Returned from Borneo trip

I've returned from Borneo and have done an initial trawl of my images
and put them online he

www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/

I might need to spend a bit of time on some photos to remove a bit of
noise but, overall, I'm fairly happy with the results.

In terms of camera equipment, you'll probably guess that I had a new
toy...a Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro which arrived a day before I flew
out so I had a bit of a learning curve to go through on the strengths
and weaknesses of that lens and figuring out how to best use it. It
was fun but very frustrating especially if I hadn't taken a tripod
out on a particular trek with me. The depth of field was very small
on some of those shots and the slightest breeze would throw a shot
out of focus. Well, you learn by doing as they say!

I had a "Bear Grills" jacket which I pressed into using as a
camera-jacket but on a few occasions when leaning down taking macro
shots my 70-300m f4-5.6 IS USM lens would slide out of the pocket and
drop onto the muddy jungle floor (that lens needs a proper
cleaning!). I think that I need a proper camera-jacket with pockets
deep enough to fully secure longish telephoto lenses. Any
recommendations?

I hardly ever used my 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM EF-S. So really I was
mostly swapping between the 100mm macro and the 70-300mm telephoto. I
left the following lenses at home:

16-35mm f2.8 L USM

28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM

70-200m f2.8 L IS USM

I also left my Epson P5000 at home and instead relied on a bunch of
CF cards. I really did want to travel light!

It was quite dark in the forested areas and I had to go to ISO 400 or
even ISO 800 on some occasions. Very difficult lighting conditions
especially if you're traveling light and don't have a lot of time to
set up for a camera shot. And with leeches crawling over your body
your mind tends to concentrate on getting the job done quickly!

It was very wet and we had a lot of rain even though we were at the
end of the rainy season. So I used floats-bags to keep my equipment
dry in my backpack, which was especially useful when crossing rivers
waist-deep.

Also when I had my camera out around my neck in the jungle I attached
a small float-bag on the camera-strap and used it like a waterproof
cover for when the rains came, so the camera was still accessible.

I almost wished that I had taken a waterproof camera housing so that
I could have taken some shots from the raft when white-water rafting.
Or perhaps I should have used an additional but smaller camera for
use within the raft?

OK, back home, I've image-processed now using a 90 cd/m2 instead of
the 190 cd/m2 used for the Antarctica photos. I hope that the picture
don't look too dark now, but I do recognise that I still prefer dark
images! I'd probably need to ramp up the curves on some shots but let
me think about that for a while as I get to know the images and
figure out what I'm trying to convey.

Regards,

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu

Website : www.MetalVortex.com
Contact : www.MetalVortex.com/contact

Blog : www.MetalVortex.com/blog
Experimental : www.NinjaTrek.com

Brain! Brain! What is brain?!

In article ,
Kulvinder Singh Matharu wrote:

I've returned from Borneo and have done an initial trawl of my images
and put them online he

www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/


A lot of very good stuff there and elsewhere on your site. You do a bit
of traveling, don't you. ;-)

HFL

--
Change hlockwood to hflockwood in email address

In article , Kulvinder Singh
Matharu says...
I've returned from Borneo and have done an initial trawl of my images
and put them online he

www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/

Thanks for sharing the photos. As usual your photos are too dark. See
for instance this image:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/footbridge.htm

The histogram ends at 200 and beyond 128 there is very little image
content. Most of the image brightness values are squeezed between 0 and
128.

Same for this image, where the histogram abruptly ends at 200:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/guitar.htm

He
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/boat.htm

the histogram ends again at 200 but has its peak around 0, which means
that there are large aread of solid 0,0,0 black in the image with no
detail. You seem to like darkness.

Here is another example:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/leaf_6.htm

Here the histogram even ends at 160.

I suppose you shoot RAW. Try adjusting the black point and the
brightness so that all brightness values are inside the image and
nothing is cut off, neither at the dark not at the bright end.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

"Kulvinder Singh Matharu" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:01:08 GMT, "Dudley Hanks"
wrote:

[snip]

I tend to like dark images as well.

They are actually fairly difficult to shoot, and it is often hard to
resist
simply making the subject brighter in order to draw attention to it.

Nice Work,
Dudley


Thanks. It is a difficult balance to achieve. It's funny, when I had
my monitor luminance at 190 cd/m2 people said that my Antarctica
images were too dark (it was assumed that these people were operating
at around 90 cd/m2). I've now processed the Borneo pictures using
monitor luminance at 90 cd/m2 and people are still finding the images
too dark. I thank that just shows that "dark" is my thing.

The interesting thing is that most people like the images "as is" and
I've also had no complaints on the prints that I've done. So it must
be rather subjective and some people prefer bright and others dark.
But I like to experiment and may even ask people to compare images. I
may post the results here.

With Photoshop, it's so easy to vary the image from completely black to
completely washed out white, that almost any original exposure is adequate
for the task.......Unlike the slide film that I use, it would seem that
worrying about the original exposure is almost a complete waste of time when
shooting digital.....I have taken a whole group of photos sent to me by a
friend on disk, and completely reworked them to dig the details out of the
shadows without blowing any of the highlights using my CS2 program.

On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:35:54 +0200, Alfred Molon
wrote:

[snip]
Thanks for sharing the photos. As usual your photos are too dark. See
for instance this image:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/footbridge.htm

I know what you're saying but I was using a monitor at 90 cd/m2 and
that matches my prints very well. I just like dark. Also, most people
are using LCDs at 200 cd/m2 or above and they're not really motivated
to turn down the luminance on their monitors despite any instructions
from myself, so they're going to see nice bright images. For example,
at work, checking people's monitors and my images all looked fine and
there were no complaints on darkness.

I almost think of this as a compromise in terms of me preferring
darker images and most people seeing brighter images on their newer
LCD monitors. For printing, I can apply a Curves adjustment layer if
required to suit taste.

What I might do, is perhaps increase brightness as an experiment and
see what that looks like on other people's monitors.

Thanks for the comments as I'm always looking at improving.

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu

Website : www.MetalVortex.com
Contact : www.MetalVortex.com/contact

Blog : www.MetalVortex.com/blog
Experimental : www.NinjaTrek.com

Brain! Brain! What is brain?!

"Kulvinder Singh Matharu" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:35:54 +0200, Alfred Molon
wrote:

[snip]
Thanks for sharing the photos. As usual your photos are too dark. See
for instance this image:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/footbridge.htm

I know what you're saying but I was using a monitor at 90 cd/m2 and
that matches my prints very well. I just like dark. Also, most people
are using LCDs at 200 cd/m2 or above and they're not really motivated
to turn down the luminance on their monitors despite any instructions
from myself, so they're going to see nice bright images. For example,
at work, checking people's monitors and my images all looked fine and
there were no complaints on darkness.

I almost think of this as a compromise in terms of me preferring
darker images and most people seeing brighter images on their newer
LCD monitors. For printing, I can apply a Curves adjustment layer if
required to suit taste.

What I might do, is perhaps increase brightness as an experiment and
see what that looks like on other people's monitors.

Thanks for the comments as I'm always looking at improving.

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu

I tend to like dark images as well.

They are actually fairly difficult to shoot, and it is often hard to resist
simply making the subject brighter in order to draw attention to it.

Nice Work,
Dudley

On 2008-04-01 11:35:54 -0700, Alfred Molon said:

In article , Kulvinder
Singh Matharu says...
I've returned from Borneo and have done an initial trawl of my images
and put them online he

www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/

Thanks for sharing the photos. As usual your photos are too dark. See
for instance this image:
http://www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/footbridge.htm

The histogram ends at 200 and beyond 128 there is very little image
content. Most of the image brightness values are squeezed between 0 and
128.

Histogram my ass. Now I've seen it all. We're basing the subjective
quality of pictures based on the quantitative analysis of the histogram?

Have you people forgotten that photography is an art? Just because it's
digital doesn't mean it needs to be looked at as a science.

--

thepixelfreak

thepixelfreak wrote in news:2008040211202616807%not@dotcom:

www.metalvortex.com/myphotos/boa/

I liked them!

Some I might have shot differently, but I think it show very good use of
black.
There is one or two that seem a bit dark to me, but not greatly.

John Passaneau

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:01:08 GMT, "Dudley Hanks"
wrote:

[snip]

I tend to like dark images as well.

They are actually fairly difficult to shoot, and it is often hard to resist
simply making the subject brighter in order to draw attention to it.

Nice Work,
Dudley


Thanks. It is a difficult balance to achieve. It's funny, when I had
my monitor luminance at 190 cd/m2 people said that my Antarctica
images were too dark (it was assumed that these people were operating
at around 90 cd/m2). I've now processed the Borneo pictures using
monitor luminance at 90 cd/m2 and people are still finding the images
too dark. I thank that just shows that "dark" is my thing.

The interesting thing is that most people like the images "as is" and
I've also had no complaints on the prints that I've done. So it must
be rather subjective and some people prefer bright and others dark.
But I like to experiment and may even ask people to compare images. I
may post the results here.

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu

Website : www.MetalVortex.com
Contact : www.MetalVortex.com/contact

Blog : www.MetalVortex.com/blog
Experimental : www.NinjaTrek.com

Brain! Brain! What is brain?!

"Kulvinder Singh Matharu" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:01:08 GMT, "Dudley Hanks"
wrote:

[snip]

I tend to like dark images as well.

They are actually fairly difficult to shoot, and it is often hard to
resist
simply making the subject brighter in order to draw attention to it.

Nice Work,
Dudley


Thanks. It is a difficult balance to achieve. It's funny, when I had
my monitor luminance at 190 cd/m2 people said that my Antarctica
images were too dark (it was assumed that these people were operating
at around 90 cd/m2). I've now processed the Borneo pictures using
monitor luminance at 90 cd/m2 and people are still finding the images
too dark. I thank that just shows that "dark" is my thing.

The interesting thing is that most people like the images "as is" and
I've also had no complaints on the prints that I've done. So it must
be rather subjective and some people prefer bright and others dark.
But I like to experiment and may even ask people to compare images. I
may post the results here.

--
Kulvinder Singh Matharu

Website : www.MetalVortex.com
Contact : www.MetalVortex.com/contact

Blog : www.MetalVortex.com/blog
Experimental : www.NinjaTrek.com

Brain! Brain! What is brain?!

I live in an area that is snowbound for nearly half a year. When I shoot
outside shots, I like to get a bit of texture in the snow, which translates
to a shading of the snow from white highlights to much darker shadows.

I, personally, think that this is the way it looks at the time of exposure,
but others seem to like that bleached, ultra-white look to the snow. As a
result, I tend to field a lot of similar comments about my winter shots.

But, hey, life would be awfully boring if we had nothing to compare notes
on.

Take Care,
Dudley