Opinions please
- Thread starter m7ammed
- 20 comments
- 977 views
- 3,710
- Huntsville, Alabama.
- LEGION138
GilesGuthrie
Staff Emeritus
- 11,038
- Edinburgh, UK
- CMDRTheDarkLord
I shoot everything RAW as well, and then adjust in post-production.
I like the shots, but I think that the speckle highlights around the street lights in #2 are quite distracting. I wonder if it's diffraction off dust on the lens elements. I also think that it's a shame that the BMW is being cut in half by the tail-light trails. It's a nice idea, and I generally like the shots, but those are my comments. #2 is my favourite.
I like the shots, but I think that the speckle highlights around the street lights in #2 are quite distracting. I wonder if it's diffraction off dust on the lens elements. I also think that it's a shame that the BMW is being cut in half by the tail-light trails. It's a nice idea, and I generally like the shots, but those are my comments. #2 is my favourite.
- 1,102
You can do that or you can just use the on camera white balance. If you still have your manual, read up on it as it's pretty damn important. Usually for night shots I set my white balance to preset and use my own. Press the WB button down and turn the dial until it says PRE. Let go, and then hold the preset button again until it blinks it blinks on the top LCD; this is when you fire off a shot (make sure it's properly metered). If the camera was able to set a custom wb then it will say good, if not it will say no good (oh no **** eh?). If the colours are still whack hold a white sheet of paper or anything white infront of the camera so that it can calibrate itself properly, but usually presetting off the scene works. Read your manual; it's a big help.
- 5,082
- Panama City, FL
White balance is pretty tough with street lights; they emit a VERY narrow spectrum. The foreground is sodium lamps, the background looks like mercury vapor light, they come out a bit green, anyway. If you'd balanced white for the foreground, who know what the background would have done, and I don't know how you would have balanced for the background.
OTOH, the yellow color emphasizes the street nature of the shot to me. I could wish some of the weird reflections didn't exist, and that there was no red through the car. I would like to see a car with the background lights, no foreground traffic, but that would mean a gap in traffic, which you can't control, and a faster shutter speed to fit that gap, which you might not be able to explose. It wouldn't seem like much to ask, for people to leave you be for 30 seconds, does it?
Is that a filter screen making the starburst effect? Maybe it's the cause of those dot streams in front of the car.
OTOH, the yellow color emphasizes the street nature of the shot to me. I could wish some of the weird reflections didn't exist, and that there was no red through the car. I would like to see a car with the background lights, no foreground traffic, but that would mean a gap in traffic, which you can't control, and a faster shutter speed to fit that gap, which you might not be able to explose. It wouldn't seem like much to ask, for people to leave you be for 30 seconds, does it?
Is that a filter screen making the starburst effect? Maybe it's the cause of those dot streams in front of the car.
- 1,565
- Dammam, Saudi Arabia
- m7ammed84
without traffic
, 2nd one has one so little traffic as you can see there is line on the roadthere is this the same idea as the 2nd one but with much less traffic
I really don't know what the yeallo thing is as it should in all the pics that have traffic in them for some reason , as you can see teh ones without traffic doesn't have them so it doesn't seem to be dirt , maybe its an effect of the lights ?
GilesGuthrie
Staff Emeritus
- 11,038
- Edinburgh, UK
- CMDRTheDarkLord
The starburst is what happens when you expose point lights for a long time with a narrow aperture.
I think that these are clean shots, and I wonder if you're realistically going to make them a whole lot better in camera. I would be reaching for Photoshop to fix the strange orange dots around the car.
- 23,800
- Philippines
I think those orange dots are reflections from the streetlights. You might want to try a shorter exposure, keeping the "streaks" in the background and making sure no cars go through the foreground during your shot.
Lovely background, nice clean car... try to take more liberties in shooting, though. Move around a bit and take more pics!
Lovely background, nice clean car... try to take more liberties in shooting, though. Move around a bit and take more pics!
- 3,710
- Huntsville, Alabama.
- LEGION138
Even if you don't get the WB correct in the camera and you shot it in jpeg format you can still fix it in Photoshop, just treat it like a colorcast issue and 15 second later your done. It may still have a slight tint to it but they usually turn out much better than the originals. Here's one of yours with most of the wb problem fixed, also cropped.
GilesGuthrie
Staff Emeritus
- 11,038
- Edinburgh, UK
- CMDRTheDarkLord
Even if you don't get the WB correct in the camera and you shot it in jpeg format you can still fix it in Photoshop, just treat it like a colorcast issue and 15 second later your done. It may still have a slight tint to it but they usually turn out much better than the originals. Here's one of yours with most of the wb problem fixed, also cropped.
See, in my opinion, you've altered the colouring of the whole image. The car was shot under sodium lights, therefore there is an orange cast to it, because the light source is really truly orange.
This isn't a white-balance issue. White balance is how you as a photographer need to compensate for the fact that the human eye WB's different vaguely-white light sources automatically and subconsciously. Sodium lights are never colour-corrected by the human brain because they're so far off white that the brain doesn't bother. It's the same for when you walk into a room that's lit entirely in green or blue, or whatever colour that isn't white.
Now, I don't disagree that what you've done with the image can be considered a creative decision, I don't think that you can criticise the photographer for the fact that his image is orange when it was shot under orange light.
Don't take this personally, it's just a pet peeve of mine, where people immediately call a colour cast a white balance issue, ignoring the actual colour of the light source itself.
- 5,082
- Panama City, FL
White balance is an effect of color temperature of your lighting. If your camera is set for sunlight and you take it indoors, everything goes all reddish. If you're set for indoors and go out into the sun, everything goes all blue-ish. Back in the film days you bought daylight film or tungsten film to get the correct color balance, or put a filter on your lens (costing a stop or 2) to correct. With electronics, it's done in the magic parts inside the camera.
It's generally assumed that if your white is actually perceived as white, all the other colors will be correct, although colors exist that defy electronic capture.
It's generally assumed that if your white is actually perceived as white, all the other colors will be correct, although colors exist that defy electronic capture.
- 3,710
- Huntsville, Alabama.
- LEGION138
Well i was just trying to give our mate here a tip to help repair some of his shattered dreams with some of his photos. I see what you mean with the bulbs and all these issues. So really if you don't want it to look like total bloody rubbish you must do something about the color cast, but you can treat WB problem photos the same way and fix them, what i was trying to share with him. Reality is not all things will be perfect and if you cant make them perfect try your best to fix the issue, so the best fix is to fix the wb\color cast in photoshop if all else fails.And yes i did alter the coloring in the entire photo,i did a quickie just to inspire him . You could mask out the lights that are in the far that have the green hue and take the green hue out and so forth and so forth to get a nice equal picture. Here is a link for a vague description of how to help fix some of this http://digitalsecrets.net/secrets/iCC2.html. for more in depth help just google color cast or white balance correction using photoshop. I start off with using levels and telling levels what SHOULD be black, white and neutral colors then adjust the levels manually from that point. Or you can also use the newly added color filters option that adobe added in CS2, either way will help allot.
