iced in

[jconti3]

C&C please......

[MiniChris]

Hire an icebreaker...

[Skitalez]

In my opinion the balance white suffers.....
Red - not at all red. On a photo the blue channel is prevails. too much
It is necessary to add warm

[Geoff F]

But being a bit on the blue side does make the scene appear colder (definitely too cold for me to venture outside) so I would experiment with some very slight White Balance changes and see what works.

I suspect you could also get away with a little bit of extra brightness, but be careful to avoid over exposing the patch of sun.

But, all in all, a nice scene.

[Peter Ryan]

I see from the EXIF data that the white balance was set to Sunny. This is telling the camera that the colour temperature is around 5,500 on the Kelvin scale or normal daylight with no colour cast.

The sky tells me this was shot on an overcast day. The means no direct sunlight (for a Sunny setting) and all the light was coming from an indirect light source – light reflected from the sky, and hence the blue colour cast in your image.

I have had two Nikons and I do find they shoot a little on the cool side when using the Auto White Balance but not this much.

I do like the diagonal composition and the limited red, white and blue colours in the scene.

[jconti3]

How do you view the EXIF data? That is funny that you say that. I was telling my wife on the way home from taking this shot that I forget to set the WB alot. I couldn't for the longest figure out some of my color issues. And yet again, I came from shooting my kids at 2pm in the snow to this shot and left it set to sunny. I started using my camera in full manual about three days after I got it. It is my first DSLR and I get a little excited when I think I'm on to something and I always leave out some detail. Practice,practice,practice. I tried working on it again and lost the effect of the sunset this time.

[Peter Ryan]

Hi John,

I have to rush out know but quickly I did notice you had some unusual settings for your camera. My advice move off manual. In manual mode you need a light meter to get your exposure right the one in your camera does not help you in manual.

You have a perfectly good exposure meter in your camera and it works very well in the semi automatic modes. Move on to one of the semi automatic modes like Aperture priority and then when you change the aperture to get a depth of field effect you want the shutter automatically changes to keep the exposure setting your camera set. There is a lot more than that but it will have to be for another time. Also read the tutorials as well.

I would also use Auto White Balance for the time being. I do use the Cloudy setting for sunrises and sunsets to retain the colour in the sky.

You can read your EXIF data in most of the post processing programs, if you right click on your image in Picasa and look under Properties it will display or download the freebie Opand EXIF reader.

Good luck.

[Donald]

My advice move off manual. In manual mode you need a light meter to get your exposure right the one in your camera does not help you in manual.

Peter

I find myself having to disagree with you on that one.

The secret of the in-camera light meter in Manual is to understand and appreciate that it is working differently to how it works in one of the semi-auto modes.

In Manual, the internal meter is telling you what you'll get with whatever ISO, Shutter and Aperture settings you've dialled in. Given that I use spot metering almost 100% of the time, I find it a highly effective means of helping my assessment of the tones across a scene. I then know what I've got in each part of the planned image and get make my settings accordingly.

So, using your in-camera meter in Manual is another skill set, but I don't agree with the view that it does not help you when shooting in Manual.

[djg05478]

Peter

I find myself having to disagree with you on that one.

The secret of the in-camera light meter in Manual is to understand and appreciate that it is working differently to how it works in one of the semi-auto modes.

In Manual, the internal meter is telling you what you'll get with whatever ISO, Shutter and Aperture settings you've dialled in. Given that I use spot metering almost 100% of the time, I find it a highly effective means of helping my assessment of the tones across a scene. I then know what I've got in each part of the planned image and get make my settings accordingly.

So, using your in-camera meter in Manual is another skill set, but I don't agree with the view that it does not help you when shooting in Manual.

Oh good...whew...I was curious about some of the previous advice. Even as a beginner, I shoot manual 99% of the time.

And isn't the histogram equally as effective as a light meter? Take a shot, look at the histogram, make adjustments, shoot again? ....and since I'm here, the advice about keeping WB in Auto....this is irrelevent if you are shooting RAW correct?

Thanks for the clarification
Debbie

[Donald]

the advice about keeping WB in Auto....this is irrelevent if you are shooting RAW correct?

Yes, in my opinion. My camera has never been in anything other than Auto WB, but it could be on any setting. Any and all WB adjustments are done in PP. I have WhiBal card. I take a shot with it in frame and then spot on that when I get home and adjust accordingly.

[jconti3]

So, since this was shot in RAW I should be able to get it right in PP,is that what we are saying? Also, I dont understand where to view or how to use my in camera light meter. My mission for the weekend is WB. I will be getting a grey card today and then I'm sure I will have even more questions.

[jconti3]

, Getting closer?

[tameigh]

I shot a similar pic over in St Albans Bay, Vermont, USA

The difference being that this guy should not have been surprised.



Edit: Wow, looking at my own picture, I would never have posted it today without fixing up the colors better.

As for your pic, I think that it is a bit oversaturated, I know you wanted to bring out the color of the boats and get in the sky, but I personally would leave the sky out of it and crop into the boats. It is a far less complicated problem then.

One more thing. I try to keep the sun at my back. I am not good enough to shoot a sunset or a sunrise straight on, but I like the light that time of day. If you could have gotten out onto that causeway, you maybe could have gotten those sail covers lit by an interesting light from behind you, and had a lot more color in the shot itself to work with.

These are just things I do to shoot in my style, such as it is.

[jiro]

Uhhhh... the image now shifted to the green hue, John. Mind if I ask what software are you using to do your post-processing? I am using photoshop right now. I can share some tricks if you use photoshop, too. Here is what I came up with when I tweaked your image:



Click here to see the bigger image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/willieb...5416/lightbox/

I added a graduated filter effect on the area of the sky to saturate the colors more. Normally, when I want to correct the color cast on an image I use the threshold command to find the white, neutral gray, and black area on the image. Then, I adjust it accordingly using the levels command using number adjustment on the R, G, and B values. It's not that complicated once you understand how the idea works. On your first posted image, your Blue values are up by 30 against the Red and the Green that's why you got that bluish cast.

If you're using photoshop, here's a pretty neat tutorial link on how to find the neutral gray on any image. This will correct the color cast on your image if you want to apply it using photoshop. Hope this helps.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/p.../neutral-gray/

[tameigh]

I'm impressed Jiro, Look at that ice now. The boats are nicer too.

[jiro]

Thanks, Tim.

[jconti3]

I'm using gimp2.6. I'm blown away that this is the same image. I'm lost.

[jconti3]

,

[jiro]

Nice work on the sky, John. I'm afraid the whites are all blown out, I can't see any detail anymore on those areas. Maybe lower the contrast and brightness level a bit?

[jconti3]

I see it,Jiro. I couldnt seem to get the same feel to the water as you did. It either goes bright and washed or too dark for the whites of the boats. Did you isolate the boats from the water?How did you get that more 'rich' color to the water? Is there anything I can be doing in the raw processing that could help me. Im using UFRaw and GIMP 2.6.