I'm Ant Posted September 2, 2018 Share Posted September 2, 2018 photos taken near Winter Hill, Lancashire, England Camera: Canon m50 Lens: Canon EF-M 18-150mm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted September 2, 2018 Share Posted September 2, 2018 The top image just needs a bit more cropping from the top and Ease back on the HDR the image looks too busy, better to make it more punchy with colour. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted September 3, 2018 Author Share Posted September 3, 2018 Yea top one is a bit over done thanks for your input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrb Posted September 4, 2018 Share Posted September 4, 2018 all rather good for a third week of learning keep this one in mind: the first place you stand or place the tripod we should all use is very likely not the better spot for the better photo. It might mean just a step to the left or tow step to the right; or getting a little higher, lower, closer, or further back . Take tractor --- good enough as a "recording" photo . However the better photo from a photography point may have been from a lower camera angle that removed some of the background -- I say better because there is often never a "best". You last photo : maybe a little further back so the cars are not so close to the frame (??). The better photo of the building may be without any modern cars --- it looks a very old building Final tip: concentrate on basic photography and editing mostly; plenty of time to be arty later ;). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted September 4, 2018 Author Share Posted September 4, 2018 Thanks ianrb I found once I've uploaded pics there's things I don't like about them a day later so I'll review them for longer before posting. I've backed way off a bit on the tone mapping. I like the oil painting sort of look I used to paint, I'm a big fan of Constable and Johannes Vermeer. I agree about the modern cars there's an alarm box on the house at the top pic I was thinking of using clone to remove that, only thought of it after editing. The tractor was fenced in on a driveway, when I get a tripod I'll experiment with going far lower to the ground if I can. Anglezarke reservoir looks great after the fire fighting on Winter Hill and the heatwaves dried up the shallow end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrb Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 1 hour ago, I'm Ant said: so I'll review them for longer before posting. Emotions can be very blinding at times. Generally; it doesn't matter when we see your photo; so there is no need to rush sharing . It can be amazing what you will notice after not seeing the photo for a few hours/days/weeks -- a few years later you will likely be thinking "what was I thinking"; but is the learning process of photography. I often have several advanced edits on the go at the same time so I get a break between each; but then I have too much spare time . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted September 6, 2018 Share Posted September 6, 2018 That's better re the house, I can hear the birds tweeting now and the cows mooing lol! The river scene needs levelling up. still water doesn't slope, see your image below for the difference. (Rotated -1.7º) ianrb 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted September 23, 2018 Author Share Posted September 23, 2018 Thanks for the tip, my first photo edits look dreadful now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 5 hours ago, I'm Ant said: Thanks for the tip, my first photo edits look dreadful now. It all a learning curve, your eye will get trained to these things and you'll eventually take photo's that will need minimal editing because you will have a check list in your head of the things to correct prior to taking the shot. This check list will eliminate a lot of editing and time spent composing an image will be time well spent. stokerg 1 Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aammppaa Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 7 hours ago, I'm Ant said: my first photo edits look dreadful now. Great. That's the proof that you are learning and improving. Quote Win10 Home x64 | AMD Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7GHz | 48 GB RAM | 1TB SSD | nVidia GTX 1660 | Wacom Intuos Pro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Rostron Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 On 9/6/2018 at 8:10 AM, firstdefence said: The river scene needs levelling up. still water doesn't slope, see your image below for the difference. It is not always obvious if you have stil water on a slope, especialy if there is no horizon. I find the best way is to look at objects and their reflections. The reflection should always be vertically below the object. I found your canal scene the most attractive of your images. John Quote Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl123 Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 On 06 September 2018 at 8:10 AM, firstdefence said: The river scene needs levelling up. still water doesn't slope, see your image below for the difference. (Rotated -1.7º) 3 hours ago, firstdefence said: It all a learning curve, your eye will get trained to these things and you'll eventually take photo's that will need minimal editing because you will have a check list in your head of the things to correct prior to taking the shot. This check list will eliminate a lot of editing and time spent composing an image will be time well spent. What causes the original distortion in the river scene to look like it is flowing uphill? Is this something that could have been corrected "in the camera" when the image was taken? Or is it just the way camera lenses distort the image and nothing can be done about it? (Except in post processing) The attached is, somewhat, how I would have envisaged seeing the scene if I had been standing where the photographer was. Quote To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Rostron Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 I have to admit that I did not get any impression that the water was flowing uphill in the original image, nor any other obvious impression of slope. When composing a picture like this it is not always feasible to detect a slope. My camera has an optional horizontal alignment bar in the viewfinder, but that is not much use if I am trying to vertically align an object and its reflection. John Quote Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 There are many factors that dictate how a scene will look, lenses and their distortions, zoom lenses can compress and make something look "more vertical" in a 2D plane sense wider angles barrel a scene, light and shadow can create light tricks that can fool the less observed into making compositional errors, height is another oft ignored tool. Most digital cameras nowadays have guide lines that can be superimposed over the rear screen or viewfinder, such as the rule of thirds lines or general grids, there can be optical illusions to consider where the lay of the land conspires to give an illusion of tilt where there is none. Still or slow moving water is a good check for level and the ripples can be a guide to the horizontal plane. A walk down memory lane... As a young lad I used to use a water level (basically a tube filled with water) to get accurate levels for groundwork over long distances. Later on in life I also used the same method to install a 180ft boundary fence, the neighbour was fascinated by this as he thought I would have used a laser level or spirit level but I always found the water level more accurate over long distances. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrb Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 water horizons need to be level; however there are times the shape of the land around lakes and rivers will often give a false impression of the water not being level Having said that; most water usually does need a second look Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted October 23, 2018 Author Share Posted October 23, 2018 Hi Hi guys I've been busy, I've enabled the artificial horizon in my camera so I can't get the lamp posts and horizon as wrong. Thanks for all your input, I think I've improved a lot. I might get that EF-M prime lens next. I took this shot from near Winter Hill looking towards Manchester. I had a go at a bracketed photo merged the three shots in Affinity Photo and did a bit of magic. Got myself a tripod now. Canon EOS M50 + EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 ISEdited in Affinity PhotoBracketed HDRISO 125AV 11TV 1/100 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted October 24, 2018 Author Share Posted October 24, 2018 Some edited in Capture One some done in Affinity Photo Canon EOS M50 Lens EF-M18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM Tv(Shutter Speed) 1/80 Av(Aperture Value) 11 ISO Speed 200 Focal Length 84.0mm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Hi Ant, you are getting better and better. Have a play with the levels adjustment filter to get a stronger image. Where there are flat parts of the levels histogram move the slider until the vertical marker hits the edge and the histogram starts to move up like the base of a mountain. (see images below) The image should look a bit more dynamic, now move the gamma a little to the right to give it more punch, you don't need much just a little and your image should pop. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'm Ant Posted October 24, 2018 Author Share Posted October 24, 2018 Thanks firstdefence I din't know about that trick it does wonders. Now I can see loads of mist in the first one and it looks flat compared to the levels adjusted one. firstdefence 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Mez Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Hello @I'm Ant two of your pics where so inspiring to me i actually tried to do some HDR tricks with it. My first idea was to try do some color restoration close to natural look ... i don't know your weather but i just guessed taking reference to object colorization. Hope you will like and i really hope your photography course is going well. Quote Never be the Same Again ! ---Dell Optiplex 5090 SFFIntel Core i5-10500T @2.30GHz with 12GiB 2666MHz DDR4Intel UHD Graphics 630 for 10th Generation M.2 2280, 512 GB, PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4, Class 40 SSDWindows 11 Pro x64 22H2 + LibreOffice 7.5.3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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