Took this photo of the old tractor up at Lostock on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the nice blue sky ended up almost white Must've had the aperture set too wide? Can't wait to use my new polarising filter.
Anyway there's 4 variations of the image below, having a bit of a play in photoshop to make part of the image black and white to see if makes the picture any better.
I'm not sure which I like best, but the "quick mask" technique to select part of an image (and then make it monochrome) will certainly be useful on some subjects.
The first one is the original, the second attachment is greyscale with brightness and contrast adjusted, and the third and fourth are the variations of the first one.
Mike, with the lighting as it was your new ND graduated filter (or Blue) would have helped tone down the sky. Another technique used is to take 2 exposures, one to correctly expose the sky and one the foreground and stack the images.
Nice pictures Mike. It's a pity about the blue sky getting over exposed. One way around it is to use fill flash. That will put more light into the darker foreground and allow you to get the correct exposure for the sky. I couldn't tell you how the light meter and flash work on your Canon, but it should be easy to get the correct settings.
The tractor is mostly red and magenta with a bit of blue. The rest of the image is green & cyan + few isolated patches of blue + red. So you're better off working on the colours separately. You don't get the halo/boundary artefact between the tractor and the surrounds that way. Only a little bit of manual (de)selection is needed for the few elements with blue & red in the background.
I've attached my GIMP tweaks with background grey, tractor grey and another with the tractor dipped in hydrochloric acid.
Have a read of this Mike, http://www.nigeldennis.com/tips_9.htm or http://www.danheller.com/tech-fillflash.html
I really don't know anything about how it works on your Canon, but it should be pretty straight forward. It will be in your camera's manual, look for TTL (Through-The-Lens) exposure control. TTL exposure means that the camera will monitor the amount of light coming through the lens from the flash and automatically switches it off when the correct exposure is made. You should also be able to reduce the output of the flash.
Thanks for links Jonathan, I actually read about it last night in a photography magazine I bought, and they had an article about fill flash (good timing).
I'll have to check the manual to see if I can reduce the intensity of the flash in the 350D.
Must've had the aperture set too wide? Can't wait to use my new polarising filter.
I was looking for something like this around my area but didn't get a chance to find anything in time for the competition.
Why are you in IT?
