the crew

[stuntboy]

damn gray skies, the start of this summer is just like last...meet 'the crew' a great bunch of 'guys'..comments ?

[IMG]http://**********/the_crew.jpg[/IMG]

todd

[jar_e]

Todd,

Love it. Blow it up and put it on your wall, minus the sky colors, this is a great shot! I love it!

Jared

[stuntboy]

thx jared, im waiting for the blue skies, sunny when im at work overcast and rainy all weekend.

[jar_e]

Ah, that's life for ya

[Overbeyond]

Excellent. And I don't think this photograph is missing a blue sky at all. The grey sky to me adds an interesting backdrop for these chaps.
Beautiful catch.
Tom

[Knight]

Superb capture love everything about it , color composition etc etc

[McMadCow]

Todd, I'm afraid I'm going to have to dissent from the general opinion. I try not to rail against digital too much on here, but I think the drawbacks of the medium are really apparent in an image like this. The high contrast of the sunlight hitting the birds' backs shows up and creates a wierd effect when butted up against the dark grey of the sky. Even on my crappy monitor here at work, I can see unnatural-looking halo effects around every single one of the birds. This could be reduced a bit with a better compression quality, but all in all the image looks too much like a video capture to me. Sorry. I'd really like to like this picture more since you really caught a fantastic moment but its technical shortcomings really blow it for me. Chances are I'd never even notice these issues (or notice it less)against a bright blue sky, but such is life and you couldn't do anything about that.

[Overbeyond]

"Even on my crappy monitor here at work, I can see unnatural-looking halo effects around every single one of the birds."

Interesting. I have had another look and I cannot notice these halo effects on my monitor anyway.
Anybody else notice them?

[McMadCow]

"Even on my crappy monitor here at work, I can see unnatural-looking halo effects around every single one of the birds."

Interesting. I have had another look and I cannot notice these halo effects on my monitor anyway.
Anybody else notice them?

I also saw them on my very good monitor at home. Perhaps "halo" is a poor word to use. Every one of the birds has an unnatural-looking pixel-or-two border around them that is neither the color of the birds or the color of the sky. It's a very typical effect that you can spot in high-contrast areas of many digital pictures. It can be seen plain as day here without even searching for it. That really isn't my biggest issue with this image although it does detract from it in my opinion. My biggest issue is the overall digital look that this image exhibits. Nothing is exceptionally sharp or saturated, and it's got a general "flat" feel to it. My impression is that Stuntboy used a camera with a digital zoom and got his framing this way. I could be wrong of course, but it looks that way to me. Maybe he can chime in and clue us in as to what equipment and settings he was using at the time.

[Arctirus]

Although I didn't notice it at first glance I believe McMadCow is right, any black area on the birds is outlined in white against the sky, especially in the "finger" feathers. I opened it in PS and did an unsharp mask to see if image quality would improve but just the opposite, it pronounced the outline even more.

This being said I don't think it's a [i]bad[/b] photo. The birds form and interesting formation but the lighting is a quite flat. I played around with greyscale in channel mixer and was able to see some better mono results for this photo.

Just out of curiosity what did you shoot this with? How much did you crop it?

[stuntboy]

this was shot with a canon 300d with a 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM
exposure:.....1/1000
aperture:.......f/5.6
iso:..............200
focal:...........220mm
heres a small version of the original untouched...

[IMG]http://**********/the_crew_original.jpg[/IMG]

dont forget i am a beginner only have been using an slr for 3months now and im colourblind so sometimes its hard for me to see things you might see....thanks

todd

[Overbeyond]

I have to admit that on very close inspection you are right and I do now notice what you are referring to; especially in the black areas.But it's so damn minimal and it does not detract, for me, one little bit from the overall effort. You have a sharp eye in fairness.
Tom

[Arctirus]

haha, those lines aren't there at all in the larger version. It looks like you got pwned on your "film is better" diatribe McMadCow.

No prob stuntboy, I'm not saying it's a crappy photo at all. It's just when someone posts something in the "critique" forum I try to give an honest critique and point out the good and the bad, not just fawn over ever photo and say "That looks wonderful".


I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of doing a greyscale conversion; I like the results.

[McMadCow]

haha, those lines aren't there at all in the larger version. It looks like you got pwned on your "film is better" diatribe McMadCow.

Actually, Arctirus... as I had mentioned before, it looked to me like the image was probably digitally zoomed. Turns out I was right, didn't it? Those lines are inherently there in the larger version but don't appear so predominantly until the cropped area is enlarged. Just like film, zooming in on a digital image can reveal imperfections. You know as well as I do that those imperfections in film don't include magical bright lines that don't actually exist in the real world.

[stuntboy]

i never said you said it was a 'crappy' photo, I do understand what critique means and thats why i posted it here. i never commented on your first critique. so i dont know where your last post is coming from.

todd

[Arctirus]

i never said you said it was a 'crappy' photo, I do understand what critique means and thats why i posted it here. i never commented on your first critique. so i dont know where your last post is coming from.

todd

Oh, ok. I said that in response to: "dont forget i am a beginner only have been using an slr for 3months now and im colourblind so sometimes its hard for me to see things you might see....thanks"

[Arctirus]

Actually, Arctirus... as I had mentioned before, it looked to me like the image was probably digitally zoomed. Turns out I was right, didn't it? Those lines are inherently there in the larger version but don't appear so predominantly until the cropped area is enlarged. Just like film, zooming in on a digital image can reveal imperfections. You know as well as I do that those imperfections in film don't include magical bright lines that don't actually exist in the real world.

It has nothing to do with the photo being enlarged, it's due to poor jpg compression. Open the second image Todd posted and zoom in as far as you can on the areas where the lines are seen in the first photo. You will find that they do not exist in the second. It's not the imperfections of the digital camera it's revealing.

[McMadCow]

It has nothing to do with the photo being enlarged, it's due to poor jpg compression. Open the second image Todd posted and zoom in as far as you can on the areas where the lines are seen in the first photo. You will find that they do not exist in the second. It's not the imperfections of the digital camera it's revealing.

I still do see them. As you would expect, not nearly as much as in the blown-up version, but they're still visible in the high-contrast areas. Such imperfections are almost never visible in the fullsize original version from a good digital camera, but zooming in still usually reveals them. Once you've zoomed and cropped and then converted to JPEG, they stand out even more.
Heck, you've sent me 2-3MB images from your wedding that show the same thing when you zoom in.
I wasn't desparaging Stuntboy for using a digital camera but rather for allowing the image to suffer as a result of its drawbacks.

[Arctirus]

blah blah just bashing digital blah blah

Ah, I see

[McMadCow]

Ah, I see

BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH

That's what I hear when you talk. Nothing else.

[mdmc]

this was shot with a canon 300d with a 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM
exposure:.....1/1000
aperture:.......f/5.6
iso:..............200
focal:...........220mm
heres a small version of the original untouched...

[IMG]http://**********/the_crew_original.jpg[/IMG]

dont forget i am a beginner only have been using an slr for 3months now and im colourblind so sometimes its hard for me to see things you might see....thanks

todd

Todd,
This is an exccelent shot, The birds are all very sharp and the grey sky does not bother me as it is, but you can chage it to anything you like.
I do notice a bit of an outline in your original post, but that seems to have been taken care of.
Great shot,
Mark.

[erich_vasconcelos]

Your original posted picture is very interesting, and I like the subject. It would be grat if you coud crop a litte of the left side and extend the sky at the right, as it seem natural for our eyes to move from left to right. And beause the subject are closed to the edge of the frame, I looks "compressed", as less harmonical.

One more tip: if your birds are flying to from left to right, they are "returning", and it induces safety. If they fly to the opposite direction, it gives a sence uncertanty to the subject. All that I got it from my drama theory classes at school, and serves photography very well!