Monday, June 23, 2008

Critique: Robs and J Fidel Photographs

So this is great, getting some one on one time with my readers. Sorry that it has taken me so long to reply but i was working today and i cloud not stay up all night yesterday critiquing your shots!

Thanks alot for sending in some shots so to speak

First of I will start with Robs photograph, you can see it below (click it for bigger version)


Here is the EXIF data:

Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire


One thing that is clear to me right of the bat is that the white balance is of, why can i tell this? Because the photo has a very warm feeling to it and i m thinking that this was shot indoors under some sort of light either fluorescent or some other sort i cannot really tell.

The composition is really good on this photo, i like how the lines work across the image, but i must say it looks a bit too crowded if it was going to be a "food" photo shoot so to speak, but if it was a shot to show what was avaliable on the table it give is a rather good feel across the entire image. But something that bothers me a bit is that on top left hand side of the image, there is a some empty space which messes with the lovely symmetry a bit, but that an easy fix with a crop. The white balance issue can also be solved if the photo graph was taken in RAW.

I think the DOF of the photographs works, seems to show a very nice even "central" DOF, shows a bit of everything that was avaliable on the table so to speak. Apart from the white balance and the crop issue i think the shot is great the way it is.

Thanks for sharing Rob,


Now to J Fidels Photograph as seen below (click it for larger version)


Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 85 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
ISO Speed: 200

The shots is a bit underexposed (which is alot better then overexposed it can be fixed easily by adjusting the levels in photoshop) that is what strikes me the first. I see that you tried to frame the shot with what i like to call a natrual frame, which its a bit of center so to speak which can be fixed with a little crop, when it comes to macro photography i like to place my objects in the center specially when they are flowers. There is a some what a larger DOF on this photograph and this could be because you have used f/5.6, but i clearly see why you would ahve done it. Combining some what of a longer focal lenght with a larger apretrue usualy renders some what a very tight dof but this isnt going to be the scenario if the objects surounding the main focal point are very close.

I would have spot metered in this case, you used yourself a matrix metering which ins't bad but you will se that it tries to find a balance with the background and the foreground which has rendered some sort of inbetween thing which doesn't really work. I would have also tried my wides possible focal lenght on the shot and gotten up really close to the flower (distoreted it a bit) thus it would appear a bit bigger then the other things in the photograph and thus it would have stood out more.

How is that for some critique guys? Thanks alot for sharing the images and if you have any questions concearing what i have said feel free to share.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent suggestions. I have never spot metered, but see your point.
Thanks for the input.

Jfidel

Alexander Blacker said...

No problem, i m glad i can help

Rob said...

Thanks Alex. I tried to fix the color balance but just couldn't get it right no matter how I did it.

Thanks again,
Rob