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Nickelback
Nickelback
Alex_Europa


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Band Names (Basic Editing)
Camera: Canon EOS-30D
Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Location: Bathroom Counter
Date: Aug 6, 2009
Aperture: 11
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1 second
Galleries: Abstract, Macro
Date Uploaded: Aug 11, 2009

Photo taken for the DPC Circles III challenge. Placed my camera (w/ 100mm macro lens, and Ray Flash) on a tripod level with the bathroom's sink counter. With the camera on manual, I set the shutter speed at 1 second the aperture to f/11 to give a very shallow depth of field. I dropped the nickel from about 3 feet above the counter and opened the shutter after the first bounce. I took about 20 exposures in all to get the one I was looking for.

Post: Imported into Adobe Lightroom 2.4 and made the following adjustements: Temp 3771, Tint -2, Recovery 4, Fill Light 28, Blacks 58, Brightness +31, Contrast +100. Clarity +100, Vibrance +100 Saturation -99. Tone Curve: Lights +27, Darks -1, Shadows -29. Sharpening Amount 122, Radius 1.9, Detail 73, and Masking 40.

Statistics
Place: 93 out of 100
Avg (all users): 4.4375
Avg (commenters): 6.2500
Avg (participants): 3.9565
Avg (non-participants): 4.6316
Views since voting: 784
Views during voting: 318
Votes: 160
Comments: 9
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
08/19/2009 09:35:44 AM
hi from teh shot club

I am really surprised that this finished so low. I liked this very much.

Artistically, it is very clever. Technically there are a couple of things that are wrong. I think for this challenge having the face of the coin showing up a little more would have helped. There is a lot of grain and some sensor dust going on.

One tip for the blac and white is to saturate or use selective colours and play around with those before you change it to black and white, you will be surprised at what details come out this way. Unsharp mask would have also helped to bring out some details.

the shallow DOF is a great choice for this.

Yo-Spiff gave you an excellent comment below.

I would love to see you redo this shot.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/19/2009 03:17:11 AM
OK. I gave this a 4, basically because it met the challenge topic. 4 is my minimum vote for those that meet the topic. I do like the abstract feel, but as a whole I'm not drawn in to the photo. BW was a good choice. As far as processing, the halo around the nickel is too prominent, and it is legal to clone/heal sensor dust in basic.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/19/2009 01:35:00 AM
Originally posted by Alex_Europa:

I want to give a big thank you to those 37 of you that thought it really sucked, but didn't let me know why.

We have one of our resident programming nerds working on a javascript that will register an electric shock through the mouse for any vote of 3 or less without a comment.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/19/2009 12:28:46 AM
Wow, I must say that I'm extremely disappointed with this finish. I thought the creativity would've at least got me a 5, but clearly the obvious choice was the better one in this case.

I REALLY feel that there should be a requirement to leave a comment with a score of a 3 or worse. I want to give a big thank you to those 37 of you that thought it really sucked, but didn't let me know why.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
08/17/2009 11:21:37 PM
Post-vote comment:
I gave this a 4. I see some good creativity and effort in it, but it didn't come off to me with a lot of visual impact or appeal. Unfortunately, that is what most of us look for and rate an entry on. Looks like you did a long exposure and moved the nickel into the frame at some point. I popped it into PaintShop Pro to see some things, and the first thing I found was the histogram is very flat on the light end. This makes the image a bit dark and lacking dynamic range. You can see in this screenshot of my levels dialog, the histogram and the preview of the difference it made.


Some noise reduction and contrast with a high radius unsharp mask gave me this result:

Of course, my quick edit brought out a lot of other visual artifacts, but it showed those aspects that I felt were the main issues with this shot.

This is far from a snapshot, and you are certainly moving in the right direction with this effort.

Hope this helped.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/17/2009 12:57:59 PM
This is my favorite of the Nickelback entries.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/14/2009 04:01:18 PM
amazing..
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/14/2009 12:01:12 AM
I hope you'll tell us how you set this up.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
08/12/2009 10:14:06 PM
Shot through glass or water? I like the effect.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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