With black & white in mind

[DigiDiva]

Took this with the intension of a B&W conversion. Any composition comments would be welcome. I'm still having major focusing issues and just can't get the sharpness I crave! Practice makes perfect, so I will labour on!

[chris-p]

Compositionally, this works well. The only thing I find is that it's a bit heavy on the left side. I think there's too much wall. If you cropped some of the wall out a little I think it would be a bit better balanced.

Sharpness wise - it looks like you've got ghosting of two images. You're EXIF data shows 2seconds exposure at f/22 in shutter priority mode. The DoF is fine (thanks to the f/22) but the softness in it looks like camera movement to me. If you look at the stones in the bottom right corner closely you can see the edges of duplicate stones. The same is true of the fence posts in the top left.

I'm assuming you used a tripod for a 2 second exposure (if this was hand held then it's better than I can do by a long way - even leaning against a wall or similar). It looks like you need a cable release or to use your mirror lock or a self timer to remove camera wobble if you can.

[amk1977]

As Chris mentions, there is definitely some sort of ghosting caused by movement here. If the camera was on a tripod and it was very windy, this could account for it or, if you just used the shutter release, rather than a remote or timer, you will cause movement by depressing the button with your finger.

What I also noticed is that the sky is blown out and you have gradation of grey tones in the clouds. To avoid this in future, you could either use automatic bracketing if the camera has that feature or take a series of shots, some exposing for the pebbles in the foreground, then some for the sky and reflection in the sea. You can later combine the images to produce a much more detailed final result.

If your camera does not have bracketing I'd do the following:

* Make sure you are shooting in RAW format, not JPEG.
* Position the camera on the tripod and frame your shot
* Set the camera to aperture priority mode
* Select the F value to f/22 again (higher the f/#, the smaller the aperture, the greater the DOF)
* Enable shutter delay so avoid mirror slap
* Use the self timer, setting it to about 10 sec
* Put the camera into manual focus and focus about 1/3 of the way into the frame
* Take a shot and see how the pebbles are exposed. If you're satisfied, make a note of the shutter speed in the EXIF data
* Switch from aperture priority mode to full manual mode.
* Set the aperture to f/22 and the shutter speed to the same as in the EXIF data (In this case 2 seconds).
* Now increase the shutter speed from 2 sec to 1.6 sec and take a picture.
* Repeat this process of reducing the shutter by one incriment each time, until your sky is nicely exposed.

What you should be left with (after discounting all the additional "test" exposures), will be two images. One for your pebbled area and one for your sky/sea reflection. These you can combine in post processing by blending the two images together in different layers iin photoshop or whatever software you are using. You can of course blend more than two images together. You may find that the pebbles are perfect in one exposure, the wall in another and the sky/reflection in a 3rd.

If you wanted a really milky sea, that would be the time to fit that ND filter to the front of the lens that you mentioined in the impulse buying thread . The above process will be exactly the same, except that your shutter speeds would be much slower, as the ND filter reduces x amount of stops of light, depending on its strength. Expose for the pebbles, then expose for other elements like the sky.

[DigiDiva]

My camera does have auto bracketing but I never remeber to use it! My tripod is a rubbish cheap one which is going to be replaced by a much better one (following my tripod advice thread) by January. I was sitting on a very rocky beach, on a wobbly chair, freezing cold with limited time because of the rising sun. I was using a rather unstable tripod and I dont have a rempote shutter release, so everything you have said is right, lol, you are all so observant and miss nothing.... haha....I have a lot of progress to make equipment wise and knowledge wise, but I need to know how my composition is.

The freedom I felt this morning, up before the sun, seeing things I didn't know happened, like beach cleaning and dog walkers social groups, made me feel fantastic for the rest of the day. Total strangers approaching me to chat. Even if I will never be that good, I love how photography makes me feel and that's what's important. I'm sure you can all relate to that.

I have learned so much from you guys, I so appreciate your patience and help. Keep it coming xx

[DigiDiva]

Originally Posted by chris-p

Compositionally, this works well. The only thing I find is that it's a bit heavy on the left side. I think there's too much wall. If you cropped some of the wall out a little I think it would be a bit better balanced.

Sharpness wise - it looks like you've got ghosting of two images. You're EXIF data shows 2seconds exposure at f/22 in shutter priority mode. The DoF is fine (thanks to the f/22) but the softness in it looks like camera movement to me. If you look at the stones in the bottom right corner closely you can see the edges of duplicate stones. The same is true of the fence posts in the top left.

I'm assuming you used a tripod for a 2 second exposure (if this was hand held then it's better than I can do by a long way - even leaning against a wall or similar). It looks like you need a cable release or to use your mirror lock or a self timer to remove camera wobble if you can.

Cropped some of the wall out and yes, it looked much better, thank you. Now, to get the right exposure for the milky sea and not over expose the sky.... So much to learn.