Photos Photo of the Day

I've commented on this thread a few times, but I don't think I've contributed by posting any photos yet, so here goes.



A three shot focus stack (with Helicon focus) + some mushroom repair work

 

I've not contributed to this thread before, its quite an imposing bunch of photos as they're all so amazing.

I shoot on a D5000 and this way taken on a 50mm 1.4. I shoot to JPG and don't edit my photo's as I don't have photoshop and can't afford to buy a copy at the moment.



This is something I took when I was out walking the dog around crystal palace park on sunday.

 

That it was, and thanks for commenting!

I wish everyone could see that beautiful area as we saw it. So long as I'm wishing, though, I'm also going to wish that everyone stay home the next time we visit, to keep the traffic down while we're there. We could not photograph some of the prettiest places for lack of any place to get out of one's car, and some of the parking areas that there were, were full.

Oh, and maybe you can get back to the Sierras after the color has arrived?

Mike Biggs

 

For what it's worth, I think that's a fine shot!

As for Photoshop, well, I don't want to spend that kind of money, either. But GIMP2 is very powerful, and free, although it does have a steep learning curve. Paint.net is also free, not quite as powerful at GIMP, maybe, but definitely a capable photo editor and generally easier to use.

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html

GIMP, at least, also has versions for Macs and Linux.

Mike Biggs

 

Thanks I'll take a look at gimp tonight.

Have a little rep.

 

Thank you for the kind words. It was shot handheld with a 5D Mark II and 85mm lens @ f1.2. I had to crop it a bit in Lightroom to remove an in-focus leaf near the bottom left corner. I'm undecided on whether to post pics of the petroglyph. Its location is a well-kept secret, which is why it took me 2 days to locate it. Upon arrival, another photographer was there and he told me it took him three trips over the course of a year to finally locate it, so I guess I got lucky! I'm paranoid about posting any pics of the location on flickr in case it leads others there. Plus, I got there in harsh mid-morning light and my shots are crap. Google image search "sky rock bishop" if you're interested in checking it out.

You may have a future career as a surgeon!

Like mclean007 says, merge first then correct. The distortion is caused by not rotating the camera about its entrance pupil as you create the panorama. I run into this problem a lot myself. If you're shooting handheld or on a tripod, you're probably rotating about the sensor plane (or close to it). You need a special panoramic head (i.e. $$$$), which lets you move the camera's axis of rotation forward or back. Or, if you have Lightroom 3 there are tools in the 'Lens Corrections' pane of the develop module. Click over to the 'manual' tab and play with the sliders. I've found that, once you try and stitch around 4 or more photos (regardless of focal length, but depending on your subject distance and how much you overlap between shots), the distortion becomes really difficult to correct in software.

 

Dammit, I knew I was in the wrong field. Should've picked pre-med, not philosophy!

As for the pano - I think it was 6 shots and I dun play'd with distortion controls in both Pshop and LR3 and neither of them can make it look acceptable. If one bit looks okay, another goes goofy and so on...

I try to keep axis of rotation behind the sensor plane (lean forward, twist at the waist) because some internet tutorial said it was easy and smart to do. I just do panos when I'm bored, I should probably go read up on them properly. I think this particular one is dodgy because of the fact that I was on a boat so nothing stayed the same between shots (moving forward, up and down, back and forth etc). The ones I did at the grand canyon weren't half bad if I do say so myself.

 

Needed to take a photo showing man-made curves. I setup the little ones train set and used the Pentax K5 on a tripod with a Tamron 17-50mm lens @50mm. Exposure was 5 seconds at f/7.1 with +2ev. Due to crappy living room lighting I lightened the white areas a little in PS by doing a quick magic wand selection, creating a new layer via copy and playing with the levels.

For some reason I really like the look of the inverted one

 

@Veato

In photoshop the dodge tool set to highlights (with about 10% exposure) and the "protect tones" unchecked is a really good friend of mine when it comes to white backgrounds.

Also try to make a fairly tight "sine curve" for the curves layer adjustment as a preset, the photo looks really funky, but the non-white parts are really easy to spot.

With this photo it isn't necessarily needed since you have such clean lines, but try it out.

 

I did actually try using dodge at first but found it was creating some halo effect on the upper edge of the track. I've not really used dodge before so rather than spend hours perfecting it I just used the other method. The lighting effect on the blank areas was very pronounced though and it's something I'll try again when I've got more time.

 

Try it with the settings that I mentioned before, it should clean up to white bg quite easily and when the mode is set to highlights, it doesn't even matter if you brush over your subject a bit.

A decent size soft edged brush is my chosen weapon for the job.

 

One from a week ago I only got round to looking at now (D700 and 300 f2.8 AI)

 

Nice shot Greg.




Ferrari 641 by angad84, on Flickr


Magneti Marelli by angad84, on Flickr


Chairs by angad84, on Flickr


Ice by angad84, on Flickr

 

Use the pen tool... it's the quickest and easiest way to do cutouts.

 

where was this taken? me likeY!

 

At the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

 

I thought I recognised this!!!

I see your chair and raise you another chair!


MOMA chair by felix z83, on Flickr

 

Ha! That's awesome

 

Photo of the day from 2005 - I am glad to see that they have kept the chairs!

Did you check out 5pointz whilste you were in NYC?

I put a couple more up from my trip to Manhattan! Let's see if there are any other duplicates from our visits!


tall buildings by felix z83, on Flickr

 

Nope, hadn't heard of 5pointz until now. Shame, because I love streetart.