| Author |
Message |
ashrafrafdzi
Joined: 19 Mar 2012
Posts: 5
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:13 am
|  |
Hi,
I'm totally a newbie here. Working on to submit the first 10.
Will this be good go?
| Description: |
|
| Filesize: |
145.82 KB |
| Viewed: |
824 Time(s) |
|
| Description: |
| F/8 | 1/40 sec. | ISO-200 | 50 mm |
|
| Filesize: |
58.26 KB |
| Viewed: |
824 Time(s) |
|
|
|
ruxpriencdiam
Joined: 07 May 2009
Posts: 26270
Location: Third Stone from the Sun
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:19 am
| |
It is OOF and the BG needs to be white not gray and cleaned up.
|
|
ashrafrafdzi
Joined: 19 Mar 2012
Posts: 5
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:53 am
| |
Thanks!
Now, OOF aside;
background correction -- previously it was gray-ish. I use Level to correct it. It is white now, I believe?
| Description: |
|
| Filesize: |
48.73 KB |
| Viewed: |
807 Time(s) |
|
|
|
hhltdave5
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 24083
Location: Our Stock, Food & Portrait photography books at www.rindersmithphotography.com
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:58 am
| |
It's not bad but as Barry says you do have focus problems which I think in a large part is due to the shallow depth of field. Yes, the background needs to be cleaned up.
Some other things to mention. Watch the food that you choose to use in your shots. Look at the stems of the peppers? Some are not looking their best, brown, dried out and different lengths.
Pick the best food you can. If the ends of the stems are brown and dried and those are the only ones available then cut off the end. But, always look for the best ones. When I do my food photography classes part of it is going to a store and learning how to shop for food.
When it comes to the depth of field and focus when using a shallow DOF it is often best to keep as much of the objects of the shot at an equal distance to the lens. Notice how you have the stem on the left further forward than the one on the right or in the middle. If you have a shallow DOF something is going to be OOF where it should be in focus. Keeping everything as close to the same distance as possible will help keep things in focus.
|
|
ashrafrafdzi
Joined: 19 Mar 2012
Posts: 5
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:25 am
| |
Wow! I didn't think on the details to that extend! Thank you! That was very in-depth.
However, I still didn't really get what you meant by I need to clean up the background(?). Its not only to make it clean white, no?
|
|
hhltdave5
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 24083
Location: Our Stock, Food & Portrait photography books at www.rindersmithphotography.com
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:43 am
| |
| ashrafrafdzi wrote: | Wow! I didn't think on the details to that extend! Thank you! That was very in-depth.
However, I still didn't really get what you meant by I need to clean up the background(?). Its not only to make it clean white, no? |
When it comes to food photography I always preach over and over again to watch the details. If you pay attention to them you can turn a good shot into a great shot. When I do my class I even go so far as to have people pick out good fruits and vegetables just by touch and smell along without looking at them.
As far as the background goes you did clean it up pretty well. Cleaning up just means to get rid of the gray areas making sure it is pure white. What you have here is an on white (with shadows) instead of an isolation (without shadows) but the outer areas need to be pure white.
I took your cleaned up shot and did something to check how good a job you did. All of the little black areas are places that you missed cleaning up. Once again a detail :)
| Description: |
|
| Filesize: |
69.88 KB |
| Viewed: |
773 Time(s) |
|
|
|
jhuls
Joined: 02 Jan 2012
Posts: 1046
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:16 am
| |
I think for the most part things look good for this idea, I think others have mentioned this but it's not that none of the photo was in focus and it was all oof but your DOF was so shallow. If you are going to do a shallow DOF which isn't recommended on your first ten. Make sure the things farthest in the front are in focus.
|
|
ajancso
Joined: 18 May 2009
Posts: 1891
Location: Right Behind You
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:33 am
| |
| jhuls wrote: | | I think for the most part things look good for this idea, I think others have mentioned this but it's not that none of the photo was in focus and it was all oof but your DOF was so shallow. If you are going to do a shallow DOF which isn't recommended on your first ten. Make sure the things farthest in the front are in focus. |
Hmmm.... If it is a choice of either or (which is not necessarily the case), I would rather have the fruit (red part) in focus than the stem.
|
|
ashrafrafdzi
Joined: 19 Mar 2012
Posts: 5
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:44 am
| |
| hhltdave5 wrote: | When it comes to food photography I always preach over and over again to watch the details. If you pay attention to them you can turn a good shot into a great shot. When I do my class I even go so far as to have people pick out good fruits and vegetables just by touch and smell along without looking at them.
As far as the background goes you did clean it up pretty well. Cleaning up just means to get rid of the gray areas making sure it is pure white. What you have here is an on white (with shadows) instead of an isolation (without shadows) but the outer areas need to be pure white.
I took your cleaned up shot and did something to check how good a job you did. All of the little black areas are places that you missed cleaning up. Once again a detail :) |
To get this kind of preaching, I will always be glad. Thank you. I will keep in mind on the preparation and through out the workflow.
As for the "on white" (with shadows) vs "isolation" (without shadows), does it affect the value of the photo? I mean, if I to remove the shadow, will it be better?
| ajancso wrote: | | jhuls wrote: | | I think for the most part things look good for this idea, I think others have mentioned this but it's not that none of the photo was in focus and it was all oof but your DOF was so shallow. If you are going to do a shallow DOF which isn't recommended on your first ten. Make sure the things farthest in the front are in focus. |
Hmmm.... If it is a choice of either or (which is not necessarily the case), I would rather have the fruit (red part) in focus than the stem. |
As for the DOF, I'm thinking of next time using longer focal length and make some distance so I can get everything perfectly in focus. I guess that will be safer bet for the first ten. :)
|
|
hhltdave5
Joined: 20 Jun 2006
Posts: 24083
Location: Our Stock, Food & Portrait photography books at www.rindersmithphotography.com
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:53 am
| |
| ashrafrafdzi wrote: | | hhltdave5 wrote: | When it comes to food photography I always preach over and over again to watch the details. If you pay attention to them you can turn a good shot into a great shot. When I do my class I even go so far as to have people pick out good fruits and vegetables just by touch and smell along without looking at them.
As far as the background goes you did clean it up pretty well. Cleaning up just means to get rid of the gray areas making sure it is pure white. What you have here is an on white (with shadows) instead of an isolation (without shadows) but the outer areas need to be pure white.
I took your cleaned up shot and did something to check how good a job you did. All of the little black areas are places that you missed cleaning up. Once again a detail :) |
To get this kind of preaching, I will always be glad. Thank you. I will keep in mind on the preparation and through out the workflow.
As for the "on white" (with shadows) vs "isolation" (without shadows), does it affect the value of the photo? I mean, if I to remove the shadow, will it be better?
| ajancso wrote: | | jhuls wrote: | | I think for the most part things look good for this idea, I think others have mentioned this but it's not that none of the photo was in focus and it was all oof but your DOF was so shallow. If you are going to do a shallow DOF which isn't recommended on your first ten. Make sure the things farthest in the front are in focus. |
Hmmm.... If it is a choice of either or (which is not necessarily the case), I would rather have the fruit (red part) in focus than the stem. |
As for the DOF, I'm thinking of next time using longer focal length and make some distance so I can get everything perfectly in focus. I guess that will be safer bet for the first ten. :) |
On Whites and Isolations serve really two different purposes. An isolation is something that a buyer can just lift out of the white background and put wherever it wants it to me. In short it is basically a cut out.
An On White has shadows for a reason, to show depth and dimension. In cases like this the buyer will want the whole image including the white background.
Now a buyer can always take an on white and make it an isolation themselves so they can do that with one of your on whites.
For me both serve a purpose and a need. However I am not a big fan of doing isolations for everything and thinking they are the only true stock shot. This is a mistake that many newcomers make. They are not easy to do well unless you have the right equipment and technique. Shots that are done in a more natural setting also have a very important place in stock work.
To your other question on DOF remember there are many factors to DOF, focal length of the lens, distance to subject and aperture. Depending on the lens and distance you can go from a f4 to f9 and may not still get everything in focus. It is up to you to determine just what you want in focus and what can be OOF.
One thing that you can do to help this especially in food work is the way in which you position the items. Instead of having some of the peppers running straight front to back you can angle them a bit. This cuts down the distance from front to back and you gain some DOF. This is where a complete understanding of DOF is very important.
|
|
copidosoma
Joined: 17 Nov 2009
Posts: 3789
Location: Canada
|
|
Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:23 am
| |
| ashrafrafdzi wrote: | | As for the DOF, I'm thinking of next time using longer focal length and make some distance so I can get everything perfectly in focus. I guess that will be safer bet for the first ten. :) |
I would suggest a few things to try:
Longer focal length with a higher fstop (try up to f16 just make sure you don't start getting softness from diffraction).
You can "stack" focus by shooting a few images focused on different parts and then combine them in photoshop (oe other programs). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
You can arrange the peppers to be more parallel to the imaging surface (i.e. laying across the image frame rather than so much front to back). This way you don't need as much DOF to get everything sharp.
Don't worry too much about the shadows. On white veggies sell pretty well. Just make sure the shadows arent hard and it will be fine. If you can pull off a full isolation then go for it as well. Doesn't hurt to have both.
edit, I see that Dave pretty well covered all of this so I'll just say x2.
|
|
| |
|
Log in
