StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The Grim Squeaker wrote:That is some fine sunshine.
(looks mournfully at hordes of burnt out photos from Japan).

Don't get too jealous - the last two months have been overwhelmingly rain and clouds. Nature's got a lot to make up for in the sunshine department.

How was the weather over there? Humid? Lots of thin cloud? That harsh, flat, watery light that comes through haze or thin cloud cover is horrible, and even when it is exposed correctly it looks like it's blown out.


Edited a stupid typo.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Simplicius is using film, which I've found to give better skies than digital thanks to its characteristic curve. With digital it's fairly easy to blow out skies, especially if there's mixed lighting conditions where you're trying to properly expose a darker foreground subject. Digital blows out to pure white as soon as you overexpose it a tiny bit while film gives a larger margin of error to play with before it goes pure white.

For instance, if I tried to take this photo with my digital camera, I'd likely blow out most of the left half of the sky instead of just the area around the sun. To get this photo with digital, I'd have to underexpose it a fair bit to keep the skies from blowing out, then load it up in Photoshop & do a bunch of work with the curves tool to get the rest of the picture to show up.

Simplicius wrote:

The Grim Squeaker wrote:That is some fine sunshine.
(looks mournfully at hordes of burnt out photos from Japan).

Don't get too jealous - the last two months have been overwhelmingly rain and clouds.

Beats Japan . (And half of the USA)

Simplicius wrote: Nature's got a lot to make up for in the sunshine department.

Come to Israel, it's constantly scorchingly hot here.

Simplicius wrote: How was the weather over there? Humid? Lots of thin cloud? That harsh, flat, watery light that comes through haze or thin cloud cover is horrible, and even when it is exposed correctly it looks like it's blown out.

Incredibly humid with lots of rain and the lens constantly getting steamed/fogged up. (I have a few cool shots of the Rolls Royce where the humidity on the lens worked out very well). Also very, very strong brite white light, even worse than the light in Alaska.
Good for portraits, crap for anything else, especially buildings.

aerius wrote:Another thing to keep in mind is that Simplicius is using film, which I've found to give better skies than digital thanks to its characteristic curve.

They'll make a camera with a better dynamic range instead of more megapixels soon, you'll see! You'll ALL See!

Searsport Station



Kennebec Arsenal

There's something odd about the framing of that first picture. I'd want to say it's the choice for portrait as opposed to landscape format, and cutting off the sides, but I'm not sure. Were you going for specific effect here?

That arsenal looks like a goldmine for shots. Did you spend a lot of time there?

Group photo shot originally intended for the photo contest, as requested by Simplicious. This was the best crop I came up with but there's just something about the photo that doesn't work for me.

Bounty wrote:There's something odd about the framing of that first picture. I'd want to say it's the choice for portrait as opposed to landscape format, and cutting off the sides, but I'm not sure. Were you going for specific effect here?

That arsenal looks like a goldmine for shots. Did you spend a lot of time there?

You're totally right about the first one. I wanted to get close enough so that the tiny sign would be readable, since that's the only thing that identifies the building, while still showing a fair bit of the building and putting it in context of the ground and the sky. It didn't really work.

The arsenal is awesome, though most of my shots came out badly (I was there for about a half hour). A developer owns it, though, and wants to convert it first to housing, and then to add commercial offices. I should be sure to get back there before too late in the year.

Some photos of the sky full of seagulls:

I suppose I should join in on the theme of abandoned buildings

Little known facts: Toronto is protected by a mini Deathstar

Some insects out in garden:

muse wrote:Group photo shot originally intended for the photo contest, as requested by Simplicious. This was the best crop I came up with but there's just something about the photo that doesn't work for me.

Snip photo

I like it. I don't know anything about photography besides pushing a button, but I personally think this one is better than the other candid portrait.

I like how it seems that they're all caught up in what they're doing, in their own little world, so to speak. They pay no attention to you, or anybody else who might be out of the picture. Also, it looks like they're on a big rock, somewhere in or near a city. The contrast between a very simple rock and the bustling city behind it is pretty interesting, I think. This adds to the "in their own world" effect. I like it.

Amazing color contrasts in the butterfly pictures & I love the aspect ratio of the bee (fly?) photo/

Some photos from this year's Comic-Con in San Deigo:







Full set here

3 other Flower shots from Japan, Apart from my contest submission:

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of flower photos in general. In my opinion, they all tend to look the same, not to mention that they're the first thing that anybody does once they get a macro lens.

With that said, of the three images you posted, the second one is the strongest picture. However, I think that you could have done more with that setup, maybe gotten lower and closer to the flower.

The first picture is too contrasty and underexposed. You've crushed your blacks way too much and killed a lot of shadow detail, making the picture unpleasant to look at.

The third picture is really bland and uninteresting. It's nice that we see a lot of detail in the flower, the photo is at the same angle that you would normally see a flower at and you've placed it dead center, making it even more uninteresting.

Instant Sunrise wrote:To be honest, I'm not a big fan of flower photos in general. In my opinion, they all tend to look the same, not to mention that they're the first thing that anybody does once they get a macro lens.

I don't have a Macro lens, though it is on my wish list .

With that said, of the three images you posted, the second one is the strongest picture. However, I think that you could have done more with that setup, maybe gotten lower and closer to the flower.

This was already a crop, the flower was in the middle of a lily swamp.

The first picture is too contrasty and underexposed. You've crushed your blacks way too much and killed a lot of shadow detail, making the picture unpleasant to look at.

It's unmodified actually. And I like it the most out of them . I think I should have made it my submission, but the fabric flowers pic seemed more different.

The third picture is really bland and uninteresting. It's nice that we see a lot of detail in the flower, the photo is at the same angle that you would normally see a flower at and you've placed it dead center, making it even more uninteresting.

Hmm. Point taken.

The Grim Squeaker wrote: It's unmodified actually. And I like it the most out of them . I think I should have made it my submission, but the fabric flowers pic seemed more different.

I prefer it to the one you submitted as well.

Akumz Razor wrote:

The Grim Squeaker wrote: It's unmodified actually. And I like it the most out of them . I think I should have made it my submission, but the fabric flowers pic seemed more different.

I prefer it to the one you submitted as well.

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Well, better luck to me with the next round I guess.

For anyone in the US looking at MF film, Unique Photo has really good prices (less than $4 for an Ektar 100 5-pack!) and Lattin Labs does it for $2/roll.

Low-resolution, unprocessed scan of a sunset taken with Fortia SP, f/2.8 1/20 sec on a 645N (there are some dust specks and Digital ICE artifacts that need to be removed at some point):

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Blah! I'll cut the photos down to three.



There was a gavering of many boats for a annual habour festival. Later on in the evening they had a firework display that could be observed all the way from Memorial Road in Hanham.


Hell's Angel gathering.

Sorry about that.

Thanks for contributing, Orange, but as a courtesy please limit yourself to three photos per day.

Simplicius wrote:Thanks for contributing, Orange, but as a courtesy please limit yourself to three photos per day.

It's not an arbitrary rule, either.

I put it in place to force you to pick the best three photos out of a set instead of just posting the entire thing in PaD. It also makes it easier to critique since one doesn't have to go through the entire set, jsut the best three.

Feel free though tomake a seperate trip report thread with the entire set of photos. That what I do already. I'll post the best 3 images in PAD, and then make a separate trip report thread.

phongn wrote:Low-resolution, unprocessed scan of a sunset taken with Fortia SP, f/2.8 1/20 sec on a 645N (there are some dust specks and Digital ICE artifacts that need to be removed at some point)

That's some funky circus colours there. According to a quick google search, Fortia SP is said to make Velvia look dull, they ain't kidding about that one.