Sharing one photo every day until I forget (Day 5)
Sharing one photo every day until I forget (Day 5)
Pretty late uploading this! I figured I'd try my hand at a bit of food photography. This is also the first photo that was originally taken in RAW and edited a little, so there's probably a lot that could have been done differently.
(Recipe in comments)
Exposure Settings:
Aperture: f/14 Shutter Speed: 1/20s ISO: 3200 Focal Length: 18mm
Information:
I have to post one picture every day, I can take pictures in advance, in case I'm unable to take a picture for whatever reason (vacation, weather, idk) but I still have to post once per day.
I can't post pictures of the same thing within like, a week or two, idk, I might get rid of this "rule" if I feel like it.
Don't be afraid to give me any feedback on any of my pictures, I'm still veeery new to photography and would love any feedback given.
Gear:
Canon EOS Rebel t2i
18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 EFS zoom lens
55-250mm f/4-5.6 EFS zoom lens
Pictures are taken in RAW, processed in Darktable and GIMP, then converted to webp and compressed to 70% quality.
If you'd like a higher (or full) quality image, just ask me in the replies or dms, I'll happily send it when I get a chance. If you don't specify a file format or quality, I'll just send a jpeg at 90% quality (or whatever necessary to get a reasonable file size). You can also totally ask for the version of the image before edits.
Also, you're free to do anything you want with any of my pictures, just don't claim you were the one to take it :)
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Thanks for sharing! You got me to get something posted yesterday, I'll try to do so again tonight.
More unsolicited feedback!
The raw edit is good, especially for a first pass. Color perception is all... very subjective so don't shy away from going too nuts. The omelette also looks tasty!
This is the bit I wanted to comment on:
Exposure Settings: Aperture: f/14 Shutter Speed: 1/20s ISO: 3200 Focal Length: 18mm
Once you stop down past a certain point your lens will begin to lose sharpness and your end picture will be less sharp. It looks like that kicks in around f/11, so unless you need to stop down more I would try to avoid it.
I would try to keep ISO down, especially for a static subject. Doing so will introduce less noise, which results in a sharper image if you find yourself processing the noise out. It will also give you more dynamic range, but I'm not sure that matters a ton in this shot.
So the suggestion: open your lens more. Just don't go too far otherwise you won't have your whole plate/pan of food in focus.
Using the first depth of field calculator returned by DDG and guessing your omelette was about a half meter from your camera you could have used an aperture of 5.6 or so to have a critically sharp depth of 16 cm, which is enough in this case if you manage to focus in the center of the omelette. It never hurts to take a few exposures at different apertures and then choose the one you like the most in post. The joys of shooting digitally.
The other thing I'm going to add on here is that I would have opened up the lens anyway, focus permitting, to get that exposure time down.
1/20 sec is definitely flirting with frustration if you are handholding your camera and not using a tripod, or if you don't have some heavy duty optical image stabilization. I typically find that anything slower than 1/60 while handholding is going to induce some kind of blur from shake during the exposure.
Given that there isn't much evidence of this I'm going to assume OP is either the Frisco Kid or they were using a tripod.
I tend to stick with the 1/focal length rule of thumb. OP was shooting at 18mm, granted on an APS-C body, so they're a little over 1/20. I've taken sharp photos of people this slow hand held, but I would be lying if I said they were all sharp.
I totally agree with the sentiment though - the exposure triangle is all about tradeoffs and I would have personally made a different set of tradeoffs in this case. Opening to f/5.6 would give OP 3 stops of light to play with. They could reduce ISO or increase shutter speed by a factor of 8 or reduce/increase one by a factor of 2 and the other by a factor of 4.
More unsolicited feedback!
Your unsolicited feedback is very welcome!
It looks like that kicks in around f/11
I see, I'll try and keep that in mind as well for the future
I would try to keep ISO down
Gotcha, I usually leave the ISO to automatic, would you recommend I set it manually? Or maybe lower the max ISO it can choose automatically?
I leave my camera on auto ISO also, but j try to keep an eye on the value the camera chooses and will adjust exposure if it makes sense. Ultimately, exposure is a bunch of tradeoffs, so a higher ISO might be the right case in some scenarios.