Photo help

[hoover86]

I have been messing around with my entry SLR and haven't really been getting what I expected out of the camera. I'm not sure if the basic 18-55mm lens is the culprit, my skills, or maybe a little of both

I have a Pentax *istDL with the 18-55mm lens. I've adjusted the white balance with the options they have the best I can. There may be a way to adjust it manually, haven't gotten that far yet. The camera does shoot in RAW, but Photoshop CS2 editing past auto-levels scares the crap out of me

I've been shooting in the "P" mode with no flash and here's the results of my frog spawn...



I don't think it's the worst photo ever, but it just doesn't have that pop that of a lot of the great photo's I see here on RC and in the Pentax forums of people who have the same camera on flickr.

So do any of you pros out there have any advice for me?? Thanks in advance!

[lessthanlights]

the photo would pop more if you photographed with less depth of field (make the background blurry). to do that get out of "p mode" and use manual. drop your aperture number to the lowest number 2.8 3.5 5.6 ect to get the widest/biggest aperture (hole in the lens). then zoom your lens to 55mm. try that and see what happens.

[jwedehase]

And white balance definitely appears to be a culprit here. This photo is very warm (closer to red than blue), so bringing some of the blues hues back in would help it look more. Here's what a quick set of adjustments did in Photoshop, I hope you don't mind. I also removed some distracting background "stuff" to help isolate the frogspawn as the subject.

[hoover86]

Where in Photoshop did you get the color changes at? It does look quite a bit better that way..

[jwedehase]

First, I did auto levels. Then I went to Menu:Image/Levels (ctrl+L)

There I brought up the blue channel (in the drop down menu at the top of the small Levels window, you can select different channels) to probably around 1.20, and dropped the red to about 0.85, or something. I don't recall exactly off hand.

I also added contrast and used the Smart Sharpen filter.

[Joeee]

I wish i could take such a picture

[maroun.c]

Before post processing lets start with your phototaking.
Did you use a tripod? If not then you should as I see a just a little tiny motion. Its really minimum and could be related to water flow, or longer exposure time too. So you can start by turning off your pumps and using a tripod. Even on a tripod release the shutter really slowly or better yet use the timer or a remote release. It could also be softness from the lens and not motion, I'm not familiar with the lens you used but try to check it on some shots with different apertures, most comsumer level lenses are soft at wider apertures and sharpen up differently starting certain apertures, reaching a sweet spot, then ending up by loosing some sharpness at higher levels. If your lens is really soft you can try to deal with it by increasing sharpness in your camera or better yet in Photoshop. but it could also mean not being able to get satisfactory results at wider apertures.
What is the exposure time and aperture used on that shot? you could use a bigger aperture (smaller number) which would allow more light in resulting in a faster shot with less chance of blurr. The same would result with more background blurr mentioned above. It's a matter of personal taste and on similar shots I would prefer more DOF to see more of the heads as you already have a blurred background. Still that could be from motion or lens softness and not from shallow DOF which could be the reason that I'm not really fond of blurred background on this shot.
Also one other thing that intreagues me is that each head of this coral displays a different colour is that the way it looks in reality? IF so you might have some light issues wich is harder to work without external lighting (flash) which usually is hard to use with corals as it kills the colours (IMO) unless you manage to use it off camera and with high ISO or low flash compensation so that the flash is just a fill light and not the main light of the image.
Hope this helps

[hoover86]

Yea, I'm going to try and take everything in here and hopefully this weekend I will have some time to apply all of the suggestions here.

Yes all the heads are a different color in actuality. I've only had it for a few weeks and already the colors are looking better, so they should be on there way to some normalcy.

I don't use a tripod and keep putting off getting one, but this is on my list of things to get.

I'm getting a new ca reactor this weekend so probably won't have time to get anything really accomplished, but I will keep you guys posted and continue to feed off of your help

[hoover86]

Ok let's try this again. I worked with the aperture and white balance and shutter speed a little more for this picture. I also did touch-ups via photoshop. Let's see how it came out...

[hoover86]

Well it looks like the center bottom portion is a little out of focus. Here's the top right portion of the same picutre..



That's much better

SO I have a few questions.

1) Do I still need a higher aperture setting to bring the rest of the photo into focus, or is there something else going on?

2) How do you get that nice black frame on your photo jwedehase? I tried the frames portion they have in the actions tab but couldn't find anything like what you have.

3) What tool do you use to eliminate objects in the background like the LR?

[Blazer88]

1) It doesn't look like you need to stop the lens down more. You want the xenia in focus and not the rock, IMO.

2) A simple boarder is really easy to add. I just hit ctrl+A to select all, and then go to edit -> stroke to add a black boarder. If you want a white stripe, add a 15 pixel white boarder and then a 12 pixel black leaving a white stripe, you get the idea.

3) I use a black paint brush to black out the background sometimes. You can also use things like the close stamp or patch tool. Or, you can add a multiply layer to darken it. Or use the dodge tool. As you can see, there are a million different ways to bring more attention to your subject.

[hoover86]

Ok cool, got that figured out now. Thanks for the help on border.

I've tried the methods you recommended for getting rid of the background, but it seems a little tedious. One thing I have wondered about is the magic wand tool. It seems to pick out large portions of the picture, but I can't seem to figure out what to do with these portions once they are highlighted. It seems as though you should just be able to delete what you highlight, but I've had no luck. Any ideas on that one????

[hoover86]

Well after some messing around with the tools I think I have it pretty well figured out on how to get rid of the back ground. I just spent time using the magic wand tool and I think I've got it. Here's the result of a previous picture through everyone's help!



Still not astounding by any means, but good progress.

[Blazer88]

I would skip the magic wand tool, much too tedious. Grab a black paint brush and have at it. Zoom into 3:1 to get into the tight spaces and it'll look good. Here is a shot that I blacked out the background to highlight the coral and it only took a minute:

[hoover86]

Wow, you must have a steady hand and lots of patience to get that clost to things!! I'll have to check on trying that out.

[t5Nitro]

Blazer what camera and lens are you using by chance? That picture is amazing!