CC Appreciated - Newbie to DSLR!

Hi. Only had my 30d a very short while & only have the basic kit lens (18-55) but I really need to learn about editing and practice my exposure more.

Anyway, love to here your views on my attempt at minor editing/crop using DPP & Picasa. Only started shooting RAW, so not sure if my initial editing in DPP was correct! Anyway, I've have attached the untouched RAW file as well as my final take. Tell me what you think!

BTW - I tried my best to "expose [as much as possible] to the right" to get the right exposure.

Info: Av Mode, 1/50 f8 +1.3 EV ISO640 WB: Daylight hand-held

Original RAW:

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Came up with about the same crop, it is a shame that the background wall colour distracts and the corner of the wall makes it even more noticable.
I don't think the exposure is bad at all, the blue and red channels are very slightly clipped but not badly.
There is plenty of detail in the petals of the flower, i thought i just needs a little curves/levels to boost some detail there.
Did you sharpen the image from the RAW file?
Difficult to tell as the JPEG res is pretty low and the image is starting to come apart already.
You don't have image editing on so can't post my take.
technically not a bad shot at all in my opinion but the backrgound clashes, you could try making the wall much darker which will reduce its visual impact.

PETERSYMES wrote in post #5446261
Came up with about the same crop, it is a shame that the background wall colour distracts and the corner of the wall makes it even more noticable.
I don't think the exposure is bad at all, the blue and red channels are very slightly clipped but not badly.
There is plenty of detail in the petals of the flower, i thought i just needs a little curves/levels to boost some detail there.
Did you sharpen the image from the RAW file?
Difficult to tell as the JPEG res is pretty low and the image is starting to come apart already.
You don't have image editing on so can't post my take.
technically not a bad shot at all in my opinion but the backrgound clashes, you could try making the wall much darker which will reduce its visual impact.

Thanks for the response.
Yes, I did notice that the blue & red channels were clipped...but only slightly, so didn't bother to do much with that.

Sharpening - I did it in Canon DPP - just sharpened till it looked ok- I think it was set at 250...but then when I imported into Picasa I cropped it and did a quick sharpen on that as well - should I have not done that??

...Not sure what you mean by "the image is starting to come apart already" - do you mean that it is oversharpened? Sorry, for the ignorance!

"You don't have image editing on so can't post my take" - I did select "Image Editing OK" on my profile, so not sure what else to do!

As regards the background being darker, I guess that is additional pp? I only have GIMP at the mo, so will try something in that to fix the prob.

Hi pridash,

Good shooting . Actually, I think the original has more potential and interest than the crop. I know everyone always says "get in close", but I find the original's background foliage and colour more balanced, the petal and leaf shape/structure better captured, and the stigma/style/stamen sufficiently detailed anyway. I think it would have been better to frame a little lower on the main flower, so the stamen/style were clearly emerging from somewhere. It does have the compositional issues Peter's identified (room corner vertical near middle of shot, some background colour/brightness aberation + strip of petal at extreme right ), but it shouldn't be too hard to remove those in the gimp.

Re exposure, I feel it's overexposed - I haven't looked at the histogram and accept that it's only slightly blown on two channels - but I never-the-less feel that much of it is brighter than optimal for viewing. Exposing to the right is about getting the best possible signal-to-noise ration when capturing a scene; it is not a recommendation to - and it would be wrong to think it generally correct to - leave the exposure that way during post-processing. I also find the contrast between the stigma/anther and background a bit extreme - but I realise that's nature's way in this case .

Cheers,

Tony

tonydee wrote in post #5447127
Hi pridash,

Good shooting . Actually, I think the original has more potential and interest than the crop. I know everyone always says "get in close", but I find the original's background foliage and colour more balanced, the petal and leaf shape/structure better captured, and the stigma/style/stamen sufficiently detailed anyway. I think it would have been better to frame a little lower on the main flower, so the stamen/style were clearly emerging from somewhere. It does have the compositional issues Peter's identified (room corner vertical near middle of shot, some background colour/brightness aberation + strip of petal at extreme right ), but it shouldn't be too hard to remove those in the gimp.

Re exposure, I feel it's overexposed - I haven't looked at the histogram and accept that it's only slightly blown on two channels - but I never-the-less feel that much of it is brighter than optimal for viewing. Exposing to the right is about getting the best possible signal-to-noise ration when capturing a scene; it is not a recommendation to - and it would be wrong to think it generally correct to - leave the exposure that way during post-processing. I also find the contrast between the stigma/anther and background a bit extreme - but I realise that's nature's way in this case .

Cheers,

Tony

Thanks Tony. Yes I see your point about how the crop could be better & the point about exposure.

I've adjusted the crop (although the unopened flower in the background is showing - one reason why I cropped it tighter originally) and I've reduced the red & blue channels to stop the clipping. I then reduced the brightness overall - but should I have done that?

Anyway, here's the edited image - is this any better?

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Your edit looks a little green on my monitor (which is uncalibrated and probably a bit bright), and is maybe darker than necessary. I was imagining a smaller change to your original - like the following

HOSTED PHOTO
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pridash wrote in post #5446617
...Not sure what you mean by "the image is starting to come apart already" - do you mean that it is oversharpened? Sorry, for the ignorance!

No not at all, just meant the quality of the JPEG to post to this forum was so low any changes cause it to degrade too far.. (JPEGS.....Sheeesh)
The shot has a lot more detail than shown in the post so i was interested in what shaprpening you did, unfortunately not too familiar with your PP tools.

I see an nice opportunity for the application of a triangular composition.