I shot this pictures of my girls yesterday.  I used ISO 400, f13 and 125 at 7pm in Florida.  I would appreciate any suggestions.  I didn't use my flash because the camera said my exposure was right on.

Thanks you,

Lori

Lori,

That's a nice pose and location.

You might want to post the pic in the Critique area of the photo sharing to get a response. I messed with this just a little in Picassa at work. I fixed the horizon and brightened the highlights. Gotta watch the horizon when you're shooting near water. A good rule to try to follow is to try not to have the horizon slice the pic in half. Put it low to emphasize the sky and higher to show off the foreground. Don't be a slave to any rule, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Shooting at the beach, or where you have lots of white in the image means you need to do some special stuff to make the photo come out well. The camera wants everything to be neutral grey, which isn't white. The camera will choose an exposure that is underxposed. You need to over rule the camera and over expose the image to get the whites to be white, not grey. This happens at the beach, or when you are shooting a snowy scene.

Bryan Petersons Book, Understanding Exposure will help you a lot.

Keep shooting!

Dave

 

 

This is a beautiful shot! I took it into photoshop and just worked levels.  Super quick and easy.

Thank you!  I have that book ... I need to re-read it.

Lori :)

This picture looks pixelated to me.  Do you think it was the 400 ISO?  It took some more shots at 100ISO and they didn't look pixelated.  I shoot with a fuji s5.

Thanks,

Lori

I think you answered your own question:}

If by pixelated you mean little flecks of colors that don't match their neighbors, thats called noise. Usually the higher the ISO, the more noise there is.

A good noise removal program like  Imagenomic's Noiseware might be just the ticket to get rid of noise.

Dave

 

 

Thank you, I will look into that.

Lori :)

hi there dave did a great job. watch the background.... those plants growing out of the kids head look kinda funny.... nice post and setting!! rick

Rick mentioned the plants coming out of their heads so I did a quick "clone" removal. It is not a great job, but just an idea of what it would look like....I love the shot by the way...

I whipped this up in maybe 30 seconds.

 All I did was duplicate the layer and set the layer adjustment to "screen"

 Then I figured you would want a bluer sky, so I made a blue layer, and set the layer adjustment to "color burn"

Then went back to the duplicated "screen" layer and adjust the mid tone levels to get more natural colors.

If you'd like the working file, just let me know!

Very nice shot!   Luv the plays!   Toni

Does the horizon need to be straightened if this were shot again. I'm still learning but I thought that was something I read to watch out for.

Great shot! Most editing programs let you straighten images. So do it now.

 For Photoshop

Find the measure tool; Drag it across the photo where you want the horizon to be. Go to image; rotate canvas, arbitrary, pick CW in this case. Do it again until you are

Satisfied. Then crop.

Take out those reeds as was suggested. Exposure was o.k. Work with levels (come in on the histogram from both sides and maybe lighten a bit then curves and sharpen a bit.

Super shot!