January 2011 SMB Photography Challenge - Contre Jour - Discussion thread

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peachbum said:
Well I'll explain it thus, but I guess others would explain it better. When you are shooting into light or bright conditions your lens shuts down (gets smaller) to let in less light. Unless you counteract this ie by opening up your lens again (or keeping it open for longer), the overall picture will be under exposed.

That strange beam of light only seems to happen with digital cameras, it doesn't seem to happen with film photography (though you can get glare and lens image in the picture). I think if you reposition yourself it won't happen. If you look at your picture, the sun is too "bright" and the rest of the picture is too dark. But, the only way to learn is to take pictures and work out out what you like/don't like and see/find out how to do/not do the same again.

I learnt the hard way. I was an impoverished traveller sitting on a beautiful beach one afternoon. Took some shots of the sun and the waves (olympus trip) on a glorious day, and never to go back etc. Developed the film some months later, and every single shot was under exposed as I just thought shooting away at the sun would provide me with realistic pictures.
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Thanks for your comments peach. :)
 


black-cat said:
Thanks for the comment mate, the reason I took the photograph was because the sun looked awesome as it burst through the cloud on a day when it previously hadn't shown itself, my next aim was to get the sun in the centre of the pic... :lol:

As I said, I'm a complete novice at taking pictures.
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You're going to love next month's challenge then.
 
A way around blowing out the skies, use a grad ND filter or take 3 - 5 pics at different exposures and HDR them, basically it merges all the pics together and adjusts the exposures to match. tripod is essential tho.
 
black-cat said:
Thanks for your comments peach. :)
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Actually, when I first looked at your picture it was very dark, but as I tilted my screen at different angles, it looked completely different, even quite light in parts. So ignore all my comments, I'll shut up now. :oops:

My first paragraph is accurate (I believe) for very "white" scenes using a film camera. But I'm a complete novice of digital photogrpahy and I'm still learning too, which rules apply for film and which for digital photography.

I'm finding as time has gone on, nearly all pictures (digital camera photographs), the sun is too "bright" and even blurred and the surrounding area is "too dark", now I would have thought this was under exposure but maybe it is just a weak point of digital photography and not under exposure at all?

I've been trying to learn about it but not found anything relevant yet, did read up on the difference between RAW and j.peg though, so my time wasn't totally wasted.
 
peachbum said:
Actually, when I first looked at your picture it was very dark, but as I tilted my screen at different angles, it looked completely different, even quite light in parts. So ignore all my comments, I'll shut up now. :oops:

My first paragraph is accurate (I believe) for very "white" scenes using a film camera. But I'm a complete novice of digital photogrpahy and I'm still learning too, which rules apply for film and which for digital photography.

I'm finding as time has gone on, nearly all pictures (digital camera photographs), the sun is too "bright" and even blurred and the surrounding area is "too dark", now I would have thought this was under exposure but maybe it is just a weak point of digital photography and not under exposure at all?

I've been trying to learn about it but not found anything relevant yet, did read up on the difference between RAW and j.peg though, so my time wasn't totally wasted.
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Nevertheless, I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts.

Btw, when you were tilting your screen did you notice that the sun in my pic resembles the little white ghost from the ghostbusters logo? :lol:
 
some good efforts there

have one or two ideas for mine gotta be quick tho

am I missing something with mini-x2's pic?
 
Thank you.

I've just put in my album one with the temperature changed where the background comes out more orangey. I quite like this, but as a technique exercise decided to enter the unaltered one. I tried using some red paper over my light source but there just wasn't enough light to take the picture quickly and got camera shake (I presume) (in the album also).

also rans
 
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Couple of corking entries here :)

Much better than last year's efforts :lol: Good theme
 
janiep said:
"Best dead dog"
;)
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Don't hink I didn't consider it.

A bit worried that next month's theme might be a bit basic, but as there are novice photographers on here I'm going to stick with it.

EDIT: Even more so now I've seen the entries for this month, and some of the comments on threads over the last couple of days. I hope people join in, it'll be the only "back to basics" theme of the year.
 
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Re: January 2011 SMB Photography Competition - Contre Jour - Discussion thread

andy m said:
I hope I'm not the only one who had to google that. :oops:
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Nope I googled it as well, plus I went on image search on google and it would appear to be a pretty wide scope. I must get my camera out and try and enter this month.

Icarebecauseyoudo said:
Couple of corking entries here :)

Much better than last year's efforts :lol: Good theme
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I agree with that there are some cracking photos so far.
 
Great entries so far - definitely helps to give everyone constraints to work in. Should lead to less debate over whether something is 'on theme' or not, meaning that people judge the entries over more subjective criteria.
 
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