Quick flicks.

Here's a couple of really quick flicks taken this morning at 7:30 am. Nothing spectacular. As a matter of fact, I see a couple of improvements that could be made in each of the shots. But I figured that this section of the forum could use some new content and maybe it will spark some discussion.

http://www.d4design.net/images/fire1.jpg (150k)
http://www.d4design.net/images/fire2.jpg (150k)
http://www.d4design.net/images/fire3.jpg (150k)

These are raw photos - no effects or tweaks (Not even unsharp mask). The only thing done to the shots was image resizing from 2048x1536 down to a more *Web-friendly* format.

I personally love the second one, the first one kicks ass too, the last one, i dunno something about it maybe the slight blur or un excitment of the picture just makes me not enjoy it much.

btw, you know u said no effects, when people take these photos do they usually add photoshop effects to them? im a noob to photo taking so i dunno how like stock photos and photos in gennera are created

yea, i really love the second one, too. makes me want to go out and take a similar shot.

Yeah the last one would have been better if I had gotten closer to the firefighters. Maybe to capture more of their emotion, if nothing else. The second one was a 1/800 shutter speed. Maybe a tad on the dark side too but it really froze the motion of the water with that shutter speed.

InHale - that's one of the great things about Photoshop! The ability to tweak an image and improve the results! Usually when you siginifigantly shrink an image's size, using the unsharp mask can improve the clarity lost from the resizing process. But too much, as I learned from my first set of shots posted on the Net, can make them look really *contrasty*.

damn, i gotta get a camera with a better shutter speed. the4man, what camera do you have?

Nice pics, I had a simular chance to take a pic of a running hydrant like that. I'll post some pics later once I get off my lazy ass.

Olympus C-3040Z. Nice little cam. 1/800 is the fastest. But on the other end, it can go as long as 16 seconds!

heh I cant change my shutter lag on my D-520.

the 4man, great pics, and thanks for the help! yeah i always knew u could tweak the photos pretty heavy in photoshop i just didnt know quite what to do to them, thanks!

one more thing, I've been lookin around and would you happen to know how to adjust shutter speed on a Nikon 950? because i know in order to take pics such as ur second one like u said u must have very laggy shutter speeds and so i wasj ust wonderin, if u dunno then its alright uve already been a lot of help :D

Sorry man. Never used that cam so I don't know. Try starting here...

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp950/


But to freeze motion, you need fast shutter speeds, not laggy ones. And in order to use fast shutter speeds you need lots of light so keep those things in mind when experimenting.

Laggy (or slow) shutter speeds will blur motion and then you need to close your iris down on the cam or it will over-expose if there is a lot of light around whatever you are shooting. Slow shutter speeds are how you get those night shots with the car light tracers going by. And how you can make a runner, for instance, look like they are actually in motion while they are running.

Just experiement with it under different lighting conditions and you'll get the hang of it in no time.