Overcooked, so the actual dynamic range in the image is out of whack. There is no comprehensible shadow / light ratio, everything is visible, where your brain wants to see contrast between light and dark. Looks very much like photomatix has been used. The 3rd image has the best ratio between dark and light, but overall there is a halo effect over each image, this kind of processing looks cool till you've seen it a few times, then it eventually makes your eyes hurt. There's a few better options for blending exposures than photomatix, if you're using photoshop, you can go to file > automate > merge to HDR pro, and create a 32 bit image which you can then tone in ACR, gives you a whole pile of extra range on your exposure and shadow/highlight adjustments, etc, can often be more natural looking. More powerful still is luminosity masking, check out this tutorial here : http://iso.500px.com/luminosity-masks-in-digital-blending/ and grab his action set if you don't want to go through the laborious chore of setting up luminosity mask actions yourself. I have a friend who is a landscape/cityscape photographer and he manually pastes all his HDR layers into a single file, then uses regular masks to paint in areas from the different exposures between layers, which also looks pretty natural but is far too time intensive for my liking! The composition of the images is really good, just the toning that is over the top. The added boost to local contrast in photomatix that brings out grungy detail and such can fool you into thinking you have enough shadow and such after you've been looking at the images for a while.
People like to be able to see patterns and make sense of them. They like to see new information that's in some way relevant to them. The photos you showed are generally well composed but there's just a ton of visual information in terms of various colors and details that is a bit hard to "read" and even if you spend some time looking at them all you can see is some unknown place that's quite messy and oddly colorful... not relevant for most people. Edit: Let's keep posting photos. Here's a street shot that got published in 1x: "ME and My Expectations"
I've also found the 32 bit HDR method in photoshop a couple of days ago, so i think i'm gonna try that out. But first i'm gonna have to fix that photoshop/LR/ACR stuff on my pc before that works properly.
I stumbled upon an old Minolta MD Rokkor 50mm f/1.7 lens for 2 euros at a flea market yesterday and thought I'd bring it home to have a look at. It's dirty as hell, but oh well, it's probably been sitting in a dusty storage room for a couple of decades now. My camera is an old, trusty EOS 400D (Rebe XTi in the US?), so obviously it's not compatible. I got bored, though, so I took the lens apart, replaced the aperture mechanism with a shoddy "stepless" one with an old paper clip and butchered my old 18-55mm kit lens to convert the Minolta to be used in place of an EF lens. There's a 0.5mm difference in the flange distance, so it's a bitch to get in focus, and considering the ridiculously crappy 400D's viewfinder, it's even harder. But hey, it works, and for a 2€ lens it actually looks pretty decent! I tried it out quickly, here a some quick snaps. Need to take it out later tonight to give it a proper spin.
Thanks for the kind words guys! Ha, nice - my girlfriend and I thought about a trip to Salzburg but the weather was superbad most of our time in Berchtesgaden so we got the hell out after we froze our asses off in the tent for about a week My gf studied in Salzburg, we still visit friends there every now and then. @Jarkko: Good find! 2 Euros and some work isn't bad at all and it looks like it's a nice lens. The cheapest comparable lens I can think of is the Canon 50mm 1.8 and it's about 60€ used, you can't really focus it manually and the bokeh sucks ass.
Alright, more urbex and HDR shots. Different place and different editing style this time. What do you think? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Awesome - I like your newer editing style a lot more! Looks awesome, shows the details but doesn't loose the mood / feeling of the place
arvoitus, these are much much better.! I especially like the first, fifth and last. Well composed! edit: moar photos:
@arvoitus your pictures are awesome, they look really great, exactly as jipchen set, lots of details but more natural looking colors and great depth and mood awesome!!
Some pics from my vacation. Red moon rising through the clouds, seen from the Teide Volcano in the Canary Islands. The Milky Way A lizard, testing my new Canon 50mm f1.4 lens
Great shots in here, in particular on the last couple of pages - jipchen and exoslime: awesome landscapes! soundlurker: Great portraits. Soft and detailed at the same time. arvoitus: 2,6 and 9 are better with your latest processing. Ashgarth: Nice star shots! Here are some of mine from the last few months.
I purchased a D3200 on Tuesday. So far I have found that I am terrible. Messed about with the auto settings and quickly wanted to move past that because I was having a hard time getting the camera to focus on what I wanted unless it was a landscape. So dove into manual and still learning, seems like another hobby you learn by doing a lot (well and checking out what other people are doing). Also I need to pick up software and don't want to spend a fuck load on it so suggestions?
