Help with settings/beginner question

JustPlainMe

I am a beginner with manual settings, and so I'm asking for feedback from experienced folks who don't have this kind of problem anymore! :bow

I took this shot at our local zoo today:



I realize my choice of aperture was not the right one; I probably should have worked to have both prairie dogs in focus. It was an overcast day, complete cloud cover, the dogs were moving fast. I had to dial in the settings pretty quickly, and I'm new at this. With this lens at any focal length above 150mm, ISO 400 and up is a bit grainy. (Yeah, okay, I know it's a crappy lens. I'm not happy with it, but I'm on an extremely limited budget.) I intend to crop out the intruder and the funky foreground at a later time.

EXIF:

1/320 f/5.6 ISO 100 focal length 250mm

1) I was about 15 feet away, fill flash would have been ineffective.
2) I had to hand-hold.
3) This shot was well underexposed, I bumped up ISO to 400 and it was still underexposed, so I risked it at a lower ISO.

Should I have been more focused on (no pun intended) kicking up the ISO and trying to fix it in PP? Or, maybe the dogs were too far apart for it to have worked at all. (They were about 1.5 feet apart.) When I stopped down, my shutter speed dipped way under what I could handhold.

Help would be appreciated!

Sarah

Scott_Quier

- Welcome Sarah!

FWIW - I think you did a spendid job with this.

Salient facts:
Focal Length: 250 mm
DOF Required: 1.5ft
Focus Distance: 15ft

At f/5.6, your DOF is only about 0.4ft (4.8 inches). Not going to cut it.

You need an aperture of about f/16 (or better) and even then your DOF is only going to be about a foot.

You can get the same shutter speed (1/320) at f/16 if you set your ISO to 800. If you have a good exposure, ISO 800 shouldn't be tooooo bad. A little noise reduction software will work quite nicely, I should think.

Of course, another option would be to shoot at a shorter focal length and crop in post. The shorter FL will give you increased DOF (all else held constant).

Yet a third option (and the one I would probably tend towards) would be to concentrate on only one of the animals - from a compositional standpoint, probably the closest one. Open up that aperture one stop more. Yep, that'll throw the other one even more OOF - but who cares. There'll be enough detail there to know what one is looking at. In addition, that would allow the viewer to better know what to focus on (no pun intended). Sometimes it's not about getting it all in focus but getting just the point of interest.

BTW - these numbers were generated using tools available at DOF Master. You didn't think I sat down and computed them by hand did you?:D

JustPlainMe

Scott_Quier wrote:

- Welcome Sarah!

You can get the same shutter speed (1/320) at f/16 if you set your ISO to 800. If you have a good exposure, ISO 800 shouldn't be tooooo bad. A little noise reduction software will work quite nicely, I should think.

Scott,

Thank you so much for your time---it means a lot to me to have someone with your expertise take the time to answer my question. I didn't even think about going as high as ISO 800, I really need to try that and see how well I can clean it up. I can Photoshop the second dog a little more OOF to go with your last suggestion. I'm trying to learn how to rely not so much on PP.

The quote above is the kind of math I need to learn to do quickly---I need to write that formula down and keep it in my bag. I didn't even think about that while I was shootin' away.

I've just got to get better about thinking how all three factos (shutter, ISO, aperture) interact, and I have to learn to do it quickly.

Thank you again.

Here's my fixed image.



Sarah

Scott_Quier

JustPlainMe wrote:

Scott,

Thank you so much for your time---it means a lot to me to have someone with your expertise take the time to answer my question. I didn't even think about going as high as ISO 800, I really need to try that and see how well I can clean it up. I can Photoshop the second dog a little more OOF to go with your last suggestion. I'm trying to learn how to rely not so much on PP.

The quote above is the kind of math I need to learn to do quickly---I need to write that formula down and keep it in my bag. I didn't even think about that while I was shootin' away.

I've just got to get better about thinking how all three factos (shutter, ISO, aperture) interact, and I have to learn to do it quickly.

Thank you again.

Sarah

Getting it right in camera is something we all aim for.

You brighted the OOF doggie. People's attention is drawn to brighter objects. Might want to think about applying a darkening vignette.

• Select your background layer
• Select lasso tool
• Set feathering to 250
• Draw a very loose circle around the object of your attention - in this case your sharp doggie
• Invert the selection (Ctrl-I, I think)
• Copy (Ctrl-C) and Paste (Ctrl-V) to create a new layer - the center should be transparent
• Apply levels adjustment (Ctrl-L), sliding the middle slider to the right to darken the edges. Click OK when you like what you have (can be a little dark if you like, see next step).
• With the vignetter layer selected, adjust it's opacity to taste - Done

As to the math, it'll come with time. The good thing is that you don't have to get it spot on when you're shooting. Usually, 1/2 stop one way or the other is no big deal - especially if you are shooting RAW (Nikon - .NEF) format.

Looking forward to more from you.

JustPlainMe

Thanks for the tip about the vignetting. I do that frequently in my scrapbook pages but I've never thought about it specifically to help a focal point jump out. Learn somefin' every day!

I think this is a good start; the extraction was hard so there is a halo around the focal dog, but I can work on that. I'm glad you helped me see how I could "save" this shot; I love prairie dogs, and they're not often this active when we go visit them.

Here's the third try:



Thanks again, Scott.

Sarah

geospatial_junkie

JustPlainMe wrote:

Thanks for the tip about the vignetting. I do that frequently in my scrapbook pages but I've never thought about it specifically to help a focal point jump out. Learn somefin' every day!

I think this is a good start; the extraction was hard so there is a halo around the focal dog, but I can work on that. I'm glad you helped me see how I could "save" this shot; I love prairie dogs, and they're not often this active when we go visit them.

Here's the third try:



Thanks again, Scott.

Sarah

Sarah,

I'm not to crazy about this version. The exposure appears too bright and the glow is a little unnatural. As a general rule of them, try not to use glow for any wildlife.

What you could do, is isolate the main prairie dog from the other by blurring out the background. There are several tutorials on the net on how to properly mask and blur out a background.

Then I would slightly increase create an S-curve in the adjustments menu in Photoshop (assuming this is what you are using). The problem here is that the darks become "too" dark and you start loosing detail.

By the way, I have never shot at F16 for ANY wildlife unless its a really extenuating circumstance. I usually shoot wide open or at most at F8. For landscapes its a different story.

Check the wildlife forums for more tips as there are some really seasoned wildlife shooters there that could help you out more.

JustPlainMe

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Sarah,

I'm not to crazy about this version. The exposure appears too bright and the glow is a little unnatural. As a general rule of them, try not to use glow for any wildlife.

What you could do, is isolate the main prairie dog from the other by blurring out the background. There are several tutorials on the net on how to properly mask and blur out a background.

Then I would slightly increase create an S-curve in the adjustments menu in Photoshop (assuming this is what you are using). The problem here is that the darks become "too" dark and you start loosing detail.

By the way, I have never shot at F16 for ANY wildlife unless its a really extenuating circumstance. I usually shoot wide open or at most at F8. For landscapes its a different story.

Check the wildlife forums for more tips as there are some really seasoned wildlife shooters there that could help you out more.

Hi there,

I understand about the glow, I didn't use any---the appearance of one is from the extraction. I did a quickie graduated blur of the background to give the illusion of a narrow DOF.

The original without a doubt was too dark; I had to use a +1.56EV adjustment in my RAW converter just to be able to see them apart from their background. So that plus trying to keep the back dog from popping out too much while increasing detail on the front guy is really hard. Everything just starts to look orange, which it was. I could crop out the guy in the back, but the tandem munching is what makes the picture so much fun (IMHO).

I'll keep tinkering with it. My photos only ever make it as far as my scrapbooks, so I can use this one as a learning tool.

Thanks!

Sarah

Scott_Quier

JustPlainMe wrote:

Thanks for the tip about the vignetting. I do that frequently in my scrapbook pages but I've never thought about it specifically to help a focal point jump out. Learn somefin' every day!

I think this is a good start; the extraction was hard so there is a halo around the focal dog, but I can work on that. I'm glad you helped me see how I could "save" this shot; I love prairie dogs, and they're not often this active when we go visit them.

Thanks again, Scott.

Sarah

This isn't quite what I had in mind. If you don't mind, I'll re-visit this later tonight and post a quick tutorial in this thread. It's your thread and I don't really want to hi-jack it with out your "permission".

JustPlainMe

Scott_Quier wrote:

This isn't quite what I had in mind. If you don't mind, I'll re-visit this later tonight and post a quick tutorial in this thread. It's your thread and I don't really want to hi-jack it with out your "permission".

You're more than welcome to, I'd appreciate the advice. I've worked with it and keep running into problems. It's either too dark, too much contrast is lost, and in that last case, the colors just wind up wrong.

If you can point me to a place where I could see the effect you're talking about so you don't have to take any more time on this, that would be fine. I tried one more time but it all just seems to dark. If I try to adjust any levels, another layer of depth gets thrown off. I'm going to browse through the Wildlife forums as well.

I'll leave it alone for now! I sure didn't mean for anyone to spend this much time on it, I just wanted some advice.

Thanks,
Sarah

Scott_Quier

JustPlainMe wrote:

You're more than welcome to, I'd appreciate the advice. I've worked with it and keep running into problems. It's either too dark, too much contrast is lost, and in that last case, the colors just wind up wrong.

If you can point me to a place where I could see the effect you're talking about so you don't have to take any more time on this, that would be fine. I tried one more time but it all just seems to dark. If I try to adjust any levels, another layer of depth gets thrown off. I'm going to browse through the Wildlife forums as well.

I'll leave it alone for now! I sure didn't mean for anyone to spend this much time on it, I just wanted some advice.

Thanks,
Sarah

For some of us, it's fun to help others - it's not a bother. And, I have to be doing some other processing anyway .... your's is only going to take a short time. It's all fun!

Scott_Quier

Here's the quick tutorial on how to apply a dark vignette:

1. Starting with your photo, select the lasso tool, set the feathering to a reasonable value. As I was working with a copy I snagged from above (1024 x 685 pixels), I selected a rather modest feathering of 100 px. If this were a full sized image from the camera, I would have used 250. The larger the number, the more subtle the gradient applied to the vignette.

Here we see the selection I've chosen to apply to the image.


2. Here's the inverted selection (Shft-Ctrl-I)


3. Once you have inverted the selection, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste. This creates a layer on top of the background. It using this layer that we are going to create the vignette. Anyway, this is the layers pallet after the Copy/Paste operation.


4. With the new layer selected (that's the default after the Copy/Paste) apply a levels adjustment (do not create a levels adjustement layer) - this is what my levels pallet looked like when I got done. This is over-done a bit and, IRL, I wouldn't have normally used such a dramtic adjustment.


5. And, this is the result. If, after applying the levels above, you don't like the degree to which it impacts the photo, you can always decrease the opacity of this layer.

JustPlainMe

Scott,

Thanks! That looks good---I did the right steps, but I think I was trigger-shy about moving the sliders far enough. It looked too dark on my desktop screen. What you did looks great. I'm going to make your changes.

Thank you for your advice today---you gave me a lot to think about and keep in mind while I'm shooting. I have been regretting upgrading to a dSLR, but the fact that I can see DOF in my viewfinder is slowly convincing me I made the right choice. It's one of my favorite effects, and I am looking forward to getting better at using it well.

Sarah

Scott_Quier

I'm happy to help where I can.:D

divamum

JustPlainMe wrote:

Thanks for the tip about the vignetting. I do that frequently in my scrapbook pages but I've never thought about it specifically to help a focal point jump out. Learn somefin' every day!

I think this is a good start; the extraction was hard so there is a halo around the focal dog, but I can work on that. I'm glad you helped me see how I could "save" this shot; I love prairie dogs, and they're not often this active when we go visit them.

Sarah

Welcome!!! I still consider myself a n00b here even though I guess I've been actively participating for about 6 months now, but I'll throw in my 2c any way...

When I first glanced at your shot , the back guy looked like a mirror image to me even though he's blurred! Kind of a neat effect even if you hadn't intended it

If this were my shot, I think I might be inclined to isolate the in focus one by cropping, and then clone any remaining distracting bits and pieces, adding a vignette on top of that to further draw the eye to the main subject - the background is such that I think it would be a relatively easy one to do in that way (although busier backgrounds are the easiest cloning jobs, I'm finding, something blurred and even-coloured like this isn't usually too awful to try and I think there would only be a little bit left to hide after cropping)

JustPlainMe

divamum wrote:

Welcome!!! I still consider myself a n00b here even though I guess I've been actively participating for about 6 months now, but I'll throw in my 2c any way...

When I first glanced at your shot , the back guy looked like a mirror image to me even though he's blurred! Kind of a neat effect even if you hadn't intended it

If this were my shot, I think I might be inclined to isolate the in focus one by cropping, and then clone any remaining distracting bits and pieces, adding a vignette on top of that to further draw the eye to the main subject - the background is such that I think it would be a relatively easy one to do in that way (although busier backgrounds are the easiest cloning jobs, I'm finding, something blurred and even-coloured like this isn't usually too awful to try and I think there would only be a little bit left to hide after cropping)

Hi there! Thanks for the input. Scott was kind enough to show the vignette he had in mind using the original picture, which didn't have the guy in back blurred. I cropped out the funky foreground and the guy on the right stickin' his nose in, would you crop as tight as possible? Also, I tried a gradient blur to make the OOF dog a little more OOF, but that's really tricky because of the texture of the straw. The whole shot was kind of unintentional, I loved the tandem munching, but I couldn't get exposure and DOF to work together. I would have been better off with my 18-70, I think.

I will keep working on this, and I might post the finished product here later on---I don't have a smugmug account yet (can't afford it, daughter's in braces), and I don't want to use all my space at flickr.

Thanks again for the help! I think I'm going to be limited to noob skills for quite a while. It terrified me to post a picture, I was afraid I'd get shredded. Everyone's work here is so amazing. I'm just happy to be learning!

Sarah

divamum

Here's what I was thinking of. And it just goes to prove how many different options there are, none of which are "right" (or "wrong")... just different!



I cropped it down, cloned out the remaining backside from the guy to the left (easy on this one - just followed the line where the dark met light, then used some of the straw to mask the bit that was hard to do accurately), added another very sheer vignette by selecting using the oval marquee tool to pick the area I wanted left unshaded, inverting ("select inverse" - right click on a pc, don't know what it is on a mac) and then adding a fill layer (using the "dropper" tool to pick the colour of the vignette from the darker background, so it's not true black but tones in with the surrounding colours). It may or may not work - or be what you had envisioned- but I submit it as another possible option

Any questions about what I did, please feel free to ask