Toying with gopro settings to compare stills taken and your guy's high quality shots

They might have looked better on a clear day. It was hazy out kinda too

 

Looks great DS! Your photos definitely all have the same almost ominous tone to them. I like bright and colors so I'd brighten up the car/foreground, but that's just my style. However you always do an awesome job of keeping the car nicely composed compared to the background/foreground, which is always tough to do with black cars.

 

the gopro's stills are pretty solid they just dont do depth of field like a dslr. with a little editing those could be brighten up

thanks man, yea i try to do a blend of both bright/dark depending on how I took the photos haha

it can be tricky to compose the subject(car) and background just right when in post editing. one thing will change the sky but mess up how the car looks. If I have too much light in a pre photo Ill bring the exposure down and throw some light on its and balance it with black

like this one

 

That's the part I'm the most hesitant to learn. I've gotten pretty decent at taking the shots and learned a good bit how the camera works. I need to dive into the editing side of things. And that picture.... mmmmmmmm not only does it look good, but I've got a thing for evo's.

 

You should edit mine if you are bored sometime so I can see what the potential is. hopefully it will be clear out on friday so I can grab some better ones with better lighting.

 

Lol yeah ds makes a great photo editing. And that evo looks really good I like it!!

 

Yeah I normally end up with an blown out sky, but I feel like over the years I've worked towards a good balance. It doesn't hurt when you have perfect weather/sky like it was last year at Gridlife

 

thanks man

if u edit the raw files over jpegs u more range to better a good photo. since the jpegs are compressed images. alot of people just shoot and dont edit well maybe they'll run the images thru a generic editor or something basic.

if i get some time maybe ill dabble haha

yea that evo is pure sex

when i shoot photos the white balance is off and they are never very sharp or have the right amount of contrast, some do but i just fix them in post hehe i just use Game shark and get all the cheat codes

thats very true when the elements play in your favor. Yea the sky is always blown out looking since the camera cant capture like how we would see it. luckily i can save it in post as long i ddint blow out the image too much haha

 

Switching to RAW was the greatest thing I've done since I started shooting. The flexibity you have in post is just insane compared to jpeg. I definitely recommend it to everyone. I don't even have fancy software either, just Photoshop Elements 11 which is very basic in terms of capability.

 

true story, i use Camera Raw plugin on PS 5 haha its a basic version of lightroom i think.

but it does what i need it to play with raws

 

How much the basic photoshop or those programs you guys are using run for?

 

my teacher hooked me up back in 09-10 with cs5 haha

i plan to buy Lightroom soon since i make some money now

i think its like $150~

 

Photoshop elements which is very basic is like $100 or so. Best deal right now is just to subscribe to the creative cloud and get all the various photoshop programs for $10 a month.

 

I can never get the sky and car in the same picture. Camera wont focus on both. If i try to get the sky the car suffers and when I try to get the car in focus the sky suffers.

 

If you want both to be "in focus" you'll have to shoot at a very narrow aperture like f/22, in which you'll need a lot of light. But if you're just talking about the camera physically focusing on both at the same time it depends on how close you are to your subject and the focus settings on your camera.

 

Thanks man ill have to give that a try. So this image you shot at around f/22?

 

cant have two main focus points. u can in post blend two images or like mentioned narrow the aperture down.

I was watching Sleepy hollow and the camera was pretty much focused on the main guy on the left of the screen(foreground) and then someone walked in in the background with just as sharp focus.

how they do it u ask, haha they masked off some of the video and featured it in post to have both in focus at the same time.

foreground and background focus together as one

 

I just want to shoot some pictures like the one above. I've tried to set the f stop before and didn't have much luck.

 

Cobalt ss by MTR01 Photography, on Flickr

 

I Decided that I'll move these photos that I was gonna post here to my top one to compare some stuffs.

 

its a distance thing, the closer you are the more chance for some bookeh. that looks like a well lite day photo and he could have shot it at f/8 with shutter of like 1/250 and it would look like that and post editing to bring the sky if it just looked white on the camera


see those came out pretty nice

 

This summer hopefully I have some free time so I can toy around with video/photo editing

 

I see. Well it will just take some practice then

However I've seen your pictures even on a cloudy day and you manage to get the sky, is that all in the editing aspect?

 

Nope f/8 and 1/250 shutter speed. Realistically your camera is probably going to auto set itself at the widest aperture possible. Not sure what camera you use but if it's probably something like f/3.5 or f/4.5 to start. If you go lower than that, and like DS said based off distance, you end up with bokeh (or the blurred background). I love to shoot really wide at f/1.8 or f/2 to get some great bokeh going, but sometimes its impossible if it's a super sunny day.

This is at f/2.2. Shooting at that wide gives you the nice blurred foreground and background and to me makes the subject pop quite a bit more



Whereas this photo is at f/8. Granted it's not a super narrow aperture; however you do see that the foreground and background are much more focused as with the subject.

 

Yeah my lens is f3.5 I believe. So to shoot that wide I would need a new lens or would it be possible to get a pretty wide shot with f3.5? I try to shoot in manual but I haven't fully grasped the full understanding of the elements(shutter speed, iso, aperture) and how they respond to one another.

Also are those free handed or do you use a tripod?