[Matt F]

Bought a little Canon Ixus 850is a couple of weeks back and had been waiting for some decent light to grab a few shots around The Quays before my contract finished there on 22/12.

Anyway - last chance I got and it was pretty foggy when I ventured out lunchtime. Popped into the Lowry outlet mall and when I came back out the fog had cleared and the sky was blue and clear.

Pretty impressed with the camera - a touch of barrell distortion but not bad seing it goes out to 28mm equivalent. Hardly any shutter lag either.

My favourite is the Dubai style buildings with, IMO, a rather fine reflection.

[Rob Barron]

Yup, good work and good reflection in the 2nd shot as you said. I wonder if you hand-held that shot or used a tripod? My feeling is the former and it would have been even sharper with a tripod.

Ok on the mono, would prefer to either see the whole of the building in the FG or a stronger crop. Was this an in-camera mono or post-processed?

3rd shot sorry no. Doesn't work for me, it's far too busy. Maybe if you had used a very wide aperture to get the bridge in sharp focus but the buiuldings blurred in BG it would have separated them better.

4th shot, ok, a bit of a cliche shot and sometimes works nicely with the left being virtually a mirror image of the right. In this case the block of flats behind the left side prevents that happening. Short of blowing the flats up with a stick of dynamite you are somewhat restricted in how you get round that! Yes you could clone it out but not sure it would give a strong enough image to make it worth the time and effort.

Great that you are getting out and using that new camera of yours. Ignore the barrel distortion: that is a technical point that will be unnoticeable on 99.9% of the shots you take with it! Enjoy using it and I hope we'll get to see some other shots in the near future.

Cheers,
Rob

[Dave]

Time to sell the D70 now then Matt & just use this camera

[Matt F]

Thanks for the feedback Rob.

Shot 1: I converted to B&W in Photoshop simply by changing the mode to "Grayscale" - I'm sure there is a better way of doing it but this is the only way I know at present. It certainly looks better in B&W than colour. Unfortunately I couldn't get the top of the Lowry building in shot - I normally like to capture the whole building but I've seen a number of pro shots where the top/edges are deliberately truncated.

Shot 2 was hand-held but it was at 1/200sec on a fairly wide angle so I'd be surprised if there was any camera shake. I rarely shoot with a tripod - certainly not with a compact camera where - to me - the whole point is minimising the kit you take with you. This one is definitely my favourite of the four.

Shot 3 - your comments sum up my feelings in a lot of ways - it's very busy, probably too busy and I'm not sure whether it works but I do like the way the perspective of the bridge and the flats work at right angles to each other and the contrast of the colours. I guess I'm saying I'm not convinced it works but I like it nonetheless.

Shot 4 - just a snap really but you make a good point about the flats spoiling the symetry of the shot.

DJW - yes it's tempting to ditch the D70 when a compact turns out quality shots with little/no shutter delay. The only thing they don't seem to be able to do is throw the background out of focus which I demand for portraiture.

Matt.

[skipper954]

There is a certain advantage and immediacy to be able to pull a nice camera from your pocket and snap. And it is not easy to carry the d70 around with you every day in your pocket.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Matt F

Shot 1: I converted to B&W in Photoshop simply by changing the mode to "Grayscale" - I'm sure there is a better way of doing it but this is the only way I know at present.

Sacralige

Try Channel Mixer with monochrome option ticked. 100% RED is like shooting B&W film with a RED filter in place etc. From memory it's 40% Red, 30% Green & 30% Blue that is perfect for skin tones. I usually convert at 100% red for landscape shots

[Rob Barron]

I agree with Dave that using the Channel Mixer is far better than using Greyscale but you have to learn a bit at a time so it's fine that you went with what you know :o)

What I don't agree with is the prescriptive details of how many per-cent to give each photo as they are all different. They are fine as they are but not for every shot so urban landscapes will work very differently depending on the colours of buildings and so forth. So, just as a little pointer, here is a mini-tutorial.

The important thing to remember when using channel mixer is this: the channels will work counter to what you might think as they effectively add a filter to each of the three colours. So, red channel adds a red filter and thus reds disappear (get lighter) the more red channel you apply. The same with the other three.

So, the more percentage you add of a colour channel, the LESS you will see of that channel, which subsequently means in a mono shot those colours will appear light. And the opposite applies, if you remove from a colour channel (minus figures) you will darken those colours.

Ok, so as a very basic example, if you have a blue sky, green hills and a red telephone box as the subject, we would probably want the blue to be a fairly strong grey, the green hills to be fairly light greys and the red telephone box to be quite strong and dark grey, as the main subject, standing in relief from the hills. This would give roughly the following settings:

Red: - 50%
Blue: + 80%
Green: +70%

NB you should generally aim for about 100% as your total to maintain a balance and full dynamic range (from full black to full white).

Have a play and see what happens, I am sure you will find this method very useful and controllable. You will find the Channel Mixer here: Image > Adjustments > Channel mixer. Don't forget to check the 'Monochrome' box in bottom left of the Channel Mixer window.

Cheers,
Rob

[skipper954]

When using channel mixer, I go to channels first and click on each channel separately to get a rough idea of how much of each color I want. I then use this as a starting point for the channel mixer.


skip