At 02:13 10/18/02, Moose wrote:
I admire your work, John, and what you post is mostly so good, that I
appreciate you posting a few that are only very good to boost my morale.
A critical eye finds most of their weak spots and echoes much of my own
evaluation of them.
I need to work at controlling the depth of field better, more particularly
getting it deep enough, or adjusting the critical focus plane to wrap it
around the subject completely. Part of the solution is more powerful
lights that will allow stopping the lens down farther to gain greater depth
of field at higher magnifications (that's in the ultimate equipment plan).
The magnification in a few of the African Violet shots is so high that the
light loss from using extension tubes prevents stopping down as much as I
would like to. Didn't discover that until I was shooting them, metered the
lights at full output and then corrected for the light loss from high
magnification. Moving the lights I do have closer might help, but I'm
reluctant to do that.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om157.jpg
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om158.jpg
Technically excellent. A bit cold for my personal taste.
:-) You found what was intended: the raw, stark contrast of the white and
black, and the sterile edginess it creates with a slight hint of color from
the stem. I love/hate them for the same reason. The contrast is quite
dramatic, but it's not what I would permanently hang in my living room (a
complete clash with its decor).
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om159.jpg
Very nice! Might be even better with a little more light in upper center
darkness. Photoshop?
If I were to shoot one like this again, I would wrap it completely with
blackness or with the lower green color. The half/half doesn't work as well.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om160.jpg
A little light unless I dim my monitor a bit, then I like it a lot.
I'm going to blame this on the scan . . . the lab I send the stuff out to
for very hi-res scanning has changed to different equipment. I need to
rework it. Looked at the transparency again on the light table. For
whatever reason the scan sucked some of its saturation out, perhaps with
making it slightly lighter than it should be and throwing the color balance
off slightly in the mid-tones.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om169.jpg
Either not enough DOF or the plane of focus is too far forward. Even out
of focus, the background pattern is too strong and distracting. Photoshop
can fix that.
Looked at the transparency again; it has greater apparent sharpness,
especially in the eye and skin texture detail. I need to examine the scan;
may have screwed up the unsharp mask parameters which can soften areas with
lower contrast.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om170.jpg
Love it. Same slightly distracting bokeh that I get with the Tamron 60-300.
I get better bokeh out of the 85/2 and 135/2.8 with tubes than I do with
the 35-105 in close focus. The harsher bokeh of this lens with "busy"
backgrounds has become apparent with a number of photographs. The 35-105
bokeh behaves better when the background is lower in detail, brightness
value, and doesn't have sharp contrast edges. IOW it's more sensitive to
background conditions. Otherwise it has proven to be handy when traveling
and working with minimal equipment. Fussing with setting its focal length,
focus and the close-focus ring has a "learning curve." The instructions
for this lens specifically mention partial close-focus ring rotation to aid
in focusing. The close-focus ring is a helical that moves the entire lens
cell farther from its mounting flange; the equivalent of an adjustable
0-7mm auto tube (max length approximate; I've never accurately measured it).
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om171.jpg
Lovely subject, lighting and composition. Not enough DOF for my taste.
The objective was getting DOF just around the center one, which I believe
it achieved, but it doesn't work that well visually. It doesn't cleanly
isolate it from the others. Given what is in the photograph, I class the
flaw as more compositional. I would be improved by providing more physical
isolation of the center blossom from the others, or including them in the
DOF (as you mention). The others next to the center one are on the DOF
edge, half in and half out.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om172.jpg
Something about this is sort of sterile or flat, no depth, can't quite put
my finger on it. The Out of focus mass in upper left is distracting.
I'll tell you what it is (IMO):
Lighting is not as good as it could be to model its 3-D shape. A better,
less direct light angle would provide slightly more modeling of the
shape. The conical shape demands at least two lights, the second for fill
of the interior, and light modifiers for feathering shadow edges. Barn
doors, or some similar light shaping device would fix the out of focus mass
you mention by blocking light reaching it and greatly lowering its
brightness value.
http://johnlind.tripod.com/oly/gallery/om173.jpg
Pretty flower, nice composition except I'd lose the sharply focused little
hairs on the bottom. The out of focus petals on the lower left detract
from the image for me. I have the same problem with my flower shots.
Getting the DOF and focal plane just right is far harder than it seems it
should be. A bit of far side light might pick up the undulations in the
center of the petals and give a little more depth to the even white expanses.
I need to do this one again, when a decent blossom is more isolated from
the clutter of leaves and other blossoms . . . or at least when I can
rearrange the surrounding clutter without breaking stems. The blossoms on
this one are very flat compared to others and your suggestion is the most
likely solution to providing better dimensional depth.
Re: "Photoshop" (or in my case, Picture Window). I prefer to do it "in
camera." It makes life much easier versus doing more work in post
processing for web use and especially in making prints.
Thanks,
-- John
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|
