Why my D30 pics are so ugly ??

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Can you Shed a little more light on the subject?

White Balance for example. What post processing have you done.. Etc.

It definitely looks like you have not run any sharpening algorithms yet as the entire phot looks very soft IMHO.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

1. 1 - Are you using a polarizing filter of any kind?
2. 2 - ON the second picture why precisely did you choose the Sky to be your exposure point? Had you chosen someplace lower on the building, or more to the people in the photo you would have seen a much lighter sky.

1. 3 - Some of what you are seeing as distortion is actually explained because how you took the picture.

Look at
http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift.html

for an explanation of the phenomenon you are seeing to a degree in some of your photos.

Mark Jamison said:

White Balance for example. What post processing have you done.. Etc.

It definitely looks like you have not run any sharpening algorithms
yet as the entire phot looks very soft IMHO.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Looks like simple perspective distortion to me. The parallel lines of the subject appear to converge as they go upward because your camera was tilted upward. BTW, some of that can be removed in Photoshop.

If there's too much sky, frame the subject diffferently or crop some sky when you process it. One can't change the camera sensor's aspect ratio, so change the resulting image!

RE eyes not seeing reality...the viewfinder sees what the sensor sees except the viewfinder is slightly cropped. But I suspect these were handheld so you simply didn't spend much time looking thru the viewfinder. When you use a tripod, you have and take more time framing thru the viewfinder...LOOKING at what you're about to shoot.
--I love my D30!

oh no, i did not apply any modifications.
This is my jpeg pictures as very are stored on my microdrive

Mark Jamison said:

White Balance for example. What post processing have you done.. Etc.

It definitely looks like you have not run any sharpening algorithms
yet as the entire phot looks very soft IMHO.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I did not used any polarizer, that is why i am so surprised
(i used Auto white balance). I always focused on the building
never on the sky

Mark Jamison said:

1. 1 - Are you using a polarizing filter of any kind?
2. 2 - ON the second picture why precisely did you choose the Sky to

be your exposure point? Had you chosen someplace lower on the
building, or more to the people in the photo you would have seen a
much lighter sky.

1. 3 - Some of what you are seeing as distortion is actually

explained because how you took the picture.

Look at
http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift.html

for an explanation of the phenomenon you are seeing to a degree in
some of your photos.

Mark Jamison said:

White Balance for example. What post processing have you done.. Etc.

It definitely looks like you have not run any sharpening algorithms
yet as the entire phot looks very soft IMHO.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I did not think any of the images were ugly, just a bit off maybe and I was unsure of what thought was wrong with the third one.

You do have perspective issues and fixing them would help a lot, but, of course, would do noting for the metering issues.

See this thread from yesterday, DavidP had the fix if you have PS6. This fix, I believe was made available in PS 6.0, not in earlier versions.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=2218938

Jeffrey Behr said:

Looks like simple perspective distortion to me. The parallel lines
of the subject appear to converge as they go upward because your
camera was tilted upward. BTW, some of that can be removed in
Photoshop.

If there's too much sky, frame the subject diffferently or crop
some sky when you process it. One can't change the camera sensor's
aspect ratio, so change the resulting image!

RE eyes not seeing reality...the viewfinder sees what the sensor
sees except the viewfinder is slightly cropped. But I suspect
these were handheld so you simply didn't spend much time looking
thru the viewfinder. When you use a tripod, you have and take more
time framing thru the viewfinder...LOOKING at what you're about to
shoot.

--
I love my D30!

Click to expand...

--GSmith

do you have an example of the detail EXIF data, that might help understand what is going on.

George Smith said:

You do have perspective issues and fixing them would help a lot,
but, of course, would do noting for the metering issues.

See this thread from yesterday, DavidP had the fix if you have PS6.
This fix, I believe was made available in PS 6.0, not in earlier
versions.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=2218938

Jeffrey Behr said:

Looks like simple perspective distortion to me. The parallel lines
of the subject appear to converge as they go upward because your
camera was tilted upward. BTW, some of that can be removed in
Photoshop.

If there's too much sky, frame the subject diffferently or crop
some sky when you process it. One can't change the camera sensor's
aspect ratio, so change the resulting image!

RE eyes not seeing reality...the viewfinder sees what the sensor
sees except the viewfinder is slightly cropped. But I suspect
these were handheld so you simply didn't spend much time looking
thru the viewfinder. When you use a tripod, you have and take more
time framing thru the viewfinder...LOOKING at what you're about to
shoot.

--
I love my D30!

Click to expand...

--
GSmith

Click to expand...

--GSmith

Guy,

it is nice that you have sun!

I cannot see any evidence of barrel distortion just parallel distortion. This is easily sorted with PS as is the levels. I downloaded the main one of your concern and have adjusted levels - a little, distortion - a bit and used Ultra Sharpen 5 pro to sharpen it - a bit.

I have reduced it by 50% as this should not show in this small image.



I don't think that you have a problem - enjoy your D30.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

--KRsBryanCanon D30 http://wakeup.to/bryan

AWB I find gives you some pretty saturated skies. I usually try to use a Grey card to do a custom white balance. Also, a brighter exposure will lighten the sky as noted by Mark.

Joo

guy gagnon said:

Mark Jamison said:

1. 1 - Are you using a polarizing filter of any kind?
2. 2 - ON the second picture why precisely did you choose the Sky to

be your exposure point? Had you chosen someplace lower on the
building, or more to the people in the photo you would have seen a
much lighter sky.

1. 3 - Some of what you are seeing as distortion is actually

explained because how you took the picture.

Look at
http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift.html

for an explanation of the phenomenon you are seeing to a degree in
some of your photos.

Mark Jamison said:

White Balance for example. What post processing have you done.. Etc.

It definitely looks like you have not run any sharpening algorithms
yet as the entire phot looks very soft IMHO.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--Canon D-30 & PowerShot S100Maybe one day I'll take a decent picture.

I never shoot a building straight on. They come out too flat. I always try to include two sides. I would get in a lot closer and show some of the details of the architecture but that's just me.

billtoo

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

I see your gallery. As an ametuer, there is nothing wrong with them, may be the perspective issue, but to me, they are very good! The exposure of the sleeping polar bear is correct and the composition and DoF are also very good.

For the exposure of the buildings, try this method I take from John Shaw's books:

The blue sky is considered is neutral, take the exposure reading of the sky, using spot-metering or in case of D30, use center-weighted. Since the building is white or bright color, add the EV to +1 or +2/3 and the picture will be okay.

Griffin.-- http://www.pbase.com/griffin/

They look like typical D30 photos to me. And if you added no usm to them they look better than what I get from my similar lens.

I like the saturated skies.

What lens are the Tamron1 and Tamron 2 taken with?-- http://www.pbase.com/galleries/sasc

Just a quick autolevels gets your skies back to normal -- white balance is tricky. Your only serious problem is the color cast from the wrong WB. Don't worry. A lot of us have to do WB fiddling is postprocessing.

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

--Joe Hawblitzel http://home.kc.rr.com/educ/weather/index.htm

Click to expand...

I used a Tamron 28-200 XR macro
for the price , i am happy with it
Not the sharpest lens, but for take quickly some
pics of animals in a zoo , i appreciate it

Note : i am just amateur

SC said:

They look like typical D30 photos to me. And if you added no usm to
them they look better than what I get from my similar lens.

I like the saturated skies.

What lens are the Tamron1 and Tamron 2 taken with?
--
http://www.pbase.com/galleries/sasc

Click to expand...

Thanks for all answer ! it helps me a lot.

For people who asked it for, there is the EXIF Info
for this picture

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

File: 1172091.jpg
File size: 1,382KB
Image Serial Number: 122-2204
Camera Model: Canon EOS D30
Camera serial number: 1a3800186
Firmware: Firmware Version 1.02
Date/Time: 2002.02.16 12:17:52
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 9.5
Exposure mode: Program
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Single frame shooting
ISO: 100
Lens: 28,0 to 135,0 mm
Focal length: 28,0 mm
Subject distance: 655,35 m
AF mode: One-shot AF
Focus point:

If you have contributed some money to PBase, you can link your images directly on the web. I am sure you are aware but allow me:

Let's say I have a pic like:

http://www.pbase.com/image/818054

You can link it directly by appending ".jpg" towards the end.

Hope it helps.

Griffin.-- http://www.pbase.com/griffin/

guy gagnon said:

I did not used any polarizer, that is why i am so surprised
(i used Auto white balance).

Click to expand...

I never use AWB (should be called WWB, where the first W stands for "Wrong" in my opinion ;-)). You find a nice scene which is interestingly lit by light of a certain quality, and AWB goes and makes it look horribly dull and clinical.

As a default, I leave the camera in daylight white balance, switching to the others when necessary, If I'm shooting indoors, or in tricky situations, I'll probably just use CRW mode and fix the white balance later.

First of all like the others, I think the color balance is off. The AWB seems to go too blue most times.

Second of all the 28-135IS has a lot of barrel distortion. While I like mine, it definitely has a lot of barrel distortion on the wide end.

Third you are pointing the camera up quite a bit which causes some pretty severe Perspective distortion. Any lens except a Tilt and Shift will cause this effect if you tilt it relative to the subject plane.

The Barrel distortion gets compounded by the Perspective distortion.

Here is what I did.

1. Using curves I click the Gray eyedropper on the street to get a first pass white balance. I then tweaked the colors a little bit, but this got me "in range." I thought the image was a little dark so I pulled the middle of the curve up.

2. Using Adromeda Lens Doctor (which I already owned) I fixed the barrel distortion. Lens doctor costs about $80 as I remember it, but it works well and is simple to use. You can also save fixes for zoom lenses and make your own "sliders." NOTE, you must fix barrel distortion before perspective correction, it does not work the other way around.

3. While lens Doctor will also fix perspective distortion, I have found I get better results doing the perspective correction in Photoshop. I use arbitrary transforms to adjust the perspective. This takes some practice but PS does a nice job. I put down guide lines to help me get things straight. It looks like your shot was also slightly angled to the left which caused some perspective distortion in the left/right direction. I took this out too.

I have posted a small image for viewing directly and a pointer to a full size version below. It is not perfect, but I only spent about 10 minutes on it.

Below is a scaled down version for posting:
http://www.fototime.com/ {5F0106D0-6781-4D69-AB5A-261E90DEB83B} picture.JPG

And this points to a full size version.

http://www.fototime.com/ 87EAA350-8F44-44EB-8BFF-8EF09415B5FF} picture.JPG;

guy gagnon said:

Sniff
I took lot of pictures today in Lilles (France) by a splendid
winter sunny day (sun with small angle).

Lot of pictures has too much blue sky, but more weird,
i suspect some big barrel distorsion. I used my Canon 28-138 USM IS...
WHo is wrong ? me ? or the camera/lens ?

I need to understand....i do not want
to scrapt all my next pictures in my Canada visit in June

SOmes pictures :

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172091/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172155/large

http://www.pbase.com/image/1172167/large

( it is not well framed.. sorry... and ido not understand why..
maybe my eyes see the realitic more small than reality ... :~

Thanks again
Guy

Click to expand...

--Karl