Critique please! Still not happy with this... i had the ISO up quite a bit because of the light (or rather, lack thereof), but i was speeding up the shutter a bit because i wanted to retain the flavour of night... only i also wanted to be able to see people and some movement... sooo... this is, i think, the best of a bunch of shots with variations on aperture and shutter speed... but any and all suggestions for settings for this kind of shot (and any other critique for improving it) are most welcome!
Thank you so much for all the views, comments and favs on my recent photos... you guys are so awesome and i'm feeling really badly for being so far behind in commenting back on your shots... really hoping to find some time tomorrow and then on into the weekend...
hahaha! i was there at lunchtime and took almost the same shot - from the guitar to a little bit past the rainbow. you've captured the ambience, so far as i know dundas and yonge at night. :-)
I think it's fantastic! It's obvious it's night and you get all the great lights...exposure looks great...not too much noise and sharp focus on the Hard Rock...a little movement blur on the people, especially the ones crossing the street. I wouldn't change a thing!!!
Why f/7.1? I'm not sure if this was with the nifty fifty or the 17-85mm, but in both cases, you could have used a wider aperture.
You would have lost depth of field, but I think you could have gone down to around f/4.0 at least on the nifty fifty and kept everything in focus you wanted. That would have allowed you to use ISO 250 and still get your 1/13th shutter speed, with almost no noise. Alternatively, you could have stuck at ISO 800 and used a 1/40th shutter speed, if you wanted to freeze motion more.
I suspect going all the way down to f/1.8 on the nifty fifty would, while not keeping everything in focus, been quite a nice effect. City lights often look good out of focus, but you would have had to take care to get the focal point correct, so that what you wanted in focus was in focus. At f/1.8 you could have used ISO 100 and had a 1/25th shutter speed.
Narrower apertures are sharper, but you need to decide the best tradeoff between lens sharpness and camera noise. On a crop-sensor camera (at least as they are today), I'd always try and stay at or under ISO 400, even if it means losing a little lens sharpness.
However, that minor technical aspect aside (which I only raise as you asked for suggestions), this is a lovely night city shot! The composition is excellent, the exposure looks spot-on -- you have retained detail in the bright signs and in the shadow areas. I might have set the camera in burst mode and taken a few shots in succession -- to me, the guy in the foreground with one leg is a little distracting, and a burst sequence would likely have caught him in a better pose. But that's minor, overall, this is a superb shot, and a fav!
@abirkill tx so much Alexis... really helpful to get that kind of insight... i was leery of losing depth - hence the f/7... yesterday i shot at f/4 and f/5 or so, and wasn't happy with the results - but then, i was using a slower shutter speed (and much lower ISO), so was getting blur likely due to camera movement... will have to wait to next week to try downtown night shots again but will definitely give it another try with the combo of settings you are suggesting... tx!!!
Nice shot. My eyes are pulled to the left. Mored light further back in the scene might have prevented that. You could resort to a spot of burning in. With a small backlit image it is difficult to see noise sometimes (fortunately) It doesn't look too bad to me.
Alex has said everything to say technically. Composition, I might have tried cropping severely down on to the Hard Rock them, perhaps leaving the street man in the frame on the extreme right. And then adjusting from there. The present shot has way too much in it for coherence. Less is more," remember?
@frankhymus yeah... i know what you mean about less being more... and usually i would agree... but for this one i'm not sure the quality is good enough (too much noise), and to be honest, i find the hard rock façade rather boring... and the street'n lights 'n stuff kind of add welcome distraction and interest for me :)
You would have lost depth of field, but I think you could have gone down to around f/4.0 at least on the nifty fifty and kept everything in focus you wanted. That would have allowed you to use ISO 250 and still get your 1/13th shutter speed, with almost no noise. Alternatively, you could have stuck at ISO 800 and used a 1/40th shutter speed, if you wanted to freeze motion more.
I suspect going all the way down to f/1.8 on the nifty fifty would, while not keeping everything in focus, been quite a nice effect. City lights often look good out of focus, but you would have had to take care to get the focal point correct, so that what you wanted in focus was in focus. At f/1.8 you could have used ISO 100 and had a 1/25th shutter speed.
Narrower apertures are sharper, but you need to decide the best tradeoff between lens sharpness and camera noise. On a crop-sensor camera (at least as they are today), I'd always try and stay at or under ISO 400, even if it means losing a little lens sharpness.
However, that minor technical aspect aside (which I only raise as you asked for suggestions), this is a lovely night city shot! The composition is excellent, the exposure looks spot-on -- you have retained detail in the bright signs and in the shadow areas. I might have set the camera in burst mode and taken a few shots in succession -- to me, the guy in the foreground with one leg is a little distracting, and a burst sequence would likely have caught him in a better pose. But that's minor, overall, this is a superb shot, and a fav!
@abirkill