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Firstly, I would like to thank those that participated in the exercise. I hope that you will/have learned something from the experience and can take this with you, moving forward.

I would also like to thank Scott (MHD) and Peter (Stubbsy) for their help in getting this exercise off the ground.

Overall, I am impressed with what has been submitted. It seems that we were all able to get close to our objectives, which is a good sign.

I think it would be interesting to hear what each of us thought about our own image, as well as the others submitted.

My image:

This was taken on my trip up to the Brisbane Ranges. As soon as I saw the tree, whilst driving along, I knew that this was the shot I was going to take for the exercise. As I didn't have much prior experience with the CPL filter, I wasn't sure exactly how it was going to turn out. I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and loaded it onto the PC.

I think if anything, it is a touch overexposed, but under the circumstances, I am very happy with my result.

To expose this image, I used CW metering (due to the CPL onboard the kit lens) and tried to meter off the sky & highlighted leaves on the main tree. Knowing the D70 would try to underexpose a touch, I have +0.3 EV dialled in and also had the meter (in the viewfinder) just to the left of centre.

One thing I found interesting was that when you are limited to taking one photo, you seem to look at the scene much more closely. I know in the past, on the odd occassion I have taken several images in the hope that one turns out good enough to keep. Looking back now, I wonder why I just didn't take the time to think about it a bit more and take one (maybe 2) shots. I guess the more practice you have, the more you trust your abilities.

I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts on the exercise and the submitted images.

For those that didn't find the chance to participate, your thoughts/comments are also welcomed.

My Image:
I had my camera with me the night I drove past this shop looking for parking and just had to return to photograph it. When looking at it through the viewfinder I reckoned it might make a good challenge for the SEE. So I took awhile to think about it. I used the in camera spot meter to gauge the differences in lighting and then evaluative metering to get a feel for overall scene. I decided just to underexpose one stop from that reading. This was shot handheld at 1/25s as I had no tripod with me. I used 1600 ISO and auto WB in RAW and was pretty happy with the result. (The Canon 1D MKII is great at handling noise at high ISO) I have given this image a slight sharpen after resizing and that's all. I have processed another version of this image where I burned in the window display a little and added some saturation, but overall nothing much was needed.

Having looked at the other submissions I am impressed at how everyone has managed to keep detail where it's needed.
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Paul.

A great challenge

Dave, Just wanted to say thanks for coming up with this idea and organising it. I was very impressed with all the images bar my own. Mine was manual focus and manual guess on the exposure. I purpoosely picked a difficult subject, trying to expose the dark palm trunk without over exposing the sky. I took a guess based on past experience, whilst it was acceptable on the sky it was underexposed on the trunk. This was a great example where spot metering should have been used, my camera was set to matrix metering, when shooting I noticed the meter (which I studiously ignored as I had already chosen my exposure) was showing overexposed. Spot metering the trunk then taking that image and a safety image one stop the other side would have been the best option.

Maybe it wasn't what you were after Glen, but I still like your image. It's got a nice moody feel to it with the dark trunk. Sky looks good too.

I have noticed that with no processing each image looks a little flat & underexposed (except for Dave's which is a touch over). What I think this exercise shows is that post processing is always necessary for digital images, especially these landscape scenes where there is a large dynamic range to contend with. Having said that I do think everyone has made a good job of capture with just one frame.

The thing I enjoyed most about this challenge was forcing myself to think long and hard about the scene, not just exposure but composition and other elements too.
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Paul.

Paul, you are right that images look different without any pp at all. I didn't think yours looked flat at all, I really liked the way you captured the bright street light on the Watkin St facade whilst it fades the further away from the streetlight on the Wilson St facade. Yours was my favourite image out of this exercise, with five close runners up after

My shot appears to be missing ?

Anyone seen my shot ?

Craig, missed your image, or was yours the one disqualified for cheating?

Um, well if it was then I'm the first to know about it.

I uploaded it a while back, hid it and all was good in the world, and now I can't find it

I went out while I was sick just to make sure I had something to submit.

Only joking Craig, no disqualifications on an exercise Maybe it was in a different section? Try PMing Scott, he may be able to see where you have been.

PM sent I guess you were joking about the disqualification, but you made me think for a second if I had really shot in manual. Hopefully the shot will turn up, otherwise I'll host it and post it myself.

Alpha_7 wrote:Um, well if it was then I'm the first to know about it.

I uploaded it a while back, hid it and all was good in the world, and now I can't find it

I went out while I was sick just to make sure I had something to submit.

Craig, when I log in I can see it (it is still HIDDEN).
Can you see it now ?

(I'm stupid) Thanks Dave, I've unhidden mine now. Should we ask Big Red to do the same ?

Craig,

You have really nailed the exposure on that. Looks great.
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Cheers,
Paul.

Craig, looks spot on to me. Looks like it was taken near Stubbsy's?

Behind my house (a few hundred metres) are man made wetlands that flow into mangrove estury type setup. So while I was off sick I took a short walk down there to find a "landscape" to photograph.
My main aim was not to blow out the sky yet keep the detail the water and mangroves, I'm happy with my shot.

Looking at the others I don't I tested myself out with a tricky situation as others did. Some of the other shots seem to be much more difficult to shoot then my own.

Alpha_7 wrote:Behind my house (a few hundred metres) are man made wetlands that flow into mangrove estury type setup. So while I was off sick I took a short walk down there to find a "landscape" to photograph.
My main aim was not to blow out the sky yet keep the detail the water and mangroves, I'm happy with my shot.

Looking at the others I don't I tested myself out with a tricky situation as others did. Some of the other shots seem to be much more difficult to shoot then my own.

Each on their own merits Craig. I think you did a tremendous job.

Can I ask what, if anything, people learnt from doing this exercise ?

Pay attention to the whole shot, take your time, use the information in the viewfinder (I often don't ). Think about the dynamic range your trying to capture.
I found it a good exercise, made me think a lot more about everything I was doing.

As Craig said, pay more attention to whats in your view finder. In spirit of the exercise I didnt crop ,straighten or clone stuff out. My horizon is slightly titled and my shadow is in my shot.

Also using my new CPL. I need to practice on how to use it properly and get correct meater readings. I was tempted to pull it off yesterday. Any tips here are appreciated

Thanks for organising the exercise Aussie Dave

ozczecho wrote:As Craig said, pay more attention to whats in your view finder. In spirit of the exercise I didnt crop ,straighten or clone stuff out. My horizon is slightly titled and my shadow is in my shot.

Also using my new CPL. I need to practice on how to use it properly and get correct meater readings. I was tempted to pull it off yesterday. Any tips here are appreciated

Thanks for organising the exercise Aussie Dave

Good to see that you held back on your PP.

It was my pleasure. I was hoping that this exercise would show the need to really look at the scene closely before taking your shot...which seems to have shone through. For this I am very happy ! Sometimes I wonder if low "keeper-rates" are just the consequence of laziness. If one tries their best every time they press the shutter button, perhaps that KR would rise
I have a few other ideas for exercises, which I will hold onto for the time being and will look to revisit a little later in the year (keep your eyes open)

As for the CPL filter, were you shooting with CW metering or Matrix ?

Hi,

That's what I say on the SEE site:

Dudley Beach. Tried my hand at a long exposure, a bit "a la Dooda". It was hoping to get a nice sky being full moon, but weather did not help. It still came out quite nice, I think, opposite views welcomed. The Newcastle city light are blown, but I knew that would happen.

I have done some long exposures before, but never this long. I had seen the photos from Dooda and liked them a lot, so I wanted to try my hand at it. The resulting exposure was 109s

I used the meter to get an initial reading, and obviously, that didn't work. So I sorted guess it, based on the discussions in dooda's threads.

http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php?t=15355
http://www.dslrusers.net/viewtopic.php?t=15340

I also tried to use hyperfocal focus, that seemed to have worked, things look fairly sharp.

Certainly with night photography, it made me think more about really what I should be doing. It certainly gets to be a trial and error until you get more comfortable with that type of photography. Initially, the moon was meant to be out, so the exposure would have been easier to meter. But as luck has it, the clouds rolled in on my way to the location.

It is also a bit harder looking through the viewfinder when it is that dark. One has to wait for the eyes to get used to the dark.

I also got to try out my new cable release. I had lost my IR remote on an earlier sunrise shoot at the same location.

Also, I didn't have a choice in the single exposure since after I got this shot, it started raining and I had to pack up.

To get to the location, I had to climb down a cliff, on a "goat" track. Very important to have a headlamp, keeps the light where you are looking while keeping your hands free. Also having a mini-trekker that takes my tripod was a big plus. I had been there previously during the day, so I knew where I was going.

Doing a bit of PP on it certainly makes it that much better, but I was still happy with my final result.
EDIT: The PP has been done now, not on the photo submitted

Thanks Dave for thinking this up,

André

I put a brief version of these comments in the notes area of my image. The shot was taken on an overcast day at Chichester Dam in the Hunter Valley. I figured the shot would present some interesting challenges since I had to balance the brightness of the sky with the darker treeline on the left. I wanted to get the trees and a recognisable reflection of them in the water without blowing the highlights and so losing the cloud detail. I spent a bit of time playing with my CP filter since I wanted the water in the foreground to be a little darker so it didn't pick up too much cloud reflection and so distract from what I knew would be a much less detailed reflection on the LHS of the image.

So what did I learn?
- No PP = darker shots (seems a trend looking at all the images)
- Frame your image and look at ALL the view including the edges (oh how I wished I could crop out the dam superstructure on the RHS)
- Consider the individual elements in the image and how they work together or against each other. If they work against each other try to mitigate the effect (the CP filter in my case was used to do this)

Finally, thanks to Dave for organising this and congratulations to the others that took part. The only disappointment for me is that with the large number of members here there were so few entries.

I guess i better have a say on my pic ... i was taking some pics around the top of the dam and decided to go to the bottom and take one pic only of the spillway as it looked pretty hard to get right.
when i looked at it i had dark sections at either side, a bright sky, shadows under the roadway and a very bright water flow with the sunlight reflecting back at me from the sun behind me.
I pointed the camera around the whole scene [its allways set to spot] and then guessed a compromise reading.

You guys are better judges as to whether i got it right !!

Are there plans to do another one of these exercises, but perhaps with a different theme / style in mind ?