Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr_Baker
I'm a big fan of taking what's available when you see it. There's plenty of ideas of what could be staged, but rarely do those things happen, and many times they're not as good anyway. You appear to see a lot of nice cars in your commute. The issue I have with the Packard shot might just be related to the height of the house. I saw a couple of pages back where you mentioned tilt/shift lenses and thought that could help. Ah, well, looking at it again, the main corner of the house (the line of which intersects the car) doesn't look like it's falling away at the top. This must've been a telephoto lens, looks fairly flattened out to me (which I like in this shot). Good relationship between the car, tree and house, BTW, and classy daily driver!
It could just be the reason I think it's crooked is because I can't seem to take a hand-held level picture, so I'm always adjusting after the fact. And since I'm in the distortion correction in CS2 for that issue, it's pretty easy to adjust the tilt if there's a problem. Cheaper than a $2000 TS lens. And TS lenses don't encourage point and shoot, rapid-fire shots, do they?
Another random thought - you must've upped the contrast in these shots in one way or another. It looks just right to me, not over the top. The Merc may show it more than the others, but it looks right in that shot. Silver cars look good a little hopped up.
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I bike a lot, so I can cover more ground faster than driving in the city. It's fairly convenient and fun, so I go out for rides on my own time often.
I don't recall speaking of tilt shift lenses, but I definitely want to get more falloff with my lens, I rarely get the depth I want. I wouldn't need a TS for that though, I can just play around with something more realistic, monetarily. For the Packard, I was probably around 70mm f/5.6.
I definitely play around with levels here and there in Lightroom2.0, and I've gotten very disciplined in not blowing out everything to HDR levels. It takes a bit of control, even with the blacks, to get a mature look. I like a little contrast, but just as I don't want burning highlights, I try to avoid dark abyss black spots.