I started taking photos mid last year and have been loving it. But I feel I have far more room to improve. Would anyone care to check out my Flickr "photostream" here? Is that allowed haha?
Mike,
Welcome to FM and the Critique Forum.
You are best off if your request for critique is focused on 2-3 related images (or less) at a time. If you have EXIF info (focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO) indicated, this is helpful. If you have specific questions, that is also helpful in getting more and focussed responses.
I'd be happy to take a look at a couple of related images, if you identify which ones you most want feedback on. You can post a new series of images/requests once daily.
Enjoy!
Scott G
Beautiful owl. Its amazing you were able to get that close! Nice bokeh with this lens.
Technically, exposure looks good. I cant figure out if your depth of field was incredibly shallow (doesnt seem it should be close up at f5.6) or if there was movement of the owl and/or lens. I think you need to shoot at a higher shutter speed and higher ISO. Feather detail is amazing, but I think a bit oversharpened.
Compositionally it would be great if you caught some eye contact, with less head rotation than is shown. With some rotation, I'd prefer to see less on the right of the image, and a bit more on the left with the eye less centered in the image. Given the capture, I might go for a tighter crop, almost to the black marking around the eye from the right, and from the bottom to the sharper feathers.
Scott G
Wow on getting close and clear - impressive clarity.
I think this would be improved if you had all of his ears and went portrait.
To improve this one I would crop off some right so he is less centred and has space where he is looking. I would try to bring out some detail in his eye.
Welcome very nice pictures. I look forward to commenting on more.
I would post a little smaller so that it fits on a smaller screen for viewing for better comments and as scott says 1-3 with question and exif.
@Sbeme
Hehe, if you can't figure it out, I'm clueless .
What ISO should I shoot in general? When I do print, they are large A3 prints, which is like 20x35 I think.
I've been a bit sharpen happy
Well with the eye story, know much about owls? They are real pains cause they usually have their eyes closed during the day, I have one shot where he was looking directly at me, but it wasn't amazing. I see what you mean, the eye is DEAD centre.
@Scott
Thanks . I actually have a couple of portrait shots like that, but I was a little bit skew with all of them so I'll have to see what I can do
Will do
Thank you very much, I look forward to taking more and hopefully improving
Sorry about the size :P I'm using a widescreen so I forget :P
The EXIF info can be included within the posted image.
ISO needs to be as low as possible to minimise noise and as high as necessary to provide adequate aperture for DOF and shutter speed for freezing subject motion. better too high than too low because you can always apply noise reduction but you can't undo the subject motion or lack of DOF.
Oversharpening can be obvious at the contrast edges and still be tolerable but when the subject is all edges (e.g. blades of fine grass, leaves on a tree, or fine feather details on a bird, etc.) then those details become nothing but halos and lose colour. Fine details cope less well with the same amount of sharpening as broader details and so there is no one sharpening level that suits all images.
A relatively minor issue with this image is that the bright sky is a little distracting in part because it is at the edge of the frame. It draws attention away from the bird. Best avoided if possible but of course not always possible.
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