First Snow Mountain Photos

[outofline]

Most were shot by me with a cheap quick shoot Casio Exilim EX-Z700 7MP, The two (Race 1 Race 2) were shot by my 18 year old son with my Panasonic fz20 5mp.

Full Album:
http://s857.photobucket.com/albums/a...prod/Scenery/?

[outofline]

I know they were shot with a cheap casio one click but they are that bad? Any critique? Usually I shoot with my Panasonic FZ20 but I was letting my son shoot with that!

[caleb]

It's a lot to digest in one post (12 photos!). Generally, there's no clear subject and the ground of forests like this aren't photogenic and quite distracting. Out of all of these, I'd only keep #4 and #9 maybe.

[Anbesol]

agreed with caleb - theres some major CA and highlight issues in most of them: blown out highlights and major blue/purple fringing, all of them are overexposed. The focus kills a few of the shots too such as the first.

In the first one - all of the snow and sky is completely overexposed and has CA surrounding those hotspots, the focus should have been placed at the closest object in the scene in this shot, it was placed in the very back of the scene.

12 photo's is a bit much to critique.

[jetrim]

8 & 9 are fairly decent but as the others said a dozen photos at once is WAY too many to seriously critique.

[EOSThree]

They are not all that bad. There are a lot of them. It's not always followed, but the guidelines for the critique forum are to post one photo for critique. It's much easier to concentrate on one photo that it is looking at a dozen. With a dozen I'm afraid all you'll get is a general critique.

Many appear to be overexposed, that is probably due to a lot of dark in the photo so the P&S camera is exposing in general and lightening up the frame to average exposure. I am disappointed there isn't more snow in shots of the first snow. If this snow happened last night getting out a little earlier, before the snow fell off the trees, would have yielded much better results.

I think #9 is the best of the lot. It could use a rotation to the right (the aspens are all leaning left) and would have been much better if the aspens were farther along in their color change. It could use a better foreground subject, maybe closer to the aspen grove with them being the foreground or maybe a cleaner rock or if there is a pond or a stream in the area.

[caleb]

Looking back, I don't think our advice is general or "here's how to improve ... step 1.." so...

You're on the right track. You are looking for things to take pictures of and unique views/angles/whatever. These aren't pictures of trees in the dead center of the frame for instance. What I do before/after shooting some type of subject is jump over to a popular photosharing site and do a few searches about the thing (in this case maybe "forest bridge" or "snowy mountain" etc) and see what I like and don't like about the photos that come up. Then it's a matter of keeping out the bad and creating the good qualities. For instance... I could maybe look up waterfalls. I see some photos with the water too "frozen" I see some photos too blown out I see some photos under exposed I see some photos that weren't put on a tripod etc. It just helps me know what mistakes to look for as I'm taking my own photos.

It would probably be really good to learn how camera expose and how they work. You should (at some point) know a little about exposure: ISO-speed, shutter speed, and aperture. So, what they are and how they affect the photos. Then you'll get an idea why your camera is exposing incorrectly for what you want. At that point, you can use manual mode (if you have it) or meter the camera differently to get the things exposed how you want them.

Do you use a tripod yet? Even a cheap one may do wonders (I'm not saying these photos need them, but tripods are incredible)

[Anbesol]

Snow is a hard element in photography because its so white, bright, and reflective. Unless you meter it very particularly you will overexpose the snow, but most point and shoots don't have the dynamic range capability as SLR, so snow becomes even that much harder. No less, there is still way too much CA in some of the photos, adding a polarizing filter or neutral density will help (not eliminate, but help) CA issues.