Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

Part 2 is up!

http://www.martinirwinphotography.com/2013/04/24/food-in-hiroshima-hiroshima-pt-2/

Snippet...

 

Looks good! :congratulatory:

 

Pigeons! Spectacular photography as always. I love this thread! :smile-new: Keep snappin'!

 

Part 3: www.martinirwinphotography.com/2013/04/26/itsukushima-shrinemiyajima-hiroshima-pt-3/

 

You've got some really beautiful shots in that 3rd set, Marian. Some REALLY nice ones.

I'll be off to Aso on Saturday night and coming back on Monday. I'll be taking my camera but not sure how many good photos I can get with the family being around.

 

Cheers & have a good Golden Week

 

@Yakumo: Thanks for the info, great to see the use of a bit of street furniture to get that shot!

Martin, those are some amazing photos in Hiroshima!

Can I ask a daft noobish question? The night time shot around the Peace Park - from a technical perspective, how did you manage to get such a balanced capture of the shadows and lights without the lights blooming out of control? Is the camera/sensor, lens (low f-stop?) or settings that help get shots like that? When we were over there 6 months back I had trouble getting a good balance for night shots, but I was only using entry-level DSLR gear (550D with the 18-55mm kit lens) and learning as I went.

... apologies if it's a stupid question!!

 

The response curve of your camera isn't perfectly linear. I can't speak for Yakumo, but the way I'd do it is to slightly underexpose and then push the image a stop or two in post, with a little bit of black recovery.

Or create a HDR composite, but I think that's cheating.

Edit: Was all topsy-turvy. :S

Edit2: That's why I always shoot RAW.

It lets you do crazy stuff like this:

Before


After

 

I use light room too.

 

Thanks MangledLeg!

Not a stupid question at all, and you'd be able to achieve similar results with the 550D in my opinion... if you had a "faster" lens. You see how Yakumo's [low-light, but arguably all of his] photos have improved since he bought the lens I recommend for him? The wide aperture (low f/ number) means that more light hits the sensor for the same exposure (all other things being equal). If you refer to my river shot, with the dome lit up on the left (below)...



the EXIF data are: shutter speed of 1/10s, aperture of f/2.8, ISO400, focal length 24mm, EV+3.00

The lowish ISO reduced noise and stopped overexposure, and the wide aperture allowed sufficient light to enter the lens and thus hit the sensor. As retroswim has mentioned it is possible to "recover" some of the image in post processing, but I've done very little to the image. I use Lightroom to organise my photos, and correct for lens barrel distortion.

Histogram:



and here's the histogram shown in my camera's EVF:



This helps me with exposure settings sometimes. Hope that helps!

 

I sometimes use the histogram. It can be a handy tool at times. One thing I find odd though is that my Toshiba TV has a histogram for some odd reason.

 

Is that tiny rope fence there to keep the pixies out of the flower bed?

 

Thanks for the feedback guys

When we went over I switched to doing everything simultaneous JPEG+RAW - allowed for quickly sending pics to family while we were away when we could hook into the in-room wifi where it was setup, and allowed for more work at home. Could not believe the amount of detail you can recover in raw mode either. Though I tend to use Photoshop for my image work rather than Lightroom. I hear it's a great piece of software, but I think I'm more used to messing around in that.

The lens point is good too - have been thinking of upgrading, but am still convincing my other half of the benefits

If you guys don't mind I'd be happy to post some shots and see if you can fire some feedback so I can improve (not sure when we'll be able to get to Japan again, but it means future images and travel will look better!), but the quality isn't anywhere near where the likes or Martin, Yakumo or GaijinPunch so I'm probably a little self-conscious

 

post away. you only get better by listening to others and practising. I used to be complete crap at taking photos. Now I'm just crap Honestly though, the only way to improve is to post your shots and see what people say.

 

Lightroom is essentially a photography-honed version of Photoshop. (The product is actually called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom)

It doesn't just touch up images, but it organises them as well. It also stores your modifications to images separately to the images themselves, meaning you can undo one or all of your changes at any point down the track. Even years later!

Lightroom has camera and lens profiles for automagically correcting distortion and aberrations too.

 

Not really a photo but a video of me driving around Aso the other day.

 

@Yakumo: Nice video of the drive! Made me think a bit about Shoutoku Battle (sp?).
@RetroSwim: Cool, that makes sense - I knew it was a streamlined version of Photoshop designed for photographers, but I guess it would be interesting to compare my current processes using Photoshop vs Lightroom. Might have to look into it.

Anywho, I've taken a look through some of the shots I took and here are a some I'm happy to share without being too self-conscious

Akihabara at night:



Street art in Shibuya:



Suidobashi in the afternoon:



Tokyo Tower at night:



Rockers at Yoyogi Park:



Crossing the bridge to check out the big Book Off in Kyoto city:



Fushimi Inari:



Autumn colours at Nijo Castle:



Gion at night:



Students at the Peace Park in Hiroshima:



Backstreets in Hiroshima:



Nipponbashi:



Doutonburi in the afternoon:



Walking back to the main station in Nara:



I've over-processed a few while I was trying different stuff in post, and some I've only tweaked a little. Still working out what I like doing best.

Any feedback would be really appreciated though - there's some shots in there that are probably very touristy, but lack of time meant we weren't able to get off the beaten track too much!

 

Some good shots there. I7m not in the best of states to commernt at the moment since I'm a bit drunk but I did notice a few shots are a bit lob sided.

 

This. Straighten! The Tokyo Tower one especially. Vertical things being non-vertical is distracting.

Other than that, I'm a fan of them all! I really like the street art one. I usually hate selective-colouring, but I really like this photo, it has great lines. I guess because the colour is subtle, so it doesn't look cliché as that effect normally does. Thumbs up!

I don't know how long you've been photographing for, but see if you can find a book called "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson. It answers pretty much all the questions you've had here, and explains the answers really well.

 

Nice shots, everyone.

Note that just about any of the features you'd need in Lightroom to fix exposure (including the same noise reduction algo) are in Adobe Camera Raw, which comes w/ Photoshop. I could never get into LR's work flow, so I use ACR. I try to get the exposure right in the camera, but sometimes it's not possible (like in really dark situations, or overcast weather).