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Post A Pic Of Today's Riding


Mark W

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14 minutes ago, Mark W said:

Is that 'halo' kind of thing around the riders something you're adding in, or just a product of some editing process you're using?

I'm not adding it intentionally, just from the editing, I don't really know what I'm doing and I need a better editing program.

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Ah, cool - didn't know if it was to make the rider stand out or something.  What are you using to edit at the moment?  If you're looking for something decent and legal you can download the full Adobe CS2 (incl. Photoshop) from Adobe themselves for free.  Alternatively, I'd imagine if you had a scout around you could find some reasonable ways of 'acquiring' one of the newer Photoshop versions.  I've used CS5, 5.5 and 6 and they're pretty good.

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3 hours ago, Mark W said:

 If you're looking for something decent and legal you can download the full Adobe CS2 (incl. Photoshop) from Adobe themselves for free.  Alternatively, I'd imagine if you had a scout around you could find some reasonable ways of 'acquiring' one of the newer Photoshop versions.  I've used CS5, 5.5 and 6 and they're pretty good.

How about on the video editing side of things? The best thing I've found is an open source clone of WMM, not bad, not great either.

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10 hours ago, Mark W said:

Ah, cool - didn't know if it was to make the rider stand out or something.  What are you using to edit at the moment?  If you're looking for something decent and legal you can download the full Adobe CS2 (incl. Photoshop) from Adobe themselves for free.  Alternatively, I'd imagine if you had a scout around you could find some reasonable ways of 'acquiring' one of the newer Photoshop versions.  I've used CS5, 5.5 and 6 and they're pretty good.

Cool I will check them out, currently using photo director by cyberlink, it's a hdr effect that does it, I didn't think it looked that bad in these ones?

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I thought it may have been an HDR thing as that seems to generally do that halo effect.  The only one I really spotted it on was the one of the Luke on that rail - around the front wheel and around him there's a slight lighter area but it's not anything major at all (Y)

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I don't really know of any guides in all honesty, it was just all trial and error for me, with the odd random nugget of info tossed in from someone that suddenly made everything make sense :P

Just as some random pointers that you'll probably know already, but just in case:

- Aperture controls how bright the flash lit part of the photo will be, shutter speed controls the ambient.  I usually play around with the ISO to get the ambient looking about right, then tweak the aperture and flash power to get the flash lit area right.

- The more powerful you set your flash, the more motion blur you're likely to get.  This is annoying as on a bright, sunny day, because your camera's sync speed is usually only going to be 1/200th or 1/250th, you'll need to have you ISO nearer 100 or so to get the daylight bits exposed right, then when it comes to getting your flash lit part right you're pretty limited as you'll need to have the aperture pretty wide open (which is bad for quality and depth of field, depending on how far away the subject is), and then you'll still need to get the flash power dialled pretty high up.  With mine, if you go 1/1 you'll get some blur during most shots, with 1/2 it's not too bad, then 1/4 and down and you're pretty much good.

- If you want to avoid things looking too flat, you have to try and get your flashes to opposing angles if you've got more than one.  It's not a hard-and-fast rule for obvious reasons, but generally you'll want the flash angle to be a reasonable amount different to your own (so it's not basically looking over your shoulder or whatever) so it doesn't make the subject look really flat and textureless.

- Playing around with the zoom setting on your flashes makes a big difference.  If you've got to have them quite far away, it's definitely worth trying to set the zoom setting on them so it's high double/low triple digits as it'll concentrate the flash power more.  That said, if you're just trying to get some general fill light, trying to get a little closer and setting the zoom angle to as wide as possible can be good as it'll be a fairly soft-ish light so you won't get a shitload of brutal shadows.

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I think it's just standard.  I used to have a custom one I made but I kind of ended up not really liking that look any more.  Another thing that I've said to pretty much everyone I know with a 550D before, but if you've got a Canon setting the white balance to cloudy or shade seems to make a big difference.  Standard Canon white balancing always seems to be really cool/cold looking, whereas if you go cloudy it kind of warms it all up a bit.  Seems to generally keep things looking alright with flash too.  I usually just leave it on cloudy, then once it gets towards dusk bang it up to shade if needed.

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Yeah, people recommend shooting flat/neutral so you can play around with the file and do more with it, but I hate post processing stuff so I generally just try and get it as close as possible in camera.  You generally know the kind of look/feel you want in a shot, so I don't get why you wouldn't try and get it as close as you can in-camera rather than meaning yet more time doing boring stuff on a computer :P  Definitely worth having a play around with settings though to see what you like the look of.  Everyone's got their own style or aesthetic, so just keep playing with it until you get results you're happy with, then hone it in from there.

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Here's some phone photos from my last ride..have a bit of a shoulder problem, taken me out for 2 months so far..not much I can do, but Matt did some fun riding.

 

Last shot is a photo of my post beer spots' selection of the day.

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IMG_7195.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

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