all the (right?) gear and no idea?

N

ned.c

Messages
153
Name
Andrew
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi all,

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with what I feel are bad photos that I'm taking. I was relatively happy with my lot from Farnborough this weekend, until I saw other peoples.

I've also been trying to do some motorsport and even people shots which don't come out how I want them. I'm wondering whether any of my issues are down to my kit, or just technique (I'm guessing the latter, but would like a sanity check) or am I just expecting too much/being too hard on myself?!

My two main lenses are an 18-135 IS (for walkabout) and an 70-200F4L on a 40d for telephoto stuff.

I think I've got a good grasp of the controls and setting I should be using on the camera for the various situations (generally moving objects) I understand and set aperature, shutter, iso, af, shooting mode etc, normally by Aperature priority Av setting on the camera.

The problems I have is either I don't have the reach and object never fills the frame, or I get camera shake, or both. Examples are I'm panning with cars at a circuit and don't want a really high shutter speed as I want to see the wheels blurred, or I'm shooting a prop driven plane and want a little blur in the propellers but when I slow the camera down enough I just seem to end up with non sharp photos, I presume down to camera shake.

I've only recently bought the 70-200 and am wondering if I bought the wrong lens and should have gone for the significantly cheaper 55-250IS which is stabilised and has a slightly longer reach (on a cropped sensor) or the 70-300 IS USM. I contemplated throwing money at a 1.4tc but I'd then have spent a lot to get the same reach as a 70-300 and the f4 would be down to 5.6 so would work out very expensive for the same amount of zoom and light and still no stabilisation.

I also find, when taking pictures of people, I always try to focus on the face, but even with one shot, focus on face, then move the camera to frame the composition that the subject has moved and is then slightly out of focus/not as crisp as I'd like. If I set AI servo then I can never get the focal point where I want it in the view finder either quick enough or the right place in the frame by changing the AF selection point.

What can I do, is it just technique and I'm missing a trick or have I shed out on the wrong lens? :( I've been to festival of speed, snetterton, brandshatch and farnborough taking something like 700 photos per day on average and not getting any real keepers and it's get depressing.

Feedback/suggestions very welcome!

Yours dejectedly..

Andrew.
 
I certainly wouldn't advocate AI Servo for taking portraits, stick with One Shot mode and ideally select the focus point that's near the closest eye. Having said which I usually focus and recompose, but there is an inherent small error in doing so which can be evident at large apertures.

What sort of shutter speed are you using for panning? The 70-200 f4 is a stellar lens by all accounts, it sounds as though you just need to work on technique perhaps.
 
With people shots, I'm not talking about portraits in particular, people aren't posing for shots. For example I was down at the beach yesterday with some friends and trying to take some photos whilst walking/paddling and trying to catch the moments more naturally, hence the need to be fast and less intrusive with the focus/framing ie not asking people to stop, wait whilst I fiddle with my camera etc, some people don't like having their photos taken at the best of time! With regards shutter speeds it was a bright day and I was running around f8-f11 and whatever shutter the camera sorted out for me most of the time.

With regards posting up examples, how can I upload photos, the attachments on this forum only gives me a url link, not the option to upload a file?

Andrew.
 
You can embed images [as long as they don't exceed 800 pixels on the long side] by using the
tags and putting the image's address between them, or clicking on the sort of mountain and sun type icon above the free text entry field when composing a reply. Failing that, you can upload them to your own gallery on the forum.

I can appreciate the need for speed as I try to take shots of my 2 kids, but I've never used AI Servo for that purpose. I only ever use it for shooting sports or the single occasion I've shot an airshow.
 
Click on the gallery button at the top of the page, then upload photos, then follow instructions. 600x400 is max pixels, and also a file size limit.

Do you use a monopod for your panning etc?
Have heavy handed do you get with cropping your shots?
 
you can upload to the gallery on this forum, or use a hosting website (there are free ones such as flickr or photobucket).

have a look in the tutorials section > how to use tp forums : http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=41



as for the quality of your photos, you're not alone, but get a few examples up and people can start helping :thumbs:

Make sure you do not strip out the exif data (ie. do not use "save for internet" ) as it allows people to read your camera settings for the shot.
 
ned.c said:
With people shots, I'm not talking about portraits in particular, people aren't posing for shots. For example I was down at the beach yesterday with some friends and trying to take some photos whilst walking/paddling and trying to catch the moments more naturally, hence the need to be fast and less intrusive with the focus/framing ie not asking people to stop, wait whilst I fiddle with my camera etc, some people don't like having their photos taken at the best of time! With regards shutter speeds it was a bright day and I was running around f8-f11 and whatever shutter the camera sorted out for me most of the time.

With regards posting up examples, how can I upload photos, the attachments on this forum only gives me a url link, not the option to upload a file?

Andrew.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be using as small an aperture if your were taking candids at a beach, open it up man!! The 2.8 on the L should be pretty good if your focusing is good, and stopping it down a little will be even better but F11 so way to small if your snapping quickly IMO, your shutter speed will be to slow if people are walking about.
 
Deckard said:
I certainly wouldn't advocate AI Servo for taking portraits, stick with One Shot mode and ideally select the focus point that's near the closest eye. Having said which I usually focus and recompose, but there is an inherent small error in doing so which can be evident at large apertures.
Click to expand...

. . . and some of us would say that AI Servo is ideal for taking portraits and the One Shot mode focus-recompose technique is doomed :D

its a matter of personal preference and circumstances, you need to find the technique that works for you (and your kit), and also understand when you need to do it differently.
 
It sounds like technique issues for the most part Andrew and things you are trying to do will take time to practice and perfect.

With the trackside stuff, it's not easy to slow the shutter down enough to get wheel blur and still get sharp shots. Have you ever looked at the shots track day snappers sell? Most of them freeze the wheels as it's tough to get a good hit rate if you do it "properly".

With the portraits, you can try letting the camera obtain focus by putting the eye in the centre of the frame and when you recompose, just adjust the focus manually to compensate a little for your movement and the subjects.

All of these things become easier the more you work at it and YOU WILL GET THERE!! :)
 
With the 70-200 try and get out of the habit of clinging onto the zoom ring for dear life. My hit rate on panning shots is far far higher setting the zoom first then holding onto the lens hood :)
 
1. You need to work with the light more - buy Understanding Exposure - Bryan Peterson even if you think you already know what is what.
2. If you're shooting RAW (which you should be) you need to do some post processing on every image - it doesn't look like there is any on any of them.
3. Moving cars/planes are difficult beasts to photograph. There isn't much to say other than practice makes perfect after you've done 1 and 2.
 
There is definitely something amiss there. In some of the people shots I think you are stopping down way more than you need to, not that that's really a huge problem, but I wouldn't be at f/11 to shoot a couple of people walking by me at 18mm. f/5.6 would be more than enough for that shot and I'm sure f/4 would do you plenty well enough. You could lower the ISO and raise the shutter speed. The thing is, I don't think your problem is necessarily in your settings.

It's absolutely true that panning vehicles is tricky to master, and long lens technique also requires practice. IS can be a salvation but sometimes it can get in the way. Often for action shooting it may be a handicap. There may be some problems in shooting technique, or maybe not, but I think you might improve things a little with some more considered processing. When you downsize an image it will often require further sharpening as a final step before saving the file. I don't know what your workflow is, but you can bet that the very finest images you see will usually have been skillfully processed to make them look their best. You can shoot with perfect equipment and perfect technique, but that extra something comes from the final polish at the end.

One thing to ask - do you have any kind of UV/protection filter fitted. If you do, take it off and see how you fare. These things can be a blessing, but often they are a curse.

If you can upload a full size unedited original image somewhere - to Flickr for example - and then post a link it would be interesting to see how good the image really is, because I do think your workflow might be part of the problem.

I picked one of your images at random and just gave it a little tickle with some sharpening. Here is how the original compares with the slightly tweaked version....

IMG_7908.JPG
20100620_115428_7908_LR.jpg


It looks a little overdone, but working from the original file should allow better results.
 
I don't do anything to them post processing, I have no idea how or what to do. The most advanced I've got is fiddling with something or pressing 'auto' buttons in Picasa, but none of the posted images have been processed or cropped, only resized and uploaded directly to this site. Only ever shoot in teh highest quality jpeg on teh camera, no idea what to do with a raw file. I work with computers 9x5 so photography is mean to be fun and get out and about, not to come home and spend all night back on a computer tweaking photos.

Maybe spelling out that I actually don't understand exposure, but if I'm using aperture or shutter priority the exposure is down to the camera, not me!? :S but I often find I'll get a person underexposed with a blown sky behind or in the trees the cars look dark and lack detail/clarity and the same with the planes against the sky. Other peoples photos from farnborough airshow show a lot more detail of the planes themselves, I thought it was just the zoom and filing the frame but now I just don't know.

I always keep a UV filter on each lens I have to protect them and the ones at the beach and farnborough was my first time with a cp filter but have to admit I couldn't really tell much difference when I rotated it, it didn't seem to make a lot of difference.
 
From looking at your shots that aren't motor related I would reckon there's 2 small problems. Firstly it's post processing, simple things like tweaking the contrasts/curves, exposure, sharpening, etc would make a huge difference. Even looking at this one here I could see a play with the original could gain you really nice results (here's a inline to yours unedited):

IMG_9568.JPG


Of course it all depends on what your own style is. I'm a brat at trying to achive a look that's inbetween digital and film, so would do something close to crossprocessing and stuff on that particular one. But even something as simple as selecting and brightening up the girl a tad, and then bumping contrasts, maybe play with the saturation, but definitely finish up with a sharpen. I'd have a guess at a 50% unsharp mask... but that's a stab in the dark!

Shout if you'd like a sample, but it would be quite hard working on such small files.
 
ned.c said:
I don't do anything to them post processing, I have no idea how or what to do. The most advanced I've got is fiddling with something or pressing 'auto' buttons in Picasa, but none of the posted images have been processed or cropped, only resized and uploaded directly to this site.
Click to expand...

If you are using RAW, you need to do some PP. It's that simple. If you are shooting in JPEG, your camera does a bit - adds some sharpness, alters colours a bit...and you can fiddle with settings to get better results out of it but you're always better doing it on a picture by picture basis at home. RAW requires you to do that yourself - you're simply not getting the best out of an image without a bit of PP.

Don't let that distract you from the fact you need to work on how you are using the light though. That is much more important.
 
ned.c said:
I don't do anything to them post processing, I have no idea how or what to do. The most advanced I've got is fiddling with something or pressing 'auto' buttons in Picasa, but none of the posted images have been processed or cropped, only resized and uploaded directly to this site. Only ever shoot in teh highest quality jpeg on teh camera, no idea what to do with a raw file. I work with computers 9x5 so photography is mean to be fun and get out and about, not to come home and spend all night back on a computer tweaking photos.

Maybe spelling out that I actually don't understand exposure, but if I'm using aperture or shutter priority the exposure is down to the camera, not me!? :S
Click to expand...

If your aren't PPing I wouldn't compare your images with other peoples because you never know whats been done to them, you would be surprised what a little adjustment in contrast/sharpness/exposue will do to your pictures. Have you tried altering your JPEG setting in camera to increase sharpness etc?

Yes the camera will work it out but you need to undertsand what shooting at different apertures does to your pictures i.e. Depth of field and how fast/well your camera will focus.
 
Never told you what I thought the second issue was! Always take care where the sun is shining from. In that shot the sun is coming right in from one side which is doing you no favours. If the sun was a shining from the right but a little back (nearly coming over your shoulder but still to the side and shining towards the model) you'd have gotten some really nice shadows etc
 
There is always lots of debate on here re uv filters. Try shooting something in the garden, same settings, same zoom, (so full lock either way for simplicity!) and take a shot with and without the filters.
They shouldn't make a difference, but they may.
Try shooting in shutter priority for the action shots of people - let the camera take care of the aperture. Then start playing as you get more experienced.

Also, download a copy of Gimp - it is a free to use option instead of photoshop. and will allow you to process the images you have taken digitally.

Whilst purests may not like it, and you don't want to spend ages in front of a PC, when you have spent so much time taking shots, why not make them the best you can to maximise you enjoyment?
 
Thanks for all the comments.

I was aware of the location of the sun and nearly always look out for this, but given the fact it wasn't a planned or organised shoot, and I'd only rolled up my jeans I couldn't/didn't want to go much further into the sea to get the sun more behind me, and if I had, I would have lost the view of the beach/see and ended up with more beach and the not so pretty prom in the background which wasn't what I wanted. feels like it was a no win situation just because of the time of day and position of the sun?!

I've looked at the picture settings in the camera but never experimented with any of them and am only ever/currently using the 'standard' style which has a +3 I think by default on the standard profile for sharpness, everything else is flat.
 
IMHO using Standard picture style on default settings is pretty much spot on for a naturally pleasing and lightly sharpened result straight out of camera. But you still need to get exposure right and pick your other settings (NR, HTP, ALO etc.) wisely too.

I do use Picasa, but purely as a tool to upload images to the web. All my editing is performed in Lightroom. I have no idea how good Picasa is as an editor or how well it performs when resizing images. You may want to look at using DPP (supplied free with your camera) for your editing and see how you get on with that. Maybe it will improve results, maybe it won't, but I think it's worth a look.
 
Just to add, I have used gimp in the past, but only for basic rotating, sizing and cropping and currently have a copy of lightroom 2 installed but have no idea how to use it. I only installed it as Picasa had no option to darken photos, only to raise brightness, fill light, highlights and shadows which seems odd to me. i know a blown pixel is a blown pixel but i'd still like to try clawing back some overexposed shots from time to time.
 
Andrew (Ned) I've had a play with some of your files. I don't think they are as bad as you think. The motorsports shots are showing some signs of blur, but two of the shots are fairly manageable, while one is a little bit off. The chopper is sharp and most of the scene of the young lady looks good too. Detail is a bit lacking in the hair, but that could be down to a combination of things. Anyway, here goes.

1. I've made some small tweaks to this, but as you will see from the 100% crop that follows there is some pretty obvious panning blur which is hard to overcome. That needs practice, and sometimes a little luck.

20100620_115422_7907_LR-3.jpg


20100620_115422_7907_LR.jpg



2. This was better but still not perfect. I think it scrubs up fairly well though....

20100620_115428_7908-2_LR.jpg



3. As number 2....

20100718_155213_1481_LR.jpg



4. This needed a good dose of exposure boost, but it was pretty sharp. Trouble is, underexposing and then correcting leads to additional noise, which then needs to be concealed, which can rob some sharpness from the image. Still, it's not bad....

20100724_144938_9099_LR.jpg



5. I think this has shown the most improvement. The original was much better than the version that ended up in your gallery. I've tweaked this a little and I think it's not bad at all....

20100725_132708_9568_LR.jpg


Here are my adjustments for that last image. I'm afraid you'll have to click the link as I can't embed any more images....

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_4_R8TkwT74w/TE2tv-1mgFI/AAAAAAABTRc/xu-cRpp4Mpg/s800/20100726_174546_.JPG

There are some adjustments I would have liked to make to take things a little further, but my options are limited with a JPEG file to start with and I can't do what I would like to do. All in all I think you are doing rather better with your photography than you might imagine, but I recommend you take a closer look into post processing techniques just to polish things off. While I'm a little cautious about suggesting this, I do think you might consider shooting raw and using DPP to process your files. At least give it a go as an experiment and see how you get on.

EDIT : If you've got Lightroom then definitely shoot raw and use Lightroom for your processing. You will note that Lightroom has an option to add output sharpening to your images when you resize them. This is a handy feature for getting nice looking results with little effort. Actually, DPP is fine, but slow and unwieldy compared to Lightroom. Either way, shoot raw and then see what you can achieve in either editor.
 
tdodd said:
Stuff
Click to expand...

Considering that you were working from such compressed images, these (especially number 3, which is a million miles better) are really good demonstrations as to why PP is an integral part of digital photography.

IMG_14811.JPG

20100718_155213_1481_LR.jpg
 
RevOnline said:
Considering that you were working from such compressed images, these (especially number 3, which is a million miles better) are really good demonstrations as to why PP is an integral part of digital photography.
Click to expand...

Actually, Ned/Andrew emailed me the original files. :)

But yes, you're right. PP is often an important part of workflow. Some images may well be perfect straight out of cam, but you simply should sharpen after downsizing. That's the law. :)
 
I thought that 15 (for a start) looked suspiciously clean, I thought you'd just been incredibly thorough!

But yeah, point still stands.
 
DPP is good, its in the canon software that came free with the camera, its a nice simple and fast tool for dealing with both RAW and jpegs. It'll deal with exposure alterations, contrast, saturation, white balance, sharpening, square cropping, noise processing, lens corrections, curves, etc etc. Update it to the latest version from the canon support website, they do frequently update and add features. It's limitation is that its all or nothing, its not got any selective area editing features.

Gimp is free and very powerful but is quite scary and difficult to understand if you don't already understand something about the principals of photo processing.

I use DPP for most stuff and occasionally use Gimp for any selective editing (slowly and only if I'm desperate).
 
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