Blast Furnace Ruins

[allenlennon]

Hey all. After work i decided to pop over to the good old blast furnace in Lithgow, NSW, Australia. Its only 20 mins drive from my place, and 3 mins from work. And thought id give it a shot. I took over 20 pics, and the following is what i deemed reasonable after PP. All been cropped except for one. This photo session i lernt about using Exposure Compensation. Please let me know what you think and any advice you may have.

All pics done with: Lens= EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 & ISO=200

TV=1/60 AV=10.0 Focal Length= 27.0mm Not cropped.

The bottom left of the photo isnt focused, perhaps i should of had this at a higher aperture. This may have helped with the focusing of the background, and i dont know if reducing exposure composition would help reduce the brightness of the background with out ruining this shot.

TV= 1/250 AV=10.0 Focal Length= 42.mm

B&W cause i think it works, also the houses is a bit of a distraction

TV=1/250 AV= 10.0 Focal length=40.mm EC= -1/3

I do love this one, but the plant on the left dosnt fit well into the pic, i couldnt crop it out as it would have left the left side of the ruin out of the pic, A little more planning on composition would of fixed this perhaps.

TV=1/250 AV= 10.0 Focal length=55.0 EC= -2/3

i know this one has a few bright areas, but it was the best i could do with my limited knowledge.

And C&C's greatly appreciated.

[Geoff F]

I'm afraid you have serious problems with all those scenes. But I'm talking about the actual scenes not your attempts at overcoming the difficulties.

When faced with these great variations in brightness you only have limited options. Use a tripod and carefully take two or more identical shots but with different exposures; then combine them together. Easier if you have suitable software.

Or expose for the bright areas then try to recover something from the dark shadows during editing. Shooting Raw will help here; and you can create a couple of different exposures which can be combined with masks. Converting to Smart Objects sometimes works well - but only if you have suitable software, like the massively overpriced Photoshop CS5.

Either way, it isn't easy to create perfectly exposed photos in these conditions.

Your second shot works reasonably well. The first seems a bit soft; I wonder if you were hand holding the camera at a little too slow a shutter speed here. 1/60 should just about work but the other two which were shot at 1/250 are a lot sharper.

And I suspect that with the last image you were trying to obtain a greater depth of focus than was achievable.

[allenlennon]

Thanks mate. But I don't have photoshop. Can't afford it. I'll just keep Practicing.

[Mark von Kanel]

You could try a bit of fill flash, and try playing with both the flash and camera EVC. might help bring out shadow detail, would work better with off cam flash and an umbrella.

[allenlennon]

Thanks mark. Im in a middle of looking for a decent cheap flash trigger so i can

[JPS]

Hi Allen,
if you wanted to use 'bracketed exposure' and do not have the software perhaps this link might help.

http://fusion.ns-point.com/

Also 'GIMP' is a Shareware or Freeware PP program, so again cheap or free.

[allenlennon]

Does it work with Mac?

[JPS]

Sorry mate only windows as far as I know. Never mind I had best intentions in mind.