Howdy,
I just have one question. Why are those pictures SO bad? And how is it that my friend got better exposed night scenes of the same buildings with his iphone?
No pp applied. Just straight out of camera. Shot with Olympus EM5mk2 and 12-40.
Cheers.
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It'd be much easier to critique the technical aspects of the photos if you included basic EXIF data for each one.
It would also help if we could see the iPhone picture /w EXIF for comparison.
Also define in what way do you think they s__k?
@ijm5012 is your guy for urban landscapes - so consider this advice a stopgap until he gets here.
These images don't suck - for the most part they just need some PP, and some of them may have benefited from a smaller aperture. I've given each one a five minute make-over to my personal taste in lightroom.
Image 1: the major change is the perspective correction - I've also played a little with contrast. To my taste the foreground framing of the trees is a nice idea but shouldn't crop into the buildings - something for next time. Also consider placing your subject at the third, not in the middle.
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Images 2 & 3: Perspective correction again - this has created a big crop that has lost some of the context of the image. When shooting architecture like this, from low without tilt/shift, frame for a crop so you have room to play with in post. again, also added contrast and darkened your blues. They may have looked nicer with a tighter aperture to try to eliminate some of the haze around the light sources.
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Image 4: same again, again needed more room at the top - you could add black to the top in photoshop I guess on this image. added contrast using clarity and dehaze to spread out the tonal range of the mid-tones slightly, then worked on black levels.
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Image 5: This is lovely and there are loads of ways you could take it. I've gone for emphasizing the sky, and I've cropped to lose the tall building on the right of the frame, as I found it compressed the composition too much (now in 2x3 ratio). Again, I just need a bit more room at the top.
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Image 6: see comments for 2&3. I find the composition of this one unbalanced though; your subject is the building, and the lamppost is too intrusive. I can see what you were going for - the comparison of the two - but I feel they compete too much for attention. This is just personal preference of course, it's your art, but (if it were possible) the same shot with a longer lens from further away would have given you a small lamppost and a large building which may have been more pleasing to my eye.
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Image 7: needs more room for the perspective distortion, and you overcooked the whites. This would have worked better with bracketed exposures. I have tweaked the contrast to lose the white clipping and give it more range generally (clarity again). Composition-wise, for me it has similar issue to the previous - I'm not clear what your subject is (apart from all of it!). Think about how you could use the geometry to lead the eye around the images you create. Oh, and lose the tree at the top! I'd clone it out myself.
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Image 8: This is a great shot. I just corrected perspective, added mid-tone contrast, pushed the shadows and pulled the highlights, and then added a subtle vignette to improve the framing. I cloned out that distracting lamppost, and I cloned out the top of the tower so that it sits correctly in the frame.
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I really hope this helps - just say if you are uncomfortable with me using your images this way and I will remove them. Let me know if you have any questions and remember that these are my opinions and interpretations of how I would turn the scenes you saw into well-worked images. My opinions may not agree with yours of course: someone wise once said that opinions are like assholes - we've all got them.
first I don't think these images "suck" at all, rather they're neutral, as what's expected as ooc from a reliable camera.
to be able to get better looking night shots, I think it usually comes down to balancing natural/artificial light, iphone has it's in-camera HDR blend so in situations it yield more pleasing photos without retouching. Elia Locardi does an amazing job with his "blend-in" techniques shooting golden/blue hour, but if you have not decided to go that far I believe simply tweaking the camera raw files still gives you more flexibility than a cellphone shot.
In what sense do you think they suck? Lacking vibrancy? Lacking Sharpness? Cameras have a tendency to let people later make decisions on what to do with the pictures. Phones are set to amp everything up to 11 (color, sharpness, HDR for those night scenes). Your camera can do that too, by the way.
One of the bigger issues, IMO, is that with a changeable lens camera, you have options to do better framing. Most of the pics are framed with a similar view point as you would from a phone. Use telephoto or UWA to get better viewpoints. Then either in post, or set your camera up, for HDR, stronger colors and contrast, more sharpening. But SOOC jpgs of a middling focal length will not give you "wow" factor in your photos.
Also -- work to get better vantage points, which UWA can allow you to do.
"Suck" communicates nothing beyond your displeasure - it would be more useful if you said what is "wrong" with exposure - over, under, lacking contrast, clipping highlights, clogged up shadows.
As most comments have shown your photos are basically normal. It would help to know what settings you used: did you intentionally under/over expose or let the camera do all the work?
It may come as a shock that just because you've got a good camera doesn't mean it will do everything and you just push the button. I have the same combo and it is capable of amazing images when "driven" correctly. Plenty of examples on this site to look at.
Even a pro with a $10,000 DSLR combo expects to do do some post work, which maybe stretch from a few minutes to a few days of work on their images.
If you like what you saw on the iPhone then there is no reason why you can't set up your camera settings for contrast, saturation, sharpness etc to deliver similar output.
First of all - thank you for your time and comments.
Second of all - I hope nobody got offended by my choice of words. Perhaps "s__k" wasn't the best pick but I was so displeased with the pictures I took that I simply wanted to say it bluntly.
Let me just see if I can include EXIF for each of those shots. Not sure how much info I should include, though. I suppose shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and focal length might not be enough?
Suck" communicates nothing beyond your displeasure - it would be more useful if you said what is "wrong" with exposure - over, under, lacking contrast, clipping highlights, clogged up shadows.
In a nutshell, they just look... bland. When I see them, I feel as if I was eating instant noodles. No taste at all. On top of that, some buildings are "glowing" way too much. [I'll continue later on. Have to switch computers.]
Lamp posts, logos, and signs are blobs of light lacking details and just attacking the eyes with harsh light. Would a larger sensor handle those better?
They seem to lack that nice and crisp quality that I'd like to have in what I shoot.
Composition-wise there's a lot to be desired as well, but I don't really know how to improve in this department. I could never really shoot tall buildings well.
They do seem 'blah'. The compositions aren't very interesting or even a bit jarring, that's the biggest thing for me. More leading lines, abstract framing etc might be interesting. Don't be afraid of intentionally shooting upwards, not everything has to be straight and level.
Exposure-wise, many of the night shots seem too bright - though they may be well-exposed, you might still want to pull back on the highlights in post. Bigger sensor cameras tend to have better DR, so if you want punch you'll have to adjust tonal levels either in post or in camera.
Let me just see if I can include EXIF for each of those shots. Not sure how much info I should include, though. I suppose shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and focal length might not be enough?
In a nutshell, they just look... bland. When I see them, I feel as if I was eating instant noodles. No taste at all. On top of that, some buildings are "glowing" way too much. [I'll continue later on. Have to switch computers.]
Lamp posts, logos, and signs are blobs of light lacking details and just attacking the eyes with harsh light. Would a larger sensor handle those better?
They seem to lack that nice and crisp quality that I'd like to have in what I shoot.
Composition-wise there's a lot to be desired as well, but I don't really know how to improve in this department. I could never really shoot tall buildings well.
Full frame is no quick 'n easy fix - learning how to handle the challenge of light and dark is far more valuable than chucking money at new gear.
Your best friend, especially if you shoot jpegs, is the exposure compensation dial.
One of the advantages of mirrorless is you can use your EVF or LCD as the light meter. Simply crank the +/- up or down until it looks right on the screen. It really can be that simple. Try it.
One of the un-intuitive "secrets" of night shooting (in my experience) is to under expose (anywhere from -1 to -3 stops) and allow shadows to be shadows.
Another approach is to try the HDR mode (must admit I haven't yet) on the E-M5 to balance out the extremes during capture then play with the file on the PC.
And after all that in-camera stuff, then there's usually plenty that can be done once the files are in the computer ...
As for composition - heck who can say they've arrived - after 40 years I've still got a lot to learn!
Your best friend, especially if you shoot jpegs, is the exposure compensation dial.
One of the advantages of mirrorless is you can use your EVF or LCD as the light meter. Simply crank the +/- up or down until it looks right on the screen. It really can be that simple. Try it.
Full frame is no quick 'n easy fix - learning how to handle the challenge of light and dark is far more valuable than chucking money at new gear.
Your best friend, especially if you shoot jpegs, is the exposure compensation dial.
One of the advantages of mirrorless is you can use your EVF or LCD as the light meter. Simply crank the +/- up or down until it looks right on the screen. It really can be that simple. Try it.
One of the un-intuitive "secrets" of night shooting (in my experience) is to under expose (anywhere from -1 to -3 stops) and allow shadows to be shadows.
Were you using a tripod? What was the aperture? With a tripod and a tighter aperture your night shots can blow away any phone camera. Keep in mind phone cameras apply tons of jpeg editing.
Thanks for thinking of me @ionian . I haven't made it out very much for cityscape shots, so I'll have to get back in to it so people don't forget my forte, haha.
@mesmerized , here's a link to a Flickr album of mine from my time in Shanghai. Looking at your images, I think the issue with composition is the severe perspective distortion, as you're trying to capture Shanghai's massive skyscrapers from a pretty close distance, with a lens that really isn't wide enough. You need to either distance yourself from the buildings, or use a wider lens. On the E-M5 II, a lens like the Olympus 7-14 PRO would be a big asset for a city like Shanghai.
Regarding color, you're simply relying on OOC images, presumably from the standard profile, which will tend to yield rather "blah" images. For my Olympus JPEGS, I adjust the tone curve so that my highlights are +2, my shadows are -2, and I bump up the contrast and saturation a bit. This helps add a lot to the JPEG images, making them pop more than the normal OOC images.
And lastly, regarding noise in the night shots, I'm not sure what settings you were using (EXIF info would be nice), but the IBIS in the E-M5 II is good for 3 stops easy, and even 4 if your technique is correct. So if you were shooting in aperture priority @ f/2.8 to let in the most light and at 12mm, you should be able to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/4s, maybe 1/2s. At 40mm, you should be able to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/15s, maybe 1/8s. NOTE: This is strictly talking about static scenes like buildings. If you're trying to capture motion, or even take a portrait, you're going to need a faster shutter speed to help freeze the image, resulting in a higher ISO. Shanghai is pretty darn bright at night, so you should be able to keep your ISO values down, which will result in much cleaner images.
You asked about switching systems, then asked why these pics are not the greatest. I hope some of the answers here can help you understand your m43 vs Sony vs fuji thread. It's not the camera, man, it's what you do with it.
You asked about switching systems, then asked why these pics are not the greatest. I hope some of the answers here can help you understand your m43 vs Sony vs fuji thread. It's not the camera, man, it's what you do with it.
Yeah, this just seems bizarre. On one side of things, he comes here and posts in the C&C sub-forum, saying these images suck, yet he's using the default SOOC JPEG settings for these files, and doesn't post any EXIF about the shots at all.
Yet at the same time, he goes and creates a thread saying he's going to sell his Olympus gear soon, and go to either Fuji or Sony, and is asking our opinion (we clearly picked m43 for a reason, which is why we're all here). He says that the PRO lenses are pricey, yet owns a 12-40 PRO. Claims that Olympus 16MP vs 24MP of the Fuji/Sony (but in this thread, he talks about how the iPhone images look superior, and those are taken on a 12MP micro-sensor camera). Claims that Olympus PRO level lenses are too pricey, yet says Sony has affordable lenses (outside of the 28/2, 50/1.8, and 85/1.8, which ones? The crappy 28-70 kit zoom?).
It honestly sounds like a case of GAS, where they're looking for justifications on switching systems. There's nothing wrong with switching systems, but if the OP intends to use the Fuji or Sony gear in the same fashion as the Olympus gear to capture the above shots, the results aren't going to be any better.
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