Critique Frost Photos

[Applemuncher]

I wish I could have selected both Beginner and Critique - I would like some constructive pointers on some photos I took in the frosty weather over the weekend.

I had some problems keeping everything in focus with all of the close-ups, would welcome tips but because they were handheld I found that if I breathed then the focus shifted, I had no idea that the DOF could be that shallow.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Pz3zCE]IMG_3856-2 by Justine Edwards, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PpvZXU]IMG_3757 by Justine Edwards, on Flickr[/URL]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Pz3M4f]IMG_3700 by Justine Edwards, on Flickr[/URL]

And, some of you might remember that I was asking advice on creating star trails? This one was taken in a really light polluted area with cars running behind me which kept lighting the shot so it was quite difficult take, overall I'm happy with how this turned out, I don't think you could ever really take a star trail photo without making it look over-processed but I was ok with the result.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PAHzrT]Grace Darling, Hoylake, UK. by Justine Edwards, on Flickr[/URL]

Any suggestions on how this could be improved would be much appreciated.

 

[Nostromo]

The first image is out of focus I'm afraid, i would put that down to camera movement judging by your exif data. 1/25 is way to slow to be handheld. The rule of thumb is to have a shutter speed of at least the same as your focal length, so for example if your focal length is 50mm you would need a shutter speed of 1/50 (this is for full frame sensors), but because you have a crop sensor you need to times your focal length by a factor of 1.6 this would mean a shutter speed of 1/80 for a 50mm lens. Also it's not easy to shoot with a handheld shutter speed below 1/60.
For this first image you could have easily opened up the aperture to something like f/5.6 this would have given you a much better shutter speed.
The image it's self is not bad, the frost and the colours of the pegs work quite well. Odd numbers work better than even numbers, so 3 would be better than 4.
In the second image is much sharper than the first, this is due to the shutter speed being much faster. Again a bit of thought of composition would improve this (back to those odd numbers again).
The 3rd photo is also quite nice, maybe change the angle, have the log run from bottom left to top right and a lower view point.
It's all practice and learning,

 

[Applemuncher]

Hi - thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it. The pegs photo was my favorite - I liked the colour contrast and it was my intention to still use odd numbers, hence the three pegs together and then the lone one, I cropped out the lone peg and I preferred the original so I left it in but to be honest I could have agonised over it for ages. Is the picture very out of focus? I really tried to go back and see it but I honestly can't tell, I tried zooming in to see it but obviously can't do this infinitely. I'm not contesting the focus issue, I just really want to understand everything, I tried taking this with a variety of settings but this is the one which the colours looked best with.

Thank you so much for the technical guidance - that will help me loads, at the moment it's very much trial and error with only a little knowledge thrown in.

 

[Applemuncher]

Hi Dominic - It was frosty again this morning so I re-took the photographs to see if I could pin-point the focus issue, I realised pretty much straight away that even when the weather is really still the clothes line wasn't! I guess this might explain something because today I used the tripod and felt that they actually didn't look as good (because it wasn't as frosty). I did however take lots of different photos at varying settings and got some really good lessons from that.

Thanks for your help, it's much appreciated.