Mallards

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Nature Photography Image Critique : One Thread



-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), November 02, 1998

Answers

Coyote Hills Park (Fremont, California), November 1997 Nikon FM2n, 80-200mm f2.8D(N), Kodak Elite II 100 hand-held, probably 200mm @ f5.6, 1/250 sec scanned with a Microtek E6 and an upside-down lightbox

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), November 02, 1998.

nice moment, but i've got a question to how you scanned it. did you just place the slide on the scanner and then the lightbox on top of that? very cool, rather low res but good enough! I'm gona try it! tim

-- Tim Tregubov (timofei@cyberportal.net), November 02, 1998.

The one in the background is a little bit distracting but otherwise a great photo with a nice blue/golden diagonal in the water.

-- (andreas@physio.unr.edu), November 03, 1998.

Tim, you have the right idea: stick your slide between the glass platen of a flatbed scanner and the face of a lightbox. I've gotten similar results with a high-end UMAX scanner and transparency adapter in the lab, none of which really replaces a decent slide scanner.

This isn't the place to talk too much about this, but I'll have a raw TIF of a sharp slide on my web site for a while to check out (sorry not permanent, my quota is only 15 megs).

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), November 03, 1998.


Yeah, this shot catches a nice moment but the color seems to be a bit dull. The other bird in the background is an obvious distraction. I think this would have been a nicer image had it been a vertical including the reflection. The problem is that you are preparing for a horizontal shot and suddenly the bird "stands up" to flap its wings and there is usually not enough time to switch to vertical.

-- Shun Cheung (shun@worldnet.att.net), November 03, 1998.


Thanks for the comments.

Andreas, good call on the gold-blue line, it's my favorite part that the colorful male is in the blue section and the brown female is in the golden part.

Shun, I forgot to use "auto levels", so I've replaced the image with one adjusted a little to try to match the original slide. I'd kept the image bright because I was losing the shadow detail in the back and throat due to the limited density range of my whimpy scanning method, but this image is closer to the original and I guess the colors are nicer.

I agree on trying to catch the reflection, but I sort of like the horizontal composition. I was about to shoot at 80mm (hence the exposure settings), but he reared up so I quickly zoomed, focused, and shot, cutting off his reflection. I tend to use my zooms at the extremes of their range without thinking when caught by surprise, a bad habit, thanks for pointing it out.

As for the duck in the background, I've gotten mixed responses. I personally like it because of the way the respective colors work with the reflection in the water. My friend likes it because it shows both sexes. Most everyone else thinks it's distracting :)

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), November 04, 1998.


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