A little disheartened to say the least

[Orinoco]

First off let me state here and now I have only been photgraphing planes for about a week, however I don't think that makes any difference to the point I wish to make.

I submitted this to the site and it was rejected

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewreject_b.php?id=1508570

And no I don't expect to get all my submitted pics on here


The pic was rejected as the horizon is unlevel, I appealed based on the fact that the horizon was based upon the yellow sign in the background, I also know this is a controversial point in itself, however other shots taken on the day allowed me to check the level of this particular sign against lamposts and buildings to ensure it was level. The appeal was rejected with the following explanation

Admin Comments >> I would let the horizon go although it does need a little CW rotation. However there is a lot of noise, cmos spots and what looks like some cloning in places

Original pic can be seen unedited here

http://www.dreambytes.co.uk/Original...ebfriendly.jpg

or at full size here

http://www.dreambytes.co.uk/Originalbabuse.jpg

On the original top left hand corner you will see there is a dust spot, but this is cropped from the submitted version, equalising the pic reveals no spots whatsoever, the sky as you can see looks very strange, but no cloning whatsoever has taken place.

Please let me know your thoughts good or bad, I as you have probably gathered think this rejection is harsh, I will add though that if people think that it is a justifiable rejection, I am man enough to admit I am wrong and go back to the drawing board


Tony

[Crazy764]

Personally, I think the screener was referring to the area (sky and clouds) around the tail with regard to the cloning. I also think that the contrast is a little off in the picture.

Certainly no need to feel disheartened. Just keep working on it.

[AlanF]

Hope you dont mind but i just did a quick job on it i rotated it 0.2 Clockwise and think it looks better but you will never get the horizon level because that is a hill behind it. And if you do level the back up the plane is cocked



Cheers
Alan

[Mark Ralph]

This is the first time I have seen this shot and I am imediately drawn to the dark patch of sky above and to the left of the tail, maybe this is how the sky was but it does look unnatural to be honest, which could have raised the cloning question.
Was the shot RAW in the camera??

[JordanD]

A whole lot better than my first attempts though.

[v1images]

My attempt for what it is worth, edited on a laptop so not the best I guess:

The whites would blow out horribly if you correct the histogram the usual way.

[Orinoco]

Yeah the shot was taken RAW, the 2 images the web friendly 1 and the full size 1 have not been altered in anyway just converted to jpg no post processing

This is the first time I have seen this shot and I am imediately drawn to the dark patch of sky above and to the left of the tail, maybe this is how the sky was but it does look unnatural to be honest, which could have raised the cloning question.
Was the shot RAW in the camera??

[B7772ADL]

What ISO were you shooting in mate? It seems pretty noisy for a 30D?

If I was shooting from that location in that light i would have been shooting ISO 100, Av Priority F8 with 1/3rd under-exp to stop the higlights blowing out. That's with a 20d, so shouldn't be much different to a 30d.

[KLM772ER]

This is the first time I have seen this shot and I am imediately drawn to the dark patch of sky above and to the left of the tail, maybe this is how the sky was but it does look unnatural to be honest, which could have raised the cloning question.

That were exact the same thoughts I had while seeing this picture...
It is kind of unusual to get two such clear lines in the sky..

As for the dustspots, there are some points that might be dust spots but also not be.. But it is hard to tell because the whole sky looks very very noisy!

I think it will be very hard to get this one in the db but anyway keep on trying, there are a lot more (better) pictures to come!

Cheers
Björn

[NeilA330]

Well for what its worth I think you have done a great job on the final piece and made the most of what you were given as the origonal RAW (imo not great).
However, there are a certain few points. Im no expert but I think that the judgment on the horizon was quite harsh, it looks to me quite level (im looking at the tarmac) whereas possibly the screener was using the field in the background as a subject for the horizon?
I agree with the comment about the noise, and from what i saw one or two dust spots. The 'cloning' looks like the sky is divided into two different sections, sorta like a fractured polarizing filter or something :P My advice to this is to use the dodge tool and get the same contrast throughout the sky, however that could count as digital manipulation so....

Here is my effort;



I ran it through NeatImage as well to get ride of some of that noise and I couldn't save it in best quality as it would exceed limit 500kb limit.

And I couldn't help myself with this one :P I call it the A323 or A320-300



=============================

Ok, but the moral of the story is that PS does not take the picture, I think its a thing you look through infront of your face that takes it :P So, although photoshop is useful to enhance your pics it doesn't turn a mediocre pic into an amazing one. Try to get your origonal picture to a satisfactory quality or until you feel it is acceptable, it would save alot of hassle and all of this!

Good luck mate
Cheers
Neil.

[Orinoco]

Thanks for all the input, all taken on board

Pic was taken @ iso100 f8 1/320 Aperature Priority Metering was set to Partial, focus was set to centre point

Lens is Canon 100-400mm

Tony

[jid]

Sorry I did not get chance to reply last night as I did reject the appeal. The main reason being the amount of noise in the image. I could of lived with the horizon as there are no reference points. Personally I think it needs about 1.5 CW rotation to get the perspective right. Back to the noise ... Tony I see you shoot in RAW, one of the most common problems with digital photography is that people try and get the exposure of the main subject correct and forget about the back ground. In this case getting the 320 exposed correctly means the background in under exposed. Trying to get the background to the correct exposure in PS then shows a lot of noise. A better approach is to overexpose your main subject which gives a better exposure of your background and without the noise. With a RAW image you can simply fix the over exposure, plus you have a background without all the noise.


Good luck .. Jid

[Orinoco]

Thanks Jid for the feedback, I have since been back to Manchester trying different settings to those posted above to try and find the sweetspots of my camera and lens combination, it seems at the moment that for the most part my settings were not to far off, but the metering was perhaps wrong, I have now switched this to Centre Averaged.

Yesterday I took pics with bracketing at +1/3,0,-1/3, so I could see the differences in pics, yesterday at Manchester the weather was very changeable, I managed to take circa 1000 pics or 300 or so with 3 levels of exposure for each pic, so once I go through them, this will hopefully give me a better appreciation of the conditions and what is needed, so that I can expose them correctly in future.


Tony

[brianw999]

Quoting Jid...

A better approach is to overexpose your main subject which gives a better exposure of your background and without the noise. With a RAW image you can simply fix the over exposure, plus you have a background without all the noise.

Jid.

By how much would you recommend an overexposure as, when overexposing, there must be a danger of blowing out whites and therefore having no data recorded to adjust in PS ?

I must admit that I tend towards a -.33 EV underexposure, especially in good to bright lighting.

Happy to learn from someone who is ultimately far more experienced than I

( Note to self...pack cans of Boddingtons when visiting MAN....just in case !! )

[jid]

Well Brian it varies depending on the camera and the conditions but you can get away with being a whole stop over in some situations. When shooting in RAW although it can look like you are blowing out the whites, the actual detail is still retained in the RAW image. I will then do my exposure compensation in the RAW converter and bring the shadows back in PS.

Jid