[QUOTE=springsteen87;31655040] Should I crop the bottom portion off?
QUOTE]

Yes imo you should.

Well thank you kindly for the detailed response - helps a lot and you may have convinced me to go down in budget a bit on body but spring for keeper lenses.. (makes sense at this stage... )

cheers

[QUOTE=pele02;31658684] Agreed, the footprints in the sand are just a distraction. The sculpture against the sky is the interesting part. You want to punch that. I would probably go so far as to make the treeline the bottom of the image. And straighten it if you're going to do that. Great pic.

I think so too. I think the L-R crop is good though.

Try a 3:4 ratio:


or a 4:5 ratio:


I think the 4:5 ratio looks best. Objectively, it satisifes the rule of thirds both horizontally and vertically. Subjectively, it has less distracting detail in the lower foreground.

If you're going to crop it then I'd be tempted to straighten the horizon at the same time.

Really interesting photo by the way!

There's some obvious distortion going on here, so we shouldn't rotate too much, or the items on the left will lean in even more than those on the right.

I don't think we want to lose the bottom of the statue. How much can we cut off the bottom?

Here's a 4:5 rotated 2 degrees

Here's that cropped to 1:1. I had to take as much off the top as off the bottom.
That loses part of the interesting bits in the sky, but certainly emphasizes the statue.

If we cut out the statue's supports to get a 1:1, we get this: which looks vertically unbalanced to me.

I wish the original had placed the statue lower in the frame, so we could have even more of the sky from the first and the bottom of the second in a 4:5 or 3:4.

A good compositional guide is that items that rest on the ground and stretch into the sky should be placed towards the bottom of the frame, to give them gravity, and also to provide more sky for them to seem to stretch into. Try to avoid placing your subject in either the horizontal or vertical centre. The horizontal positioning of this is good, because the cherry, which is the most dominant object, is 1/3 of the way in from the right edge.

What do you think, springsteen87?

I think i'm very fortunate to have a lot of good photographers in this thread to give me opinions/advice.

I originally thought the footprints in the snow would be more interesting, so I wanted to give them some space, I think I gave them too much space. I like the horizontal framing, it was my main focus, and I really like the 4:5 with a 2 degree twist. I'm going to re-size it and will probably print it, I'm really happy with how it turned out and already have a place for it on my wall

Regarding the distortion, it's something like a full-frame 13mm IIRC, would you have moved back and gone with something closer to 18mm to remove some of the distortion, or is that being caused by something else?

The clouds turned out to be absolutely perfect, i went into the night cursing them, but I don't think i could have asked for a better result

The most interesting thing in this picture is the way the clouds seem to be exploding out of the cherry. You want to highlight that above all else. Then the spoon-cherry interaction is the second most interesting. Try to use that to get the user's eye to flow from the spoon to the cherry-nova thing. The trees make a nice background. While footprints in the sand can sometimes be very interesting, here they just distract. Crop them and dull them out imo.

A pretty common mistake with composition is to try to add too many elements or make it too complicated. Simpler is always almost better.

Here's my shot at it:



I added a curves layer to darken the sky some and make it more dramatic. But then masked out the cherry so you could still see all the detail on it. Also I masked out the shadow layer a little (dithering the opacity down) on the bright spot in the sky.

I didn't notice the distortion as DTM correctly pointed out. The capitol building is already leaning to the right. So I didn't do any straigtening. You could run one of those programs to undistort it, but I think you lose some dramatic effect. I kind of like it distorted.

Hmmm I think I probably like DTMs composition better now that I look at them. His looks more like an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top.

^ That's pretty much exactly how I would've cropped it.

Also, that's snow? Can you upload the original? Great photo btw.

I've been meaning to get a dslr for ages, I've been making do with a Panasonic bridge camera (which is admittedly pretty good for the money).

Yeah, it's snow, I can upload the .nef if that's what you're looking for, or would you prefer a .jpg with no editing?

Suzzer, I like both yours and DTM's adjustments...I'm finally going to get lightroom and photoshop, I've stalled and claimed I like SOOC far too long!

Most zoom lenses exhibit barrel distortion wide open, this looks more like pincushion. So it might not be the lens/focal length at all, but rather the effect you get from aiming at an upwards angle.


A couple of things to check: look at the Exif data in the original to get the focal length, then shoot a brick wall at that same focal length, holding the camera perfectly level. Are the brick edges at the lower sides leaning in or out?

Find football goal posts or a tall straight-sided building. Take a picture with the camera perfectly level, and another with the camera pointed up at a 30 or 45 degree angle. What is the difference on the outside edges?

Oooh, NEF plz!

I got this one time when I was taking a picture of a building leaning my lens up zoomed all the way in. Good to know why.

Here's the .nef

http://www.filedropper.com/dsc0048_2

My dad is looking to buy a camera. Most likely a nikon since that's what me and my uncle have.

He is a novice to digital photography but owned a photography studio in the 70s so he is an old school pro.

He wants to buy a body only and borrow one of my lenses till he gets a nice lens. He is looking at the D90 or D7000.

There aren't any good sales on either camera atm and they seem to be sold out a lot of places. There are however some good deals on the D3100 leaving money to spend on nice lenses.

I told him he could possibly buy my D90 and I'll upgrade to the D7000.

What's his best bet?

D90(maybe mine)
D7000
D3100 on sale with some good lenses
used starter camera

He does a lot of high end ebay sales of antique razors knifes and guns so macro photography is kind of important but I think any of these will do a good job for that.

I messed around in lightroom some and really enjoyed it. I can't wait to use it on some of my other photos.

I took this pic mainly to work on my composition by lining everything up. It made for really bad lighting in certain areas. I used light room to alter the photo quite a bit. It's probably a little over done and I probably need to re crop the photo with too much black space in the lower left corner.

Before


After

Final edits

I'm pretty happy with the pic. Especially considering I didn't really care for it in the 1st place and only tried to tweak it because it was an example of a poor exposure.

If I looked out my window and saw that, I'd start hunting for my gas mask.

I just went for way overdone but i think it turned out pretty cool

(I wish I had a D7000 - doesn't mean it is the best choice for you or your dad.)

Having two relatives owning Nikon, and an interest in still photography but not video makes chosing Nikon over Canon or Sony a no-brainer.

The earthquake/tsunami in Japan and flooding in Thailand are playing havoc with dSLR supply chains. Popular models are in short supply.

Which specific body to choose should be driven by intended use, experience and budget. Budget limits the upside only. If he has ample experience with film SLRs then he may benefit from some of the advanced features on a higher end or full-frame body more than a novice would. OTOH if that experience ended back in the 70s, those advanced features may all be new to him.

If all he will be doing with his photographs is putting them on the web (to illustrate e-bay sale items, for instance) then he doesn't need a particularly high-resolution sensor.

The DX crop factor might be an advantage for macro photography, as it can be for wildlife photography. It should give greater working distance and more depth-of-field, both of which are usually positives in macro photography.

If he might be buying used high-quality older lenses, he might want to avoid the D3100 or D5100 or their predecessors, D3000, D5000, D60, D40, D40X, because they will not autofocus with older autofocus lenses that don't have a built-in motor. Most lenses currently sold new by Nikon are AF-S lenses which have a built-in motor, as do AF-I lenses. There are still a few older AF lenses in the lineup, however. If your dad wants to use AF-D or AF lenses, or if he wants to use metering with a non-autofocus lens, he'd need to put them on a body that has a focus drive, which is any body except those listed above.

Some product photographers use a perspective control (PC) lens (a tilt and shift lens). If he wants to use a PC lens, he should be aware that there are some limitations of use on some bodies. The most common problem is the built-in flash interfering with upward shift of the lens. The full 11.5mm upshift is only available on D3, D3S, D3X, D300, D300S and D700 (and probably the new D800). On the D7000 and D90 it is limited to 8mm, less on other DX bodies. Also, bodies older than D90 are unable to control the lens aperture of a PC lens, so it would have to be adjusted manually on the lens.

Perhaps one approach he could take is to borrow your D90 to try it for a while. If he finds it doesn't meet his needs, he could look for bodies that address whatever shortcomings he finds. Also, get hands on experience with different models by trying them out at a store.

If you provide some more information on hard budget limits, and on how he intends to use a camera (frequency of use, personal or professional, what lenses, will photos be printed, if so at what size, what types of subject) people here might be able to make a more specific suggestion.

woulda made a great 2-stop HDR!

ya I am thinking of going back with my tripod

He doesn't really have any old lenses worth using. Idk what his budget is. It could literally be 1500 to 5k maybe more. It really depends how much many of his guns he wants to sell(he has a lot).

I just think he should probably wait for a more affordable d7000(~$1k) or buy my d90 when I can get a more affordable d7000.

I did see a used d80 on craiglist for $300(10k shutter count). I would consider buying this as a secondary and letting him use it till the d7000 comes back. It would be nice to throw my 55-300 on it. I should email the guy and ask if he'll take $250.

That leaves a lot of options open.

You might be waiting for along time. Nikon USA seems to have boosted prices for its most popular items. Best deal I could find for D7000 body in the US is U$120 more than the best C$ price I could find here in Canada. Get used to the D7000 being a $1200 - $1300 body until its successor comes out.

Get him a used D80 if he's essentially looking for a throwaway. Otherwise, you should talk to him and ask him those questions I posed in my previous post.

I really like this.