B&W of sydney

[TheBlueFish]

Howdy Guys...

Day trip in sydney and took a few photos... B&W made in photoshop...

Tech Specs
Canon 300D
Tamron 28-200 XR

Thoughts?

[gahspidy]

Hey TheBlueFish,
I like the composition on the first shot. Nice skyline, buildings straight with the frame, not too much foreground.
The second shot is ok as far as frame and comp.
The last one I am not feeling the composition is good. It seems too centered somehow, and the spans roadway is cutting out the interesting cityscape in the bg.
All of these images, at least on my monitor, appear to be too dark. They are also lacking in sharpness and detail and far to contrasty.
I think some levels adjustment and a bit of unsharpmask will go a long way here.
Sydney looks like a great city, hope I get a chance to visit one day.

[Chunk]

Howdy Guys...

Day trip in sydney and took a few photos... B&W made in photoshop...

Tech Specs
Canon 300D
Tamron 28-200 XR

Thoughts?

Very nice skyline shot. How did you do the BW conversion?

[TheBlueFish]

Hey TheBlueFish,
I like the composition on the first shot. Nice skyline, buildings straight with the frame, not too much foreground.
The second shot is ok as far as frame and comp.
The last one I am not feeling the composition is good. It seems too centered somehow, and the spans roadway is cutting out the interesting cityscape in the bg.
All of these images, at least on my monitor, appear to be too dark. They are also lacking in sharpness and detail and far to contrasty.
I think some levels adjustment and a bit of unsharpmask will go a long way here.
Sydney looks like a great city, hope I get a chance to visit one day.

Agreed. It's hard to get the right brightness. My LCD tends to make things look a tad bright. Have to check it off against a CRT later.

I guess i went a little too far in the conversion. I was looking for a contrasty sky. The way to get good control over the B&W conversion is to use the channel mixer in PS. You can then specify the contribution of the various color channels to produce the final B&W. In this way... it's allows you to simulate the application of color filters in B&W photography.

What about contrast? Is it a little too far? Admittedly some detail is lost of the light areas and dark areas tend to be a little too dark.

[Peter_AUS]

You know getting a good shot of the Harbour Bridge is very difficult as vantage points to it are limited to only a few places. Getting the shot with the city landscape and believe me, that is just a small fraction of the actual city is difficult.

Yes the images are dark and the detail also looks soft on my monitor as well. But I think you saved them as Adobe RGB, they could do with some Image adjustments in the shadows and some unsharpen mask applied as well, this will help with the softness of the images. Get to see you got some with clouds in them, there haven't been a lot of those over Sydney in a while, certainly not with any water left in them after travelling over from Western Australia. For those who don't know, Sydney is in a drought at present, have been for about 4 years now, the dams are at their lowest levels since recorded times started and are dropping every day. Water restrictions are on the increase and they are talking about putting the price of water up to induce restrictions on use (go figure). The rest of the state we live in New South Wales is at about 94% drought as well, so most of the state and doesn't look like improving in anytime too soon either.

Believe me and I have lived in Sydney most of my 50 years, these are very well done, compositionally and without distortion.

A nice area to get a shot of the Harbour Bridge is Lady Macquaries Chair, but parking there is herrendous now, but you can get the Opera House on Bennelong Point in as well that way. Or Even from above Garden Island (our Naval Base here in Sydney).

I miss living in the city, it was so convient to living and getting to great places. Slowly over the years I have moved further and further away from the city and now live closer to Parramatta which is about 35kms drive west of the city.

[gahspidy]

Agreed. It's hard to get the right brightness. My LCD tends to make things look a tad bright. Have to check it off against a CRT later.

I guess i went a little too far in the conversion. I was looking for a contrasty sky. The way to get good control over the B&W conversion is to use the channel mixer in PS. You can then specify the contribution of the various color channels to produce the final B&W. In this way... it's allows you to simulate the application of color filters in B&W photography.

What about contrast? Is it a little too far? Admittedly some detail is lost of the light areas and dark areas tend to be a little too dark.

Yes, thats the way to do the B&W convert, channels mixer. Try applying a multiply layer to the original image at about 35 % opacity. This enhances and for some reason, brings out the clouds much like a polarizing filter but without the blue color added. Then convert and mix. They look fine now all needs is a levels adjustment to bring out the shadows a bit.

[TheBlueFish]

Hey Peter,

Not a Sydney sider myself (from melb). I totally understand the water restrictions... similar impositions are in melb as well.

I think it looks soft mainly because the images were down sampled (not in ps). Perhaps I should do a 100% crop to give you guys an idea about the detail. At 100% res things look sharp.

Gary,

What do you mean "apply a mulitply at 35% opacity". Whould this amount duplicating the layer and setting it's blend mode to multiply and opacity to 35%?

[gahspidy]

Hey Peter,

Not a Sydney sider myself (from melb). I totally understand the water restrictions... similar impositions are in melb as well.

I think it looks soft mainly because the images were down sampled (not in ps). Perhaps I should do a 100% crop to give you guys an idea about the detail. At 100% res things look sharp.

Gary,

What do you mean "apply a mulitply at 35% opacity". Whould this amount duplicating the layer and setting it's blend mode to multiply and opacity to 35%?

Yes, 35% or less. Blend mode to multiply. Helps bring out clouds and creates a nice mood to the lighting at times. It does darken an image somewhat, but I would do it before converting and then increase the levels to get it back to looking properly exposed, then convert.