PDA

View Full Version : Manhattan from DUMBO

skidzam
16th of August 2009 (Sun), 23:35
This is my first attempt at a cityscape. I know that this is a trite perspective on the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan, but I would still appreciate any opinions and suggestions for improvement, particularly is there any way to keep the sky from blowing out? I tried using a GND filter, but I don't think it worked.

Thanks.
bensherman2
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 14:17
Why not shoot in Raw? That way you could recover some of the detail in the sky.
skidzam
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 14:52
I don't shoot Raw secondary to my ignorance in Post Processing. But you make an excellent suggestion, and in situations where I encounter extreme contrast, Ill try Raw. And maybe someday, when my expertise increases, I can go back and post process.

Thanks.
TsPoet
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 14:56
I don't shoot Raw secondary to my ignorance in Post Processing. But you make an excellent suggestion, and in situations where I encounter extreme contrast, Ill try Raw. And maybe someday, when my expertise increases, I can go back and post process.

Thanks.

All it takes is $ to buy lightroom or similar. Or, if you are Mac person I've heard good things about Gimp, which is free.
This may be too low class for many on here, but I've learned a great deal from this site on post processing for the likes of me (Dummies).
http://digital-photography-school.com/post-production
DragonDan
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 15:00
Yeah, I would also suggest doing RAW. You can set up the camera to take RAW and a JPG at the same time. I did a whole European vacation on JPG mode, looking back it woulda' been great to have the RAW files to play with.
There are tons of threads on working with RAW files. Normally, the only things I do to process them are the following (in Photoshop CS3):

adjust white balance (if needed)
add saturation
a smidge of vibrance (sharpening)
and the S curve in Curves (I'd do reading on this before attempting)
then open in Photoshop and do cropping/ resizing.

You can do these with the software that came with the Canon

This is a fine forum, don't hesitate to ask questions
bensherman2
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 15:02
Why not take 2 or 3 shots exposing for different areas eg sky foreground and then blend them using layers in post processing. Auto-bracketing is a good way to do this have a look through your camera manual.
skidzam
17th of August 2009 (Mon), 18:05
Thanks to all. I went to the link and downloaded GIMP, I'm gonna give it a shot.