B+W opinion required

[awagner]

Good Evenig guys.... jsut bough the 50mm f1.8 and tried some pics ... tough they would look great in Black&White.

Here they are:

1
http://pages.infinit.net/awphoto/3210%20tristan1

2
http://pages.infinit.net/awphoto/3212%20tristan2

3
http://pages.infinit.net/awphoto/3218%20tristan3

4
http://pages.infinit.net/awphoto/3220%20tristan4

[Radtech1]

Did you read the "Notes on Posing Images" sticky at the top of this page? It tells you that the BB resizes you shot to 800 pixels wide. Meaning anything larger than 800 pixels is reduced to 800 pixels. Meaning, it is useless to post anything larger than 800 pixels.

When you post your full sized 3072x2048 images, the BB has to download every one of the 6,291,456 pixels in your shot. THEN it reduces it for viewing to 800 pixels wide.

PLEASE go back to photoshop and choose "Save For Web" and under image size, select 25%. Make sure that "Constrain Proportions" is turned on. The resulting image will be 768x512 pixels. Because that is an even number reduction ( reciprocal of 4) it will be a very clean resample, with very few jaggies. AND it will be under the 800 pixel limit of the BB.

AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, it will be a much smaller file. 768x512 = 393,216 pixels which is a much lighter download than your mammoth files. Roughly 4 hundred-thousand versus 62 hundred-thousand. Then, they would load fast enough for those of us on 56K to see.

You required an opinion, there it is.

Rad

[Radtech1]

Thank you, much better. (Although, if you keep with an 800 pixel minification, you may end up with jaggies or a moire pattern where a 25% size would be less likely to display artifacts.)

On to the shots, I really like # 1. I have always liked high contrast light/shadow shots, and I like the use of texture and space as well.

#2 is, to my eyes, lacking because there is too much out of focus foreground, specifically, the paw. I dont even think that a crop could rescue this one as the cats forearm cuts across the face - not by much, but enough to be a fatal flaw.

As for #3 and #4, Number Three works much better than Four because on Four, the area of the face closest to the viewer is out of focus. I see what you were trying to do, discover the impact of various focal planes. The easy way around this would have been to stop down and increase your depth of focus, allowing the whole cat to be in focus.

A good general rule is that foreground, especially subject, should be in focus with the focus falling off with distance, not falling in.

Rad

[awagner]

Thanks for the tips.... I appreciate.

Sorry for the inital posted pics, i did read about it...

[Sailor Don]

Good cat photos.

[Radtech1]

Ps: What kind of a cat is yours ?

[Andy_T]

I like the photographs, especially the first one.

However, for my taste, I would even more like them to have higher contrast, especially darker blacks. They are more 'grey' instead of 'B+W' photos.

I complain here, but I don't know how to do it :wink: . However, I think that there are a lot of threads on the forum, how you can optimize B+W conversion and which actions are available there.

Best regards,
Andy

[Camo]

oooohhhh, love those fast lenses!