Out of focus...Critique please

[starriderrick]

Terrible focus job.I'm posting this to learn from my mistakes.

I know it's not good.Please pick this apart.The sky is ?? Colors are Unedited and the image is badly out of focus.I used AF :mad2: I Wasn't paying attention.(I was looking at that sky ! } If this image was razor sharp would it have impact ??What would ideal settings be for this type of capture. The sky seems just right. But,how do I expose for the dark areas ?


Settings; F/5.6 shutter 1/160 [/COLOR] wrong ? Camera Custom W/B set at 6500K Circ. polarizer filter in place.The lense is not fast.Sigma 10-20mm 4-5.6 Again,I'm posting this to learn from my mistakes.
Rick

[Seb]

Terrible focus job.I'm posting this to learn from my mistakes.

I know it's not good.Please pick this apart.The sky is ?? Colors are Unedited and the image is badly out of focus.I used AF :mad2: I Wasn't paying attention.(I was looking at that sky ! } If this image was razor sharp would it have impact ??What would ideal settings be for this type of capture. The sky seems just right. But,how do I expose for the dark areas ?


Settings; F/5.6 shutter 1/160 [/COLOR] wrong ? Camera Custom W/B set at 6500K Circ. polarizer filter in place.The lense is not fast.Sigma 10-20mm 4-5.6 Again,I'm posting this to learn from my mistakes.
Rick

Rick,

The autofocus usually wont work in dim situations like that. It really needs good light to do its things! Since you are shooting a scene were everything is at a good distance from you, turn off the AF and simply focus manually to infinity. Your lense wasn't too slow for this, at some point dark is dark and there is nothing much to do about it.

You couldn't expose for the dark areas here, there is no light source hitting these areas and there is very little (if any) information to retrieve. Actually, I think that your exposure is fine. The sky comes out well and the others elements stand out as good silhouettes. It may worth to play with level in post processing to see what you can come up with but your exposure is ok.

I am not crazy about your second picture but the first one works well as a panorama. It would be a good picture if properly focused.

Seb

[readingr]

Rick,
The top picture needs you to change position to give the flag pole room and possibly crop the picture before the flag pole but keeping all the tree with some space around it. The whole lot is too dark and you'll need a tripod for this type of photo.

Bottom photo you need to watch the edges and the light is too close to the edge of the photo. To expose this properly you need an exposure for the lights, the foreground and the sky and then merge the three in post processing. Unless your going for a silhouette then just the sky and the lights which could be done from one RAW photo.

Hope that helps.

Roger

[Greg McCary]

Composition wise, I would have panned slightly left and would have included the cut off lamp post.

[GB1]

This shot could be sharpened. I like how the tree takes center stage. If the side objects such as the house, etc were true silhouettes I think that they'd really add to the shot. The fact that they arent goes with what I see wrong with the photo - they seem to draw attention away from the tree. The slight apparent tilt in the photo is also quite bothersome to me (bad day I guess), but that can be corrected via PP.

Try upping the contrast and seeing if you can silhouette the background objects.

GB

[starriderrick]

Thanks to all who responded.Great tips.
Rick