The "OFFICIAL" Random Picture thread......

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Oceanside, CA
 
Beautiful shots man. It’s amazing how black and white images have such a different look. Can make a basic picture of a 24 hour fitness look incredible.
 
THE HCP said:
Beautiful shots man. It’s amazing how black and white images have such a different look. Can make a basic picture of a 24 hour fitness look incredible.
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I think B&W is tricky, but high-contrast B&W sure has a "look" that I like. This means that the dark blacks and the very bright whites hide a lot of the ugly details that can make a normal looking buildings/objects interesting. Does not work for anything, but for some things...
 
andalusian said:
I think B&W is tricky, but high-contrast B&W sure has a "look" that I like. This means that the dark blacks and the very bright whites hide a lot of the ugly details that can make a normal looking building interesting. Does not work for anything, but for some things...
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I wish I knew more about photography. Like how things work and what makes what look like what. Every now and then I’ll edit my shots to black and white and get lucky.
IMG_5411.jpeg
 
THE HCP said:
I wish I knew more about photography. Like how things work and what makes what look like what. Every now and then I’ll edit my shots to black and white and get lucky.
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I like this photo - the top floor is the right exposure for the highlights, I think, the lower one is maybe too bright? With cameras that have manual controls (and I think most modern smartphones have that as well) usually allow you to set "exposure compensation" - making things a bit darker / lighter as needed. I think that if you shoot a small sensor camera (like a smartphone), it is usually a good idea to "protect the highlights" - give it a bit of exposure compensation to make it look darker - it means you can recover some details from the light areas. (something like a -0.3 or -0.7 compensation in the case above).

One of the issues of the smart-phone cameras (or most small sensor cameras) is that they will have a limited dynamic range - so a scene that has a lot of dark and a lot very bright areas will have some detail loss at one of the ends (based on what you meter your exposure to). That's one of the advantages of bigger sensors - but obviously it comes at a cost of size of cameras and lenses. I usually shoot a Micro 4/3 camera, it has a smaller sensor by stand alone camera standards but it is much bigger than a smartphone sensor - so it's a pretty decent trade off for my use.
 
andalusian said:
I like this photo - the top floor is the right exposure for the highlights, I think, the lower one is maybe too bright? With cameras that have manual controls (and I think most modern smartphones have that as well) usually allow you to set "exposure compensation" - making things a bit darker / lighter as needed. I think that if you shoot a small sensor camera (like a smartphone), it is usually a good idea to "protect the highlights" - give it a bit of exposure compensation to make it look darker - it means you can recover some details from the light areas. (something like a -0.3 or -0.7 compensation in the case above).

One of the issues of the smart-phone cameras (or most small sensor cameras) is that they will have a limited dynamic range - so a scene that has a lot of dark and a lot very bright areas will have some detail loss at one of the ends (based on what you meter your exposure to). That's one of the advantages of bigger sensors - but obviously it comes at a cost of size of cameras and lenses. I usually shoot a Micro 4/3 camera, it has a smaller sensor by stand alone camera standards but it is much bigger than a smartphone sensor - so it's a pretty decent trade off for my use.
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Thanks for the advice. Love learning all I can. I used the color version of this shot when I shared on Instagram.
 
THE HCP said:
Thanks for the advice. Love learning all I can. I used the color version of this shot when I shared on Instagram.
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In the color version - I assume that the first (lower) floor is still somewhat blown out and missing details, right?

BTW, the advice I gave you for exposure compensation is because I am not sure how to change the metering mode on a smartphone and how to lock metering once I set it. In dedicated cameras you can tell it what to meter for - so in the image you gave, I would probably have told it to meter for the center of the image, put the 1st floor (brightest area) at the center of the image, do a half-press of the shutter so it will focus and meter, use the AFL/AEL button to "lock the focus / metering" and move the camera around to the composition I wanted (probably shift it a bit higher to match the composition you have) and pressed the shutter completely. In this case, the camera would have metered for the brightest part of the scene and would likely not need to do exposure compensation. (That's another advantage you have in dedicated cameras, they usually have more buttons / options to manually adjust for complicated scenes. Of course, the beauty of smartphones is that they will do 90% of what we want to photograph automatically for you - which is why they basically killed the "point and shoot" camera market).

I know this sounds like a complicated procedure, but if you are used to your camera (mine is from 2013, I am used to it by now) - this is really nothing I need to think of. I have a dedicated button that temporary changes the metering mode to center, so my procedure would be to press that button, put the area I want to meter in the center, half-press the shutter, press the AEL / AFL button, re-compose and take the shot. A lot of steps - but really nothing that would slow me down at this point because the ergonomics are pretty good on my old camera and I have the muscle memory to do that.
 
andalusian said:
I know this sounds like a complicated procedure, but if you are used to your camera (mine is from 2013, I am used to it by now) - this is really nothing I need to think of. I have a dedicated button that temporary changes the metering mode to center, so my procedure would be to press that button, put the area I want to meter in the center, half-press the shutter, press the AEL / AFL button, re-compose and take the shot. A lot of steps - but really nothing that would slow me down at this point because the ergonomics are pretty good on my old camera and I have the muscle memory to do that.
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I have an even simpler procedure:
1) Click the random picture thread
2) look at the pretty pictures

barfo
 
THE HCP said:
Thanks so much for this info. I’ll try to go find the original.
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That's actually not bad - I would say the metering is OK on the original photo, can be a tiny bit better, but not bad - there is certainly detail and color difference in the lower floor - and even the window is fine. Seems like the real issue is the B&W conversion - what did you use to do that? That seems like the place where you lost more details. I use DXO Photolab for my post-processing - it has multiple B&W conversion options (I usually do not use it as I usually shoot in B&W mode with a RAW color backup) - I suspect that whatever you used for the conversion might have used a high contrast profile which is why you lost some details.
 
THE HCP said:
Dope,always wanted to go out there.
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Everyone should visit JTNP, it's as close to walking on an alien planet as most of us will get.

Personally I just love the desert, but even people that don't, should see this national park, it's really special.
 
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