weekly Shiny Side Up's 52

Judi said:
On theme Martin, a bit dusty tho' (n)
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Mostly marks on the camera, couldn't shift them althoughI'll give you at least one of them.

minnnt said:
Plenty of Chromatic Aberration in there Martin... :eek:

On theme though mate, well done.
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Yes, the left dial is rife with it and I don't understand why because it's the same in two different lenses and with the object camera in different positions so it's not the lens and neither can it be the camera as this is one version of many I tried and the left dial always had the red rims around but the right one never did. You'll also notice that the left dial writing is out of focus even thought the dials are both the same height; weird.

Edit: Actually, I've just looked and they are not the same height, the left dial is 4mm nearer the camera, that explains it for me.
 
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I prefer the Mobius shot, it's an interesting shape and certainly fits the theme. For me it seems to be lacking something (I don't know what) maybe more space as someone else has mentioned, who knows *shrugs*

ShinySideUp said:
can't trigger my flash off camera without firing my on-camera flash
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Get yourself some cheap Yongnuo RF 603 radio triggers from eBay, cheap as chips and they also double up as wireless shutter release ;) that's what I am currently using and I would highly recommend them. I bought mine from an eBay store named hitechproduct if that's any use, it came within 3 days (y)
 
Bobby Gold said:
I prefer the Mobius shot, it's an interesting shape and certainly fits the theme. For me it seems to be lacking something (I don't know what) maybe more space as someone else has mentioned, who knows *shrugs*



Get yourself some cheap Yongnuo RF 603 radio triggers from eBay, cheap as chips and they also double up as wireless shutter release ;) that's what I am currently using and I would highly recommend them. I bought mine from an eBay store named hitechproduct if that's any use, it came within 3 days (y)
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They look good. Haven't looked at ebay yet but on Amazon they are only twenty five quid.
 
ShinySideUp said:
They look good. Haven't looked at ebay yet but on Amazon they are only twenty five quid.
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I've had mine now a little over a year after not being able to afford to replace my PocketWizards and I have nothing bad to say about them, highly reliable and as I said already I would recommend them to anyone. One thing to note is they don't support ETTL, but if your happy with setting up flash manually then they are the way to go. If you need ETTL they have the Yongnuo YN-622 in either Canon or Nikon flavour, I recommended them to my friend Gav (TP Username Sgavenge) and from what I've heard so far he only has good things to say about them - obviously cost more than the 603's though...
 
Hi Martin.....


thanks for enlightening me as to what chromatic abberrations are all about , seen the term before but never really saw what people were getting at...every day's a school day :) Quick flit round with the clone tool could lose some of those dust type marks.....neat idea for theme as well:)
 
Good idea and on theme (y) I though a tighter crop may have worked :thinking:
 
Hi, agree with above comments, can't really get excited by it.
I too can recommend the Yongnuo flash triggers, cheap but do the job
 
susiejb said:
Hi Martin....I think this theme is really difficult so well done for getting a shot that fits the topic :) I haven't a clue what it is but it's obviously something technical !
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It's the top plate of a Fujifilm X20 camera. The dial with the plus one on it is the exposure compensation dial. A dial I bought the camera for as it is so easy to use and use it I do, a lot.
 
Hi Martin

If it were me I would use the spot removal to tidy the dust and hair spots... A few too many dials clipped for me too, even if just the exp compensation dial was full would be nice - Sorry, nit picking, really like the idea for the theme to have it photography related, nice and sharp where it needs to be too (y)
 
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Here it is with most of the dust marks removed, just to prove to myself that I could. The remaining spots are because the camera is well-used and has marks on it and I don't see the point in removing every single blemish from an old camera otherwise I might as well have used the manufacturers publicity shots.

My feeling regarding the crop is that the idea is to show it is photography-related and includes the other dial and function button on the camera to indicate what it is. If I were to crop such that the picture showed only the exposure compensation dial it would be a picture of a dial with +1 written on it and while this particular picture is hardly inspiring, it could be a lot worse.
 
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Of the last load you losted.... ;), the mobius strip I really like, simple but fascinating to let your eye mentally walk around the loop (doesn't really need a person to do that for me),

the ending of the chess pieces is great. just enough information in the OOF pieces behind to show the king has no options... Presume you added the grain (shouldnt be noise at ISO 400)?? Not sure it adds, or maybe slightly less would work.

and the positve EC dial works well... I thing the DOF works well to draw attention to the subject. Good job cleaning up the dust too. I agree to leave a few marks there, not sure what software you have but clone tool set to "darken" blend mode works well get rid of white patches easily. (y)
 
Hi Martin

Positive: I like it a lot. Really shows off the design aspects and the repeating circular dials (or patterns if you like) are very attrative to me. As Graham says, you did a good job cloning the dust spots, and it makes me smile cause I know youre not a fan of post processing in this way. I would think about removing the brown spots in the right corners while you have your clone tool warmed up, though I am a little in two minds about this.

I agree with you, definitely dont want to crop this, and agree again that this would diminish impact and context.
 
Seeing as you've gone to the trouble of removing the dust you could have slid the magenta and purple sliders to remove the CA... ;)

with regards to the crop, i would have included full dials but it's not really a big issue.

Good shot Martin, shows that you are giving the theme some thought, not like us shoe horners... :D
 
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Time. Yes, it is me in the photograph I'm holding. Makes me think I should get out more, time is short, you can see it in my eyes.


Time by gorgon703, on Flickr
 
Really really nice job there Martin, couldn't more show the progression of time, from the happy face of youth, to the wiser face of experience. (y)

Great work. :clap:
 
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I like that Martin ... great idea, great portrait. :clap:
 
Positive - The edit is obviously better for the dust being cloned out but agree about the CA and focus which would help improve it

Time - Super super portrait. The B&W conversion has given it a classy feel. Great lighting as well. Nice one.
 
Very good, slight niggle would be the the left side of the frame seems to be covered or cut out :thinking:

It's a very good photograph though :clap:
 
Nice take on the theme, like the lighting on the face but ther is no seperation between the background and subject so looks like the head is just floating there
 
Just to echo what's already been said Martin, great take on the theme, lighting (y), B&W works well :)
 
cowboy said:
Very good, slight niggle would be the the left side of the frame seems to be covered or cut out :thinking:

It's a very good photograph though :clap:
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There is no PP or doctoring of the shot in any way. All I have done is make a B&W conversion from the original.

parhole4 said:
Nice take on the theme, like the lighting on the face but ther is no seperation between the background and subject so looks like the head is just floating there
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Anything else would be a distraction IMO. In all these challenges I have tried to keep rigidly to the theme but with a different slant from the obvious and in this case I wanted only to show the difference in Time between young me and old me. I was going to remove the hand holding the photograph but left it in as the eye will assciate the head with the hand and unconciously fill in the gap, that's my theory anyway after looking carefully at the picture.

Delta Skies said:
Positive - The edit is obviously better for the dust being cloned out but agree about the CA and focus which would help improve it

Time - Super super portrait. The B&W conversion has given it a classy feel. Great lighting as well. Nice one.
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Thank you so much especially the Time compliment. I have to admit, I'm rather proud of this particular photograph and it may well be one of my six monthly big printouts.

overbez said:
Really really nice job there Martin, couldn't more show the progression of time, from the happy face of youth, to the wiser face of experience. (y)

Great work. :clap:
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Ah, the happy face of youth and oh, the face of experience...desperation, desolation, regret and the feeling of impending death and destruction. Still could be worse, I might have no beer left :beer:

Thanks everyone for your comments. I'm loving this challenge thing.
 
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