lukipelaa wrote:ok i've uploaded the pic so u guys can scream your heads off at me.
Hopefully, no. Just useful and friendly critique, along with a spoonful (or maybe a shovel full) of suggestions.
but what ive did was to use front sync flash
Why? What benefits do you think that using front curtain sync might have gained you?
FWIW, I think that front sync would be the default on the D80, but for an image such as this, I'm not sure what benefits or disadvantages switching to rear curtain sync might have offered.
Of course, if your only goal was to "test it out" ....
why does it look so fake?
In what way does this "look so fake" ? Could you please explain this for me, as I don't understand where you're coming from with this comment.
2nd.. the people in the foreground look so blurry. i thought mininum moving will not be caputured by the cam?
Generally, minimal movement won't be captured by the camera. What focus point had you selected? Or did you let the camera select that for you?
Looking at the EXIF, I see three items ... ISO was 1000, shutter as 30 - I'm taking that as 30 seconds, and aperture was f/22.
I'm going to ask why those specific settings? F/22 restricts, to the maximum, the quantity of light that reaches the sensor, and as a result, it throws the time you need to make this exposure out towards the long end of the timeframe, thus maximising the chances that something might go wrong. Hello Murphy!
From a purely exposure setting PoV, you could have used F/11 with a much shorter shutter speed setting, and achieved a similar result.
But that's presuming your exposure for the background - the city lights - was correct. But to me they look blown, so perhaps the baseline exposure is wrong too.
Now, you need to understand that no amount of flash from your camera, nor from any studio strobe, would help you to capture the city lights, so the first goal, I think, is to just be able to master that aspect of capturing this image. Remove the people, and the flash, from the equation, and just make an image of the city lights. F/11 as your aperture, camera on a tripod, use a remote so as to not induce any camera movement, and then shoot 0.5 secs, 1.0 sec, 2.0 secs, 4.0 secs, and 8.0 secs, all at ISO 1000 so you have a consistent starting point.
I would even, for these images, move the camera to the other side of that railing, and grab the images from there: there will not be any difference in your exposures regardless of where your camera is actually located.
In the field, use your histogram to determine which of the images is best. This will be somewhat difficult, because it will tend towards the left because there's so much darkness in the image. That will be correct, but you don't want it running off at the rh edge; that would indicate that you've blown the lights, and that's not what you're after. You want to see them, but ideally, you're looking for clarity and some element of detail.
Once you have that image - and the correct exposure settings for the background - settled, all that's needed to do is for you to bring the people back into the image. For the composition such as you've shown, select a focus point in your camera on the rh side of your viewfinder, keep the exact exposure settings that you determined as correct in the previous exercise, open your flash (don't concern yourself about front or rear curtain sync - it's irrelevant in this case) and away you go.
Let's look at that image!
another thing but on the same track.
i tried using A and S
modes for taking just the city lights... but everytime im done focusing the small round light at the bottom comes out and doesnt let me take the photo. would love help pls!
RTFM.
Yes, I know that you are, but you're reading the wrong bits. Forget about different ways of syncing - that's advanced stuff, and you don't need to know about that right now. Learn and understand the basic functions of your camera first.
Understand its basic switch settings; learn how it operates.
Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:26 am
