Photo Critique: Clowfish picture by spongebob lover

[Llarian]

Photo Critique: Clowfish picture by spongebob lover's husband

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/4070/img4663large6ui.jpg

Moved into its own thread for Gaby. =)

First one of these. =)

I'll try to get around to saying at least something before I leave town tomorrow morning, but if not, please chime in!

-Dylan

 

[Llarian]

Adding photo meta-data, since Gaby didn't include it:

Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT
Shutter: 1/125s
Aperture: F/5.6
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 55mm
Exposure Comp: 0 eV
No flash

 

[spongebob lover]

Adding photo meta-data, since Gaby didn't include it:

Camera: Canon Digital Rebel XT
Shutter: 1/125s
Aperture: F/5.6
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 55mm
Exposure Comp: 0 eV
No flash

sheesh you know more about that camera than i know :lol: .

 

[Herefishyfishy]

The damsel is a bit blurry, but that clown that got in the way of the shot looks pretty good

 

[NaH2O]

ROFL

Looks like an awesome shot! What great photos the Digital Rebel can take!

So here is my "knows nothing about photography" question of the morning...what is the Focal Length? and exposure comp? How do you know where to find these? (I want to know so when I post pics I can include as much info as possible)

All in all, my opinion of the pic is outstanding. I suppose my critique would be to Photoshop out all little detritus floaties.

 

[Llarian]

So here is my "knows nothing about photography" question of the morning...what is the Focal Length? and exposure comp? How do you know where to find these? (I want to know so when I post pics I can include as much info as possible)

Focal length is the length of the lens. In this case, 55mm most likely means it was shot zoomed all the way in with the 18-55mm EF-S lens that comes in the Digital Rebel kits. So if the picture were taken with the same lens zoomed all the way out, you'd have a focal length of 18mm (and a very small clownfish!).

Exposure compensation is a way of telling the light meter in a camera that you think its wrong. =) Both the pictures Gaby posted had an exposure compensation value of +/- 0 eV. This means there were no adjustments made to what the light meter thought the shot should be taken at. If I want to shoot with auto exposure, but feel the meter is over exposing shots, I might change it to -1 eV. This means I'm telling the light meter to let in 1/2 the light that it thinks it needs to. (This is a dramatic difference, but its not as much as you might think). Likewise, +1 eV is twice as much light as it thinks.

Something important to remember about exposure compensation. It does not change the ISO setting to achieve the exposure change (to the best of my knowledge). So, therefore, its exposure change has to come from somewhere, and the only two places left are aperture and shutter speed. So if your aperture is fully open, and you tell your camera you want it to give you more light than it thinks you need, your shutter speed is going to drop and motion blur will become more pronounced. Or, you may end up with a narrower depth of field than you intended if your aperture is not fully open. Just something to bear in mind with Exposure Compensation.

(FWIW, I'm almost always shooting at least -1/3 eV when doing aquarium photography)

-Dylan

 

[Llarian]

This photo seems a little soft to me. I'm guessing that's mostly due to the high ISO and shutter speed. I doubt there's much that can be done about that short of providing more light. =)

However, there's also very very noticable chromatic abberation around the clown's white sections. This purple fringing is pretty common in digital photography around sections of bright white bordered by a much lower contrast area, but it should be mostly eliminated by a good lens. I've never used the Canon 18-55 that this was taken with, but I don't believe it has major abberation issues (although I could be wrong). I'm also wondering if the camera wasn't completely parallel with the glass, which would add additional abberation to the shot.

I don't have time right now, but its often possible to use "Selective Coloring" selections in Photoshop to desaturate just the purple section enough that the purple fringing goes away. However, due to the purple nature of many things in a reef, this could be dangerous as well, desaturating sections you don't want to have desaturated.

I'll see if I have time to give that a shot on Sunday.

-Dylan

 

[spongebob lover]

I suppose my critique would be to Photoshop out all little detritus floaties

shhh detritus are my friends .

what do you mean by that? (like i said i'm in kinder when it comes to cameras and pictures) .

I asked the husband and he said that this camera had an automatic shot thingy so that he didn't have to focus the camera or anything like that.

 

[Blazer88]

Photoshop would help that picture dramatically. Do you shoot in RAW? That is the easiest way to adjust the white balance and change the explosure compensation to get a better pic. Shooting in ISO 1600 is going to give you the most grain, I would try 400 and lower. I'll play around in photoshop and see what happens

 

[spongebob lover]

Do you shoot in RAW?

what do you mean by that? the only raw thing i know it's meat ... hmm the husband is gonna try getting the camera again so i can take a better picture .

 

[Blazer88]

Exactly as Llarian said, if you take out the purple hues from the picture, the purple fringing, and the purple/blue, color will go away. In this particular shot that isn't really a bad thing since the subject is the clown which shouldn't have any purple/blues in it. Here is a few minutes in photoshop with the picture cropped (nothing else really in the picture). The colors are probably oversaturated, but it will depend on your monitor. This picture would have been easier if it was the original file as well (this file was really small). Hope you likey.

 

[Blazer88]

RAW is a type of format where you can apply a ton of different camera settings AFTER the picture has been taken and then convert it into a .jpeg. The camera should have come with a RAW converter but I use the one with Photoshop CS2 which is really good.

 

[Llarian]

Kinda a hijack, but Blazer, you might try Pixmantec's (Free) Raw Shooter Essentials. I've found it to be way way better in terms of quality than Adobe Camera RAW of any generation (CS2 included). In particular, ACR seems to result in a lot of noise that isn't present using the RSE converter.

Vendor RAW converters almost universally suck. =)

-Dylan

 

[Blazer88]

I used RAW when I had my Kodak camera but I'm shopping around for a Canon D-SLR. I'll try that program when I get a new camera.