I love embossed, decorative tins. I found this one at the shop at the Hollycombe steam museum on Sunday and fell in love with it. As a bonus, it was full of toffees. Was. :-D
Aldbury Morris was dancing at its home village's fete today but it was so wet that Gareth and I didn't go. Such a shame; Gareth enjoys watching the dancing and having a chat with the dancers.
We consoled ourselves with lunch at the farm shop and a cup of hot chocolate at home.
I've tried and tried to straighten this but whatever I do, one line or other looks skew-whiff.
Edit . I think the problem is the backboard may not have been placed squarely.
Critique welcome. Veteran 365er, 2011 vintage. Only posting occasionally and irregularly now.
I'm an abstract photography enthusiast but not exclusively so.
Born in the...
Wonderful! Nice capture.
If you are interested in biscuit tins you might be interested in the Huntley and Palmers collection at Reading Museum. The website is here... http://bit.ly/bAMBEa
That is one of a group of websites I was the technical manager for. If you follow the logo for SOPSE at the bottom you can see all the sites. The one I was directly responsible for was Slough History Online. Ah! The heady days of Slough Library. LOL.
@netkonnexion Thank you for the info. I've taken a quick look at the website and the museum's definitely going in the Places to Visit folder.
I've been shooting in a combo. of RAW and jpeg for the past couple of days. This shot, the daisies and the flying moggy were all originally RAW. I sort of understand the corrupt and lossy files techy stuff but I do see what you mean about flexibility in processing. I still felt the need to tweak a bit more once they were converted to jpegs, though.
I used PsE10 to do the work on the RAW image. Lester's hidden the Canon processing software somewhere. Do you think it's worth trying to wrest it from his cache or am I better off sticking to Photoshop?
All advice gratefully received.
@dulciknit - What you have to remember with RAW is that it is literally the RAW data as it is captured. With JPEG the capture is manipulated and brightened from the RAW according to a formula. The all the unnecessary data is discarded. What this normally means is that you will have to get used to doing the work that JPEG does automatically. In fact like everything is a learning process. Actually working with RAW and JPEGs to start with is a good idea because it gives you a clue to the standard/type of processing you need to do. But it adds files to your card which uses space.
You will have to do exposure processing, then once that is done do the 'extra' processing. THEN, convert to jpeg. You will find that it is going to be different to the results that you get from camera processed jpegs. That is actually what you are trying to achieve... you want to get it right according to your eye, not the algorithm of some backroom boffin who wrote the program. This gives you flexibility and much more artistic license. BTW... if you produce a jpeg and find you still need to do processing, go back to the Elements file and work on that more. Then produce another JPEG. You should always use the elements file to do your work. That file (is it a .psd?) will not degrade with editing. The jpeg becomes more degraded every edit.
Like everything it takes time and practice. With either software you can learn a lot. It is very much up to you how you do it. One way to learn about this is to take shots you admire and try to re-shoot them your way and then do the processing. I have a file called my 'admiration set'. Kind of like our Favs on 365. These are the ones that I would want to set the standard that I want to meet. There are some 365 shots in that file, but lots of other from other places too. They provide a reservoir of shots for me to get back to for inspiration, colour awareness and standard setting for my shots. More to the point they are my guide to how my own shots should be processed. I don't always get it right. In fact like everyone I do lots of duff shots. My admiration set is my guide to what I should be aspiring to in both shooting and processing.
In short, practice, match your ideas to recognised quality shots done by other people you admire and do processing only in your Elements files... jpegs are ONLY for display.
I can't see the 'nonperpendicularness', but what I do see is the different spacing on each side. If the problem was the backboard then you could blur the join between it and the base?
@netkonnexion Apologies for the tardy reply, I've been busy beating my brain to a RAW pulp. ;-)
The memory card storage problem had occurred to me so I did some homework and calculated that I've got sufficient storage on my 3 cards to last me between downloads. I'll probably throw caution to the winds and stop shooting tandem before much longer anyway. That sort of risk taking is as close as I get to extreme sports. :-D
On reflection, I didn't explain the processing problem clearly. After processing in Elements (yes, a .psd file) and getting what I felt I wanted, on converting to JPEG the image suddenly looked wrong. I've had another try with this one : http://365project.org/dulciknit/on-the-day-extr/2012-05-08 and it seems to be OK. I was wondering if it was me or some technical thing.
I don't keep a file but I do spend quite a bit of time looking at other people's shots, puzzling things out as much as possible and studying exif data where available.
As for practice - yes, I recognise the need for that at whatever level of skill you've reached.
I was brought up with the ethic that you should always do your best and that your best at any one time is never the best that you can ever do. Consequently, I'm never 100% satisfied with anything I do. Handy when it comes to striving to improve, but it can get a little wearing at times!
@bigsusan55 Yes, I wasn't very happy with the crop at all. It didn't look right with the tin plunk in the middle, then it didn't look right with it to one side and then I realised I'd cropped too much off the bottom but the crop was the last thing I did after much prodding and poking and I was exhaustipated by then and called it a day.
There is just a touch of Gaussian blur on the bit where the boards meet but I used it to hide up the chewed up appearance of the edges. The boards are getting old and need replacing.
I don't think you can resolve the board 'seam' just by applying more blur. For one thing, because the light's hitting the boards at different angles it's made appreciable tonal differences to the colours. If I just apply more blur, I'll get lines where the blur stops. There's probably a way to blend it but it's beyond my ken. If I blur all the blue, the tin will look as if it's floating in the shot. Some days you just can't win. :'-(
It is a lovely tin, though, isn't it. :-)
Well, it is a lovely tin. I'm a bit like Anita - lost in the conversation. I would imagine that my old 20D can shoot in RAW, but I have NO idea how to make it do that...might need to pull out the manual.
If you are interested in biscuit tins you might be interested in the Huntley and Palmers collection at Reading Museum. The website is here... http://bit.ly/bAMBEa
That is one of a group of websites I was the technical manager for. If you follow the logo for SOPSE at the bottom you can see all the sites. The one I was directly responsible for was Slough History Online. Ah! The heady days of Slough Library. LOL.
I've been shooting in a combo. of RAW and jpeg for the past couple of days. This shot, the daisies and the flying moggy were all originally RAW. I sort of understand the corrupt and lossy files techy stuff but I do see what you mean about flexibility in processing. I still felt the need to tweak a bit more once they were converted to jpegs, though.
I used PsE10 to do the work on the RAW image. Lester's hidden the Canon processing software somewhere. Do you think it's worth trying to wrest it from his cache or am I better off sticking to Photoshop?
All advice gratefully received.
You will have to do exposure processing, then once that is done do the 'extra' processing. THEN, convert to jpeg. You will find that it is going to be different to the results that you get from camera processed jpegs. That is actually what you are trying to achieve... you want to get it right according to your eye, not the algorithm of some backroom boffin who wrote the program. This gives you flexibility and much more artistic license. BTW... if you produce a jpeg and find you still need to do processing, go back to the Elements file and work on that more. Then produce another JPEG. You should always use the elements file to do your work. That file (is it a .psd?) will not degrade with editing. The jpeg becomes more degraded every edit.
Like everything it takes time and practice. With either software you can learn a lot. It is very much up to you how you do it. One way to learn about this is to take shots you admire and try to re-shoot them your way and then do the processing. I have a file called my 'admiration set'. Kind of like our Favs on 365. These are the ones that I would want to set the standard that I want to meet. There are some 365 shots in that file, but lots of other from other places too. They provide a reservoir of shots for me to get back to for inspiration, colour awareness and standard setting for my shots. More to the point they are my guide to how my own shots should be processed. I don't always get it right. In fact like everyone I do lots of duff shots. My admiration set is my guide to what I should be aspiring to in both shooting and processing.
In short, practice, match your ideas to recognised quality shots done by other people you admire and do processing only in your Elements files... jpegs are ONLY for display.
Enjoy.
The memory card storage problem had occurred to me so I did some homework and calculated that I've got sufficient storage on my 3 cards to last me between downloads. I'll probably throw caution to the winds and stop shooting tandem before much longer anyway. That sort of risk taking is as close as I get to extreme sports. :-D
On reflection, I didn't explain the processing problem clearly. After processing in Elements (yes, a .psd file) and getting what I felt I wanted, on converting to JPEG the image suddenly looked wrong. I've had another try with this one : http://365project.org/dulciknit/on-the-day-extr/2012-05-08 and it seems to be OK. I was wondering if it was me or some technical thing.
I don't keep a file but I do spend quite a bit of time looking at other people's shots, puzzling things out as much as possible and studying exif data where available.
As for practice - yes, I recognise the need for that at whatever level of skill you've reached.
I was brought up with the ethic that you should always do your best and that your best at any one time is never the best that you can ever do. Consequently, I'm never 100% satisfied with anything I do. Handy when it comes to striving to improve, but it can get a little wearing at times!
There is just a touch of Gaussian blur on the bit where the boards meet but I used it to hide up the chewed up appearance of the edges. The boards are getting old and need replacing.
I don't think you can resolve the board 'seam' just by applying more blur. For one thing, because the light's hitting the boards at different angles it's made appreciable tonal differences to the colours. If I just apply more blur, I'll get lines where the blur stops. There's probably a way to blend it but it's beyond my ken. If I blur all the blue, the tin will look as if it's floating in the shot. Some days you just can't win. :'-(
It is a lovely tin, though, isn't it. :-)