Getting a new car made me shake off my laziness, dust off my camera and head out to take some pics. But I realised I need to brush up on my camera skills as well as dt skills. A couple of examples -
I shot in aperture priority mode at f5.6. Would a lower aperture of f8 or even f11 have made the pic sharper? In dt, I tried to make the grass a bit more lively, but it has turned out fluorescent and weird.
Here, I am in the shade while right side of the car is in direct sunlight. How to tackle this in dt? I tried using a mask to bring back the color in the sky, but couldn’t fine tune it around the edges of the trees. And again, grass tuning flourescent.
I’ve found using the Skin Tones preset in color zones module takes me in the right direction, but keeping it in strong mode adds a lot a noise. I don’t think I’m using it right.
The more open you shoot the sharper the image, at the cost of your depth of field. The latter can be influenced by taking more distance from the subject and maybe use a different lens in the process (subject might get too small). In the end it is a balancing act. There are apps that can help you with some of that (PHOforPHO is one, works on Android not sure if there is a iPhone version).
Well here I wasn’t aiming for any bokeh effects. I think around f9 would have been better. I’ve not been shooting for a long time so these little things just slip my mind. Need to practice more often.
Any suggestion to get back a bit of color in the sky in the 2nd pic?
Congratulations @zhopudey. Though for a person who is imploring others to let him sleep, getting a car named Harrier is a dubious choice
Here is an attempt with RT + GIMP (used GIMP to selectively brighten the side of the car that is in shade) 20201025_10.47.02_DSC_2984.jpg.out.pp3 (12.0 KB)
It all depends on what you want/need to be in focus. To give you an idea:
The angle you shoot makes me guess that the car from front left to back left is about 1.5 meters deep, give or take.
Your metadata says you shot with f5.6, 35mm, I estimate you are about 5 meters from the car. That would give you a dof of about 11.5 meters. Starting at 3 meters. Seems to me that f5.6 worked nicely assuming you want the car in focus.
Check out the HyperFocal in the Android/iPhone app stores (better then the afore mentioned PHOforPHO)
To be honest; Not when it comes to darktable or any other RAW editor.
After I edited the first one I had a look at your second shot and noticed that most of the sky and a significant part of the side of the car are blown. I did not feel like spending time on “fixing” that. I put quotes around that because you can’t fix it. Blown = lost. The best one can do is cover it up in a, hopefully, somewhat nice way.
The issue with the sky and part of the car needed to be tackled at the time of shooting.
You mention being rather new at all this. Here are a few tips about the D750:
It can show the blown parts when reviewing the shot you took. If any show up you know that you need to retake the shot with better settings. Playback Menu → Playback display options. Tick highlights and RGB histogram
It can also be put into Live View mode, which has the added advantage that you can see a live histogram as well. The latter can give you a pretty good indication that you are clipping your highlights.
Activate LiveView (lv button, bottom right) and cycle through the available displays using the info button.
You already mentioned it yourself and I can only iterate that: Keep practising and you will get better with every shot/edit!
This does look better! Thanks, I’ll study these xmp files, as well the one’s in other posts.
@Jade_NL the sad part is that I’m not new to this. I’m still a beginner , but I’ve been fiddling with dslrs for over 10yrs now. Just that I hadn’t touched the camera for many months now so it’ll take time.
