Tugboat wrote:Me likey a lot

I really like your photos Adrian, you able to take us through this one?..

Camera,
Lens
Shutter
Aperture
And post processing? Photoshop etc..ie what you did. (would be nice to see the photo before processing as well)

Or if all top secret, then i will just say Nice Pic..

Tugboat wrote:I've had it 4 weeks so I figured it's about time I took a photo of it...

ummmm, where do you put the bikes?

chuckie34 wrote:

Tugboat wrote:I've had it 4 weeks so I figured it's about time I took a photo of it...

ummmm, where do you put the bikes?

Across the bonnet. Hunting styles.

My Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 IF EX DG HSM is on Trade Me Cheap.

And my Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 EX DC HSM will be up on sunday, one last shoot with it this weekend then will be switching to the primes.

ThingOne wrote:

Tugboat wrote:Me likey a lot

I really like your photos Adrian, you able to take us through this one?..

Camera,
Lens
Shutter
Aperture
And post processing? Photoshop etc..ie what you did. (would be nice to see the photo before processing as well)

Or if all top secret, then i will just say Nice Pic..

Cheers Clive. Nothing should be top secret in a thread like this!

My original intention was to expose for the sky and then shoot a long exposure (using an ND if necessary) and then highlight the car with a flash shot from an angle. This plan went to pot quite quickly as the batteries in my flash were pretty much kaput so I had to make do with available light only.

Camera: Canon 1D MkIII
Lens: Ef 17-40 f4L @32mm + ND4 filter
Shutter: 0.8sec, 0.2sec, 0.5sec, 1.6sec and 3.2sec (Manual mode with auto bracketing set to capture 5 exposures)
Aperture: f8.0

Post-processing: Nothing terribly complex. All up about 10 mins work.
Workflow was pretty much:
- Import the RAWs into Lightroom and then export the bracketed sequence as 16bit TIFFs;
- Tonemap the 5 frames in Photomatix Pro. Nothing too extreme, strength is set to about 55;
- Import the tonemapped JPG back into Lightroom;
- Boost the contrast, clarity and vibrance;
- Add a grad filter effect to pull back the sky exposure a bit more to really help bring out the orange dawn hue,
- A couple of brushstrokes on the closest headlight to pull back the exposure a bit and reveal a bit more detail in the headlight assembly;
- Add a bit of vignetting in the corners;
- Done!

Here's the middle range exposure from the sequence with no work at all. Doesn't look much at all on its own as it was always intentional that the end image would be composed of all five exposures.



My favourite from the morning is probably this one. Pretty much same process as above except a little bit of extra colour help added in to the grad filter effect to make the sky just a little more spectacular than it really was and a wee bit of cloning on the ground to get rid of a patch of oil that looked like it had leaked out of my car!!!

chuckie34 wrote:ummmm, where do you put the bikes?

To be perfectly honest I haven't tried yet although to go in the back it's definitely going to involve removing both wheels!! Golf clubs I was a little worried about, but apparently it's a common question and the guys at Jeff Gray BMW/MINI just happened to have a set laying about to prove it! I now know I can get two sets of golf clubs, two trundlers and a picnic in there so a bike with both wheels off may just fit. Either that or I'm back to taking the missus's Golf GTI on biking trips again.

Thanks for all that, great stuff

I haven't really done any bracketed shots yet , played around with some HDR but it's a little surreal looking.
I have all the tools just not the knowledge. Yet.

Keep up the good work.

Got up at 3.45am and drove 2.5hrs to get to Castlepoint for sunrise, based on a pretty good weather forecast. Unfortunately the morning was pretty overcast and the light flat. A little bit of colour in the sunrise but not what I'd hoped for.

It looks like there is a bit of filter darkening on the lighthouse in that second one. Did you use filters or was it all lightroom magic? The HDR on the mini is nicely done.
Long drive, but it still beats going to work. It took me 90 minutes to get to work yesterday on missbehaving trains, I'll swap you that for an unsuccessful photo adventure anyday.

Yeah there is filter darkening in that second one caused by the grad filter tool in Lightroom which I used to pull back the sky exposure more to exploit the colour in the sky. Camera was fitted with an ND8 for some of the shots increase exposure times. I might do a bit of work in Photoshop to fix that.

Also did my first ever panorama yesterday. Pretty simple 3 shots stitched together using Hugin.

onetwo

Hey guys, after having a jam on my mates Canon 550D and absolutely loving it I wanted to ask about purchasing second hand dSLR's I've done a bit of research and know the basics like checking the sensor, lense and focus and looking for wear in the strap etc, but nothing beats the hands on advice of experienced photographers so I was wondering if you guys could give any tips or possibly show me a couple of links on trademe that you personally would consider?

Hard to know without a budget!?

Pretty much any old canon will do, I would avoid the 300D and 10D (old and slow, 10D isnt ef-s).
Apart from that as they get newer they get better (in terms of lcd size, sensor, gardgets etc).

Nikons older bodies tend to be nosier than canons due to using ccd instead of cmos, but do tend to produce very good results in decent light.

We're looking to upgrade to a 550d from a less than year old 1000d. Want around $600 ono for lens and body.

Few shots I've taken over the last few months

Cheers RJD yeah i was looking around the 500 600 mark. Thats the sorta stuff that I exactly wanted to know! Thanks for that! Cheers Andy ill have a think and let you know!