Was out with Binary for a jaunt in the New Forest, Didnt really take many photos other than these two:


Fistulina hepatica by Chris_Moody, on Flickr



New Forest Reflections by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

If youre bored enough, try rotating the water one 180 degrees, its pretty cool (I think it is anyway)

Good Bokeh on the first one, was that with the 50mm?

yeah. The reversed ones were ok-ish, but suffer in that there isnt anything to actually look at. Would have been better if there had been some gnats or something sucking on its juices.

Im just wondering, did you actually take any photos with my camera Adam? AFAIK you didnt, just want to make sure the reflection one isnt yours!

good question, im pretty sure i only checked the AF and didnt actually take an shots

Haha. If you did I doubt you did a portrait shot, I hope not anyway!

i would have remembered that if i did, just sorting my images now, what sort of processing have you done on yours?

Almost none believe it or not! I ran a mild unsharp mask over them as I figured it couldnt hurt, and it didnt make any difference tbh, usually I end up oversharpening things to make up for a soft lens or similar.

As it was raw I opened them in camera raw and used the auto values, and again it barely changed anything, might have just notched up the exposure by .2 or something, and I changed the blacks value from whatever they were (~2-3) to 5 or something else non-major.

The only other thing was in the river shot there was a plank of wood at the end that was just visible once you really started to scrutinise the shot, so I clone-tooled it out. I cropped about 3% from the bottom of the river shot too, other than that theyre both full frame.

I also rotated it 180 degrees at one point out of curiosity. Seriously, looking at it upside down is weird, you kind of know its upside down but still end up looking for the waters edge in the wrong place.

They look good, the colours look great nice and vivid, i think my shots look a bit flat tbh

Like the fungus shot, nice use of depth of field and I always like the textured effect sharply shot bark can give.

The reflection shot is just a bit disorienting for me - wouldve preferred to see the thing being reflected properly in shot - but dont know if that was possible given the setting?

I think theyre potentially the best photos Ive taken with an SLR to date, which I know didnt take much lol. Considering that the Beefsteak bracket fungus was a 50mm prime, and the river shot was with a lens that should be £350+ new, its hardly surprising though, given before that I was using the 18-55mm kit lens and a nasty sigma

Quote from: BigSoyThe reflection shot is just a bit disorienting for me - wouldve preferred to see the thing being reflected properly in shot - but dont know if that was possible given the setting?

What do you mean, a mirror reflection all the way up to the top with no ripples, or something else? Sadly it was the only real bit of the 1km stream that we covered that was nice and open and didnt have loads of branches and/or rubbish in it etc

Quote from: zpyder

Quote from: BigSoyThe reflection shot is just a bit disorienting for me - wouldve preferred to see the thing being reflected properly in shot - but dont know if that was possible given the setting?

What do you mean, a mirror reflection all the way up to the top with no ripples, or something else? Sadly it was the only real bit of the 1km stream that we covered that was nice and open and didnt have loads of branches and/or rubbish in it etc

No I was thinking taking the shot from further back so you get the top of the tree in as well as the reflection rather than just having the tree peeping in.

Ahhh ok. Yeah, that would have looked better, the problem was the bank in question, there was a buckthorn bush just below out of shot, so any wider/further back and it would have been in the way. Also its portrait rather than landscape as pretty much to the left/right its a bit more trashy. We were right next to a wooden bridge which is kinda like the M1 for people walking and riding, so there was a lot of disturbance in the close vicinity from people, including half a dozen rope swings.

You live and learn though, hopefully Ill get out somewhere next weekend

and plenty of mad dogs about as well