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Rob Barron · 18-11-2006, 15:03

Well done Sean, you have done a good job here. The side pose works nicely with the blurred background.

The focus does seem a tad soft but that might be due to heavy compression for the web. I think you could get a greater dynamic range into the shot, ie make sure you have all the levels from pure white to pure black. The eye would lift a bit more to separate from the black in front of it and the catchlight which IS there could be brightened to liven up the whole face.

One bit of advice, if using a lens with a wide aperture, the closer the swan is, the less depth of field you will have to play with and although we want the wide aperture to get the blurring BG, we need enough DoF to keep all parts of the head and neck in focus which might mean shutting down to around f3.5 - f4 rather than f2.8 or below. You can always go for a slightly slower shutter speed to balance that off as I am sure there was plenty of light to play with hand held.

Swans are never easy as the lighting is difficult to get right. They are often either too dark or have lots of burnt out areas so well done.

Cheers,
Rob

18-11-2006, 15:03	#2 (permalink)
Rob Barron Loves the place Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Poole, Dorset Posts: 5,386	Re: swan Well done Sean, you have done a good job here. The side pose works nicely with the blurred background. The focus does seem a tad soft but that might be due to heavy compression for the web. I think you could get a greater dynamic range into the shot, ie make sure you have all the levels from pure white to pure black. The eye would lift a bit more to separate from the black in front of it and the catchlight which IS there could be brightened to liven up the whole face. One bit of advice, if using a lens with a wide aperture, the closer the swan is, the less depth of field you will have to play with and although we want the wide aperture to get the blurring BG, we need enough DoF to keep all parts of the head and neck in focus which might mean shutting down to around f3.5 - f4 rather than f2.8 or below. You can always go for a slightly slower shutter speed to balance that off as I am sure there was plenty of light to play with hand held. Swans are never easy as the lighting is difficult to get right. They are often either too dark or have lots of burnt out areas so well done. Cheers, Rob __________________ Rob Barron robbarron@aol.com If you look down on other people, don't expect them to look up to you!