Is this any good?

[PaCiFiSt]

Hey - I took this a little bit ago for my manager at work. What do you think?

btw my manager used it for an ad in the newspaper (the paper is black and white incase anyone is not thinking today or is tired:D)

[PhotosGuy]

Nice colors, but the verticals are leaning at the sides.

[PaCiFiSt]

Good point - I'll remember that next time - I'm still learning :)

[flowe]

Hi Mike,
as you want to learn, here some comments. I think a lot more could be achieved with the A85, a recent 4 megapix camera.

Obviously, full wide angle has been used, resulting in considerable barrelling (edges near the border bent barrel like). This is the case eg. even with the G6, albeit not at all to this degree. Better avoid full wide with shots sensitive to barrelling - which might get difficult indoors. Then full wide and full tele zoom settings are prone to some softness, aggravated here by the fully open aperture f2.8. Full open again is far from optimum sharpness. With this type of zoom lens, best sharpness lies at about 2/3 up the aperture range, ie. around f5.6 or higher. This would result too in far more depth of field (range of acceptable sharpness, in terms of distance from the camera). Chances are, you shot the 1/10 sec. hand held, and this probably contributes some more unsharpness. That's definitely out of the question with an appropriate aperture and corresponding slow shutter speed. Now you need a tripod or other solid support, and auto release - but this is no basic problem with a static setup as this one.

Another area of trouble is tilt (by about 2 degree clockwise) and perspective, because the camera has been pointed downwards. Tilt is easily corrected in any image editor, using grid or cropping tool as a guide. The same with perspective. This to some degree is often acceptable, but IMO not here. Undesired perspective can be avoided or reduced on shooting by pointing the camera dead level and cropping excess parts in editing.

Most of this comments pertain to shooting, but I went about to try to get the most out of your shot - if only to give an impression of what a better shot might look like. In spite of sharpening, the inherent flaws could not be offset sufficiently. All this required some efforts in editing, not to be discussed here. The old rule applies: a good image depends on a good shot, and a bad shot will never become a technically satisfactory image.

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/flowe/digifoto/img/potn_mikedokas_510x390.jpg

I hope this helps you along - you know: "The road is the purpose" (or some more appropriate translation of the famous Zen adage).
flowe

[PaCiFiSt]

Thanks alot(not sacastically) I learned alot from that. I will try to use those things you taught me.