[Trashcan]

(Excuse the large page)
Some of the first photos I ever took- shot on a Minolta Dimage point-and-shoot.




And my brand new Nikon 35mm SLR (N75):

[Charlotte]

Nice images, Trashcan Love the first two! Second two look a little on the bright side, with the last one's background being a bit distracting + with some noise. But overall, lovely shots!

[Dabhand16]

You have captured your subjects well, Trashcan Bonfires are really difficult, but you have got them as well as you could have hoped without going into multiple exposures. The close ups have great differential focus, making the subjects leap out at you.

Give us more

[Trashcan]

Thanks dabhand
And Charlotte, what would you suggest to darken the close shots?
I could just photoshop them, but what would be the photographic technique? Lower speed film?

[Dabhand16]

Got to say the two that Charlotte is talking about don't seem too bad to me. Could be a monitor calibration thing, but to make the images less bright in camera would require a reduction in the exposure - faster shutter speed, or smaller apature (higher number), or both.

[Charlotte]

I think darkening them a bit would bring out the colours more + also bring the focus more onto the subjects while darkening the backgrounds to make them less noticeable. The backgrounds are both bright, which draws attention away from the subjects (flowers). A minor tweak in Levels or Curves should do the trick - if I get time today I'll have a go for you, although I'm not brilliant at that sort of thing myself

In camera technique would be underexposing ever so slightly @ -0.3. The BG definition also depends on distance, i.e. of camera to subject + subject to BG. e.g. If subject is close the BG then a wide aperture will help to throw BG out of focus, but if the BG is quite far back it should blur quite nicely with a mid-range aperture like f11 or f8 so that you should still get your flowers in good focus. Others may have different ideas, but this would be my advice here

[purplepleaser]

Hi

I really like your last picture. Lovely gentle colours.

Lee

[Rob Barron]

I like the first one of the flames, the mono doesn't appeal hugely as there aren't enough tonal variations to really hold the attention for me. The second two are good images, you have focused them well and used good differential focusing. But as has been said, they are a bit flat so could do with a bit of adjustment to get the dynamic range (from light to dark) stronger and drop the overall luminance a touch as they are slightly over-exposed.

Charlotte has already said what to do in camera so you might want to give that ago. I think you could go to a half-stop or even lower in the case of the third image. If your camera is choosing a setting that is a bit over-exposed, you can dial in some exposure compensation to force the camera to allow more or less light depending on the situation. Using a slower film speed won't make any difference if you aree using the automatic settings as your camera will compensate for the different film speed. This is an area that is quite an advantage in digital work because we can look and see what the camera is giving us straight away and can then adjust and retake as necessary.

I have had a little play with the third image using Photoshop just to see how you like it a touch darker with greater contrast and stronger colours. I used the Curves tool for the contrast and boosted the saturation a little to give the colours more punch.

I also converted it to sRGB as this is best for displaying on the internet. If not, it will often show darker than you saw it on your computer before uploading.

Hope you like it anyway.
Cheers,
Rob

[Trashcan]

Thanks Rob. I also had a go with cleaning up that image.
I adjust the levels a bit to bring out the darker tones, and then dodged the flowers and burned the shadows and background needles to make it a bit less distracting. Let me know if I'm along the right path with this.

Edit: And yeah, the shadow in the middle-background looks too stroked. I fixed that a bit, but you should get the idea from this one.

[Rob Barron]

Definitely better and you are certainly doing things the right way. When you said you adjusted the levels, did you use the Levels tool or the Curves tool? I have to say I always recommend to my students that they get used to using Curves and forget about using levels other than for very basic adjustments. I almost never bother with Levels (Ctrl+L) now, Curves (Ctrl+M) is much more flexible and can do everything the levels tool can but a lot more and a lot better.

Levels lets you do three things basically: adjust the white point, adjust the black point and adjust the mid-grey point. That's that. I know I am being a bit simplistic in saying that as you can adjust the R, G and B channels and also adjust Auto-color correction and things if you get deeper into the Options but the majority of people rarely do, they just do the three things I mentioned.

Curves allows an infinite array of tonal adjustments, contrast changes, colour matching between shots, and so forth and let's you fine-tune the color balance, contrast, highlights etc. so try it and see how you get on with it. I promise that after you have gotten used to it for a few weeks, you won't bother with the Levels tool much at all.

Keep up the good work, you are working along the right lines and it's a fascinating journey so don't get off the train just yet

Cheers,
Rob

[Trashcan]

Thanks Rob. I just learned how to use the Curves tool from the article on this site. I definitely see a lot more potential and flexibility in it.

[Rob Barron]

I'm delighted to know you found the article helpful, the more you play with Curves the more you'll appreciate the depth of it.

Cheers,
Rob