / wider aperture=more light thus under/over exposure not realizing that the camera is making shutter speed adjustments to compensate for my aperture adjustments. And, if I understand this correctly, in Shutter mode the camera compensates shutter speed changes with aperture changes.
Manual mode seems to be what I should begin to learn as well.
... Yes, I struggle to fully understand the exposu... (show quote)


We have all struggled with exposure trying to learn this Magical pastime...me? I still do on occasion but, apropos to the season..."Go back to basics, and execute!"

We spend all that money on cameras that are smarter than any of us, and "expect" them to do marvelous things. For the most part, they do, and we love 'em! Some folks spend their entire lives in "P" (For Professional) Mode, and that's O.K., too.

Hie thee to thy local library, and check out a book or three on basic exposure. Find one you like, then buy it on Amazon, or wherever. I recommend Bryan Peterson's book, "Understanding Exposure", 3rd or 4th edition. That will explain all you will ever need to know about available light photography, IMNHO .

Somewhere in there, he does a page about diffraction, showing it is a non-problem in the real world.

Flash...that's a whole different animal, but worthwhile learning a few things in order to improve your photography.

IGNORE the Factory manual!(Well, mostly) Written by engineers for engineers. For me, the "Dummies" series of books is much more understandable. The pages are falling out of mine! Read some, go out and practice, then read it again, repeat. Soon, you'll have it!

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Dec 5, 2019 19:49:52   #
photogeneralist Loc: Lopez Island Washington State
 
autofocus wrote:
your answer is spot on, although I'm not a fan of guessing what EV to use when it's a simple adjustment by just shooting in manual mode...but, I'm old school! :)


If you are old school, then you know the sunny 16 guidelines. In full sunlight, (hard edged shadows) set your camera f stop for f 16 and your shutter speed should match your ISO. This is not precise rule but is usually close enough to produce a usable exposure.

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Dec 5, 2019 23:26:38   #
Pixeldawg Loc: Suzhou, China
 
I am adding an attachment here that may help some of you with the Exposure/DoF issue. It is the basics of the relation between lens and aperture settings. I use this with my students (who pay for their college... but you can have for FREE. Merry Christmas from me! :-) ) REMEMBER that EACH LENS has its' own DoF characteristics, and even lenses with the same focal length can differ in the amount of DoF they provide at a specific aperture due to the variations in optical design. I highly recommend getting an APP for your phone that gives you the DoF scale for your exact lens. The other thing about DoF that you have to remember is that DISTANCE matters! The closer you are to the subject, the more shallow the DoF gets. This is most obvious when you do macro (i.e. "bug" photo) work. You can have an aperture of F22, and only have .5 of an inch of DoF. Conversely, you can focus the same lens at a distance of 60 feet at F22 and the sharpness will be apparent throughout the entire range of the shot. Hope this helps!

Mark Lent



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