Landscapey portrait of my bike

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Name
Neil Thompson
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Confused lol???

Heres a shot i took of my bike whilst riding in the highlands on the road from Lochness out towards Skye. Awesome scenery about the place! Had to get a shot of the bike in there too lol.

Taken with Sigma 10-20 @ 10mm, Iso800, 1/800, f4.0, CPL, 0.6ND grad, 550ex on camera 1/1 Highspeed sync.

c&c very welcome although i dont think ill get a chance to try the shot again anytime soon :(

Highland-Hornet.jpg
 
I don't think you'll need to try that again, I like it just the way it is. The only thing I'm not keen on is the flash hotspot in the tank but that would be very easy to get rid of.
 
thats a great shot, what a stunning spot (y)
 
I love the photo, the bike even more :)
But... could you explain to me why did you use such a high ISO? Wasnt it possible to go for 100?
 
Great shot, the colours look awesome. Good use of fill flash too!
 
I love the shot too. Shame theres no where in and around london that'll give a beautiful background scenery like that.

Btw, it may be the way its been reduced in size, but is it a little soft? I have the nikon version of the sigma 10-20 and find it a tad soft.
 
Thanks very much for the comments, that was the best out of 20ish attempts before i went to enjoy the roads again :D

Any simple techniques to remove the hotspot? or is it just a bit cloning and playing about in photoshop? Not something im good at!

I love the photo, the bike even more :)
But... could you explain to me why did you use such a high ISO? Wasnt it possible to go for 100?


Hi im glad you asked this as im about to post a question lol.

At my prefered settings of iso100 and f8 for my 10-20,the bike was still heavily under exposed with the flash cranked right up.
So i figured to increase the fill power of the flash i had to raise the ISO and open up the Aperture to give me enough light. Which meant i had to increase the shutter speed into the relams of Highspeed sync mode to keep the background in check.

Now my question would be.
Having seen shots of model taken with a similar idea, using the sun as a back/rim light and filling in. The photographer in this case is shooting at Iso 100, f16, 1/160 to expose the background as he wants. He then uses a 430ex @ 1/4 power and this is enough to lift a full length model out and be perfectly exposed???

What am i doing wrong to have to use such a high iso/low aperture whislt having a more powerful flash???

In fairness flash was on camera as i couldnt fit any more gear in the tank bag lol but it was swiveled towards the bike and id say the camera and flash was only 2-2.5m from the bike.

As for softness it was shot wide open and ISO 800 so im sure theres an element of softness and noise. Doesnt look bad printed 18x12 though :D
 
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It was probably all that bright ambient light tricking the camera into using a low flash power if you were using ttl and wotnot. If I was you I'd have picked the settings I want and bunged the flash in manual and changed the power to see what worked best rather than let the tiny little pea brain inside the camera work it out (wrongly). If it wasn't possible at those settings and full power to sort the bike out then I'd have gone down the road you did of changing things.
 
Having just done some sums you'd have struggled to use your preferred settings. Changing ISO from 800-100 loses you three stops, changing aperture from F4 to 8 is another two. So shutter speed needs to increas five stops to compensate which is 1/25 or something stupid (my brain hurts now and I'm probably wrong).

None of it really matters though, you got a cracking shot as it is.
 
f*** all wrong with that, apart from clutter ( back wheel ) nay mind though, bikes and the West Coast = fun in bundles and if the weather looks like that then happy days, I hope you have many happy memories, that photo would be mine, great stuff !
 
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