angra_mainyu

(personal attack deleted) - jms

No red filter used. The infrared filter used was completely opaque to visible wavelengths. More like a black filter!

Please rate and comment this. Thanks.

Wow, you can get your DC240 to focus on something! I'm envious. My wife's 240 struggles in bright sunlight... Nice pic, very graphically strong.

Sadly, lacking in sharpness, and with a lot of RGB noise in the shadow areas - typical of a low end digicam in low light. Shame, otherwise this would have been a lovely shot - the expression is perfect, and the composition is nice and tight. Conversion to b/w hides the annoying colour of the noise (it just looks like grain), but not much can be done about the shake, unfortunately.

You really should brace the camera against something before taking shots in the dark - the bad motion blur really ruins what looks like an otherwise interesting and colourful pic.

Not sure what's going on with that tree, but it's just getting in the way for me! Without it this would have been a nice symmetrical shot of a beautiful mountain and its reflection.

This is very soothing, my only comment is that I would have cropped out the buildings to the bottom and kept the image simple - just the main building and a surrounding of pure sky. Very nice shot.

To me this goes nowhere; the frame is lopped off, with only a curve visible at the top; the various patterns in the gate are cut off, also leading the eye out of the frame, and the verticals are angled. This feels, to me, more like an exercise in exposure than a final image. As an abstract it is too busy; as an image of a gate it lacks the right content.

Hi, thanks for the comments. All digital cameras are IR sensitive to some degree, but they all have hot mirrors fitted to filter the majority of IR light out to avoid polluting visible light shots. However, some models, especially those using Sony's 2.1 MP chip, are able to take IR shots when an IR filter is fitted over the taking lens. This is not just IR effect, it is true near IR sensitivity, just like Kodak HIE film, but smoother grained and without the guesswork required for exposure! Even better, my Olympus C2020 is so sensitive that I can handhold it for IR shots in good light despite the 7 stop reduction in light with the opaque filter fitted! This shot was handheld at the 35mm end of the zoom at 1/50th second.

 

The grey shadow sadly was unavoidable - the scene was just next to a small woodland, and the low sun that makes the picture so dramatic also cast many tree shadows that were difficult to avoid including! Many angles were attempted, but none were quite as punchy as this one.

 

As a sidenote, the visible light version of the pic was actually very mundane!

This is not very nice, I'm afraid. The pose looks awkward, and the model has a red nose (not her fault, she's having a bath!) The composition of your crop feels cramped, and the angle feels a little disorienting.

 

The watercolour effect is just in the way, and does nothing to improve upon what is quite an ordinary shot. I've checked out some of your other pics, and there are some great ones in there. Forget doing special effects and concentrate on taking more great photos!

Too tightly cropped, I feel, and I also would liked to have seen her face. If a sense of anonymity was wanted, then it should have been cropped at the neck, not halfway up her face! Tonally it is OK, but I would like to see either a bit more contrast or a more high-key approach. As it is it doesn't really stand out. Nudes are *very* hard to shoot well, though, so don't worry about it. Keep practising!

I love the way you have filled the frame with this lovely old tree, and the warm light faling on it is a great contrast to the cool, deep blue of the sky. I think the snow in the corner adds context to the image, and central composition, contrary to most compositional rules buffs beliefs, often works well with trees. My only criticism is that I would like to have seen more of the shape of the tree, you know, the edges of the branches, but I understand how getting a different viewpoint can be tricky with trees!

I rated this rather highly because I love the splash of colour and the subtle tangle of branches - the light is nice, and the composition is very off the wall (no pun intended!). I liked it, anyway!

My reason for the low rating I have given this shot is that a) the highlight areas are completely blown out, and glare an ugly white across the underdone shadow areas - T-Max is very picky about exposure, and this shot seems out of its tonal range to do justice - that and the camera's metering has likely been fooled by the wide contrast in the scene; and b) it is not sharp. No element of the image seems to be quite sharp enough to be a focal point. This is not necessarily your fault, but cheap zoom lenses that are supplied with cameras are rarely anything to write home about with regards to sharpness. You have an excellent camera to find cheap, sharp lenses for, though, so don't panic, invest £25 or so in an SMC Takumar 50mm f1.7 A and see what a difference it makes. The flare of your zoom also badly affects the tree branches that are against the sky; notice how the branches seem to disintegrate against the bright background? Again, because zooms contain more glass, this sort of flare is more of a problem than with prime lenses.

 

Don't despair, it is a nice idea for a shot - the composition is fine, but experiment with altering the exposure manually, and try out a cheap Pentax manual focus prime lens.

...then please leave a comment explaining WHY instead of just giving it a low rating. I can only learn from my mistakes when I know what they are!!