Assignment 2

Photographing my room or a detail

I wasn't entirely sure if this is what we had to do for this photograph but a few classmates explained and I think this is what he had to do... For this photograph, since I can't find my tripod lately, I had to use a steady object to place my camera on, results came out better than expected. I tried several attempts of avoiding light trails (like we see in the back of this image) but failed pretty bad on my other attempts, this was my best one.

Drawing with light
For this photograph, drawing with light wasn't my first time so I had lots of fun doing this part of the assignment. Sadly, I did something very similar to this for the first assignment and didn't want to re-use the same material as I did on that assignment so I just used a simple light for this one. I like how the infinite sign I tried making didn't come out perfect and that we see from where the light begins. Not many people may like it but in this case, I think it makes the photograph much more interesting.

Lab 7 : Save the pixels

Shooting at ISO 400

Which gives the best exposure? Why? 

The properly exposed one, according to my light meter, gives the best exposure. (The first one) Because it isn't too bright nor is it too dark. We see everything properly, detail for detail & the eyes are well lit and exposed as well.

Shooting at ISO 1600
In which is the noise worse?
I think the second image has the worse noise.

JPEG vs RAW

What is the difference between the JPG and the RAW image screen caps?
As we've learned in class, JPEG shots are like "caked up" versions of an image. As we see here as well on the 100% screenshots, JPEG seems more saturated and less sharp than RAW. The colours of JPEG also sort of seem warmer than on RAW, they're less "accurate" on JPEG.

Lab 6 : Histogram

Low key scene 

Variety of tones scene

High key scene

1. According to my histogram, where do most of the pixels in my high-key image fall?
    On my high key image, most pixels fall on the right side on the histogram.

2. Are there any pixels in my high-key image that would not print with detail?
    No because everything that has major details in it is well focused and even with the white on white
    situation we have here the whites don't go to a major clipping point where it becomes problematic.

3. According to my histogram, where do most of the pixels in my low-key image fall?
    On my low-key scene, a have a good amount of pixels on the far left and right, but none in the
    middle of it.

4. Are there any pixels in my low-key image that would not print with detail?
   According to Lightroom's histogram, with the help of the black and white clippings, there aren't any
   pixels that would lose detail if I printed this image out.

5. According to the histogram, where do most of the pixels in my varied tones image fall?
    For my varied tones image my pixels are almost all over the histogram but I'd say they're mostly on
    the right since my image has more bright tones than dark (the red-ish).

6. Are there any pixels in the varied tones image that would not print with detail?

  Always according to the Lightroom's histogram with the help of the white and black clipping setting   on, it doesn't show any clipping on my image. So basically the details should be printed out since it     doesn't show any clipping on my image.

7. Considering the information on the histogram, do you feel your camera is properly exposing the
    high key and low key scenes?
    I personally feel like my camera is well exposing my high key and low key scenes. Where the
    whites or blacks dominate on my image, the histogram goes with it as well. It exposes properly,
    although I do think that sometimes it could do better my camera still does a decent good job in
    general.

8. Which histogram shows the most dynamic range?
    Out of my three images, definitely the varied tones one. There is more than just black or white on
    my image so the histogram should show a bigger variety on its histogram. The more variety there
    is to the image the more dynamic the histogram should look.

    

Lab 5 : Noise Reduction

50 mm : ISO 100 - f/16 - 3"

On :

Off :

There seem to not have much of a difference between the noise reduction On and Off at ISO 100. Because the ISO is already very low, it doesn't change much to the image.

50mm : ISO 800 - f/16 - 0.4"

On :

Off :

For 800 ISO, we start seeing a little bit of noise around when the noise reduction is Off, mostly on the canvas. When I turn my noise reduction On, I think that my camera reduces pretty well for a high ISO without loosing much details. Since noise is much more visible in darker places, I assured myself to at least have a little bit of black to compare my noise reductions properly.

50mm : ISO 6400 - f/16 - 1/20 secs.

On :

Off :

For 6400 ISO, which is the highest ISO possible on the Nikon D3200, if we compare it to the other ISO featured on this blog, we can see a pretty good difference, noise reduction on and off. Although for the noise reduction on, I still think it does a pretty decent job in reducing the noise. I only have an On & Off option for noise reduction so I can't do a comparison between Low, Standard & High but if I had to choose between keeping the noise reduction On & Off, I'd prefer keeping it On because I don't loose much details after all.

Assignment 1

Landscape with deep DOF

f/16 - 1/80 secs. - ISO 100

For my landscape shot I figured that with snow a lower vantage point would be the best choice for this shot. With my 50mm lens, because it was all I had on me at the time, the smallest  aperture I could obtain was f/16. I didn't have any idea in particular for shooting my landscape shot, all as long as everything was in focus and sharp, and that what I'm shooting is decent-looking, I was very satisfied with this. 

Night scene

f/5.6 - 2.5" - ISO 100

For my night scene photograph, as I was reading the assignment I saw "ghosted elements and light trails" and this was the first thing I thought of. In the "Instagram" world this is what we call "fire-painting", you light up some steel wool, attach it to something and start "whipping it" around. All depending on what shape exactly you want to capture. In my case, we tried an 8 sideways (infinite sign basically), a regular circle from the top, on the side and also from the front. I had to play a lot mostly with my shutter speed because I either had too many light trails in my picture or not quite enough, in the end this was one of my best shots that I am more than satisfied with. The person in the image is still visible but isn't exactly sharp and on focused, it seems more ghosted than anything else, another reason why I liked this image a lot, I have a mix of both ghosting & light trails.

Portrait with shallow DOF

f/1.8 - 1/125 secs. - ISO 800

For this portrait I just wanted to make something simple. No huge set, makeup or anything. Just my subject and a satisfying background. I chose the kitchen because the lighting was good and also because he likes spending time in the kitchen (he likes cooking) so I told myself, why not have him in an environment he likes? Focusing on his eyes was what mattered the most for me. 

Shooting a sport

f/8 - 1/150 secs. - ISO 800

This is probably not the most ideal sport shot but here's an acquaintance of mine sort of climbing//jumping around. In this shot more precisely, if I remember it well, he was just about to jump on another platform (I honestly don't know what it is). Initially, I wanted him to do a few flips around the place and have a shot of him in the air as he does his stunts, but because of the weather conditions that day I preferred not making him do that, he also preferred climbing around so I didn't stop him from doing so either, When our teacher gave this as apart of our assignment, I knew that going to an actual sporting event wasn't going to be easy because I don't have the right equipment nor an can I get very close to my subject. So I came up with this idea and it worked out pretty well in the end. 

Lab 3 : Focal Length

 f/5.6 - 1/160 secs. - ISO 400
18mm (18-55mm)

f/5.6 - 1/125 secs. - ISO 400

55mm (18-55mm)

Still-Life :
On the first image, where the focal length is 18mm, there is more background than on 55mm one. We see a big difference of distortion from one image to another, because of its focal length.

f/3.5 - 1/60 secs. - ISO 800

18mm (18-55mm)

f/1.8 - 1/60 secs - ISO 400

50mm

Portrait :

From the 18mm to the 50mm, we see a huge distortion. On the first image, there is more background and the faces look more distorted than on the second one. The depth-of-field changes as well from one image to another because of my aperture, but also because of my focal length.

f/2.8 - 1/80 secs. - ISO 800

70mm (70-200mm) 

f/2.8 - 1/160 secs. - ISO 800

105mm (70-200mm)

f/2.8 - 1/100 - ISO 800

135mm (70-200mm)

 f/16 - 1/60 secs. - ISO 3200
70mm (70-200mm)

f/16 - 1/30 secs. - ISO 3200

105mm (70-200mm)

f/16 - 1/30 - ISO 3200

135mm (70-200mm)

Part 2 : Focal Length and Depth-of-Field

For these images, I had to change lens because my 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 didn't show any big difference from a wide to small aperture. We see a huge difference of depth-of-field from the f/2.8 and f/16, the background is much blurrier on the f/2.8 shots.

f/4 - 1/125 secs. - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/5.6 - 1/80 secs. - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/8 - 1/40 - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/11 - 1/20 secs. - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/16 - 1/10 secs. - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/22 - 1/5 secs. - ISO 100

18mm (18-55mm)

f/5.6 - 1/80 secs. - ISO 100

30mm (18-55mm)

f/8 - 1/40 secs. - ISO 100

30mm (18-55mm)

f/11 - 1/20 secs. - ISO 100

30mm (18-55mm)

f/16 - 1/10 secs - ISO 100

30mm (18-55mm)

f/22 - 1/5 secs - ISO 100

30mm (18-55mm)

f/5.6 - 1/50 secs - ISO 100

55mm (18-55mm)

 f/8 - 1/30 secs - ISO 100
55mm (18-55mm)

 f/11 - 1/15 secs. - ISO 100
55mm (18-55mm)

f/16 - 1/8 secs. - ISO 100

55mm (18-55mm)

f/22 - 1/4 secs. - ISO 100

55mm (18-55mm)

Part 3 : Test your lens
Everything went pretty well for this part, the only difficulty I got was because of the different focal lengths I had to use. I had to get closer or further away from the target, it wasn't much but sometimes it could be difficult. Also as of aperture speaking, as my f-stops got smaller (ex: f/22), the clearer everything got. I don't see a HUGE difference but the difference is still there.