RWI photo contest for novices; with prizes!

[alvinado]

Took some time before v-day to take some new photos, this stuff is addicting!! Tried my best but it seems like my original photos are better. Maybe my potential is reached! haha

Just for the sake of all in RWI, Happy Valentine's day and the flower is for my darling in real life(Not the sea dweller!)

1) Before and After
Before:My first Picture on RWI

Some editing. Give me some chance, The photo was not taken well to begin with

After: Same watch, but equipped with better skills.

After2 (NEW!): Just took out my cam and started snapping! It is really addictive! To much Noise in the photo as not enough exposure!

2)Set Design
Set 1: Deepsea!

Set 2: My Darling Sea Dweller Again

Set 3: Another angle of my Sea Dweller

3)Flare-LV cardholder with My Hublot on a canvas setting...

Flare 2 (NEW!): Again not ennough exposure.

4)Lumeshoteepsea

Lumeshot2(NEW!):

Lumeshot3(NEW!):

5)Equipment:
Camera:Casio Exilim 6.0 Megapixel, just your everyday camera
Software: Photoshop. Used some basic tools like sharpen and auto colors

 

[Pix]

It's good to see how you improved over the different batches of pictures.

Indeed if the lighting or the aperture time are not enough you might end in grained pictures. An easy tip to correct (hide) this is to make the grained part more blurry.
Whatever your software is, just select the watch, then invert the selection (now you have the background selected instead of the watch) and either use a denoising filter, a blur function or just make this background darker.

 

[alvinado]

Thanks for the comments, I'll explore the features that you talked about!

 

[PHicks]

Alviando,
I tried editing one of your last posts to see if I could make the dial stand out a little more. I also added some blur around the edges (as per Pix's suggestion) to place more focus on the subject and hide some of the grain.

The 2nd Hublot still looks a little out of focus to me. The background and the far side of the watch appears to be nicely in focus. I wonder if your camera has a spot focus feature? If it does you could try using that rather than the general purpose focus. It seems like it is taking too much of the background into focus. SLR's generally use a mathematical approach that attempts to replicate what the eye sees but of course, even with this, you sometimes need to switch that off and use one of the other methods like spot focus.

Your shots are definitely better and, as you say, its good fun playing around. Sometimes you take a shot without much thought and it comes out better than all the others.

Just a thought, most of the pictures you see on this forum have been taken with expensive cameras; a lot more expensive than your little Casio. You should be very pleased with what you've achieved; congratulations!

 

[alvinado]

Alviando,
I tried editing one of your last posts to see if I could make the dial stand out a little more. I also added some blur around the edges (as per Pix's suggestion) to place more focus on the subject and hide some of the grain.

The 2nd Hublot still looks a little out of focus to me. The background and the far side of the watch appears to be nicely in focus. I wonder if your camera has a spot focus feature? If it does you could try using that rather than the general purpose focus. It seems like it is taking too much of the background into focus. SLR's generally use a mathematical approach that attempts to replicate what the eye sees but of course, even with this, you sometimes need to switch that off and use one of the other methods like spot focus.

Your shots are definitely better and, as you say, its good fun playing around. Sometimes you take a shot without much thought and it comes out better than all the others.

Just a thought, most of the pictures you see on this forum have been taken with expensive cameras; a lot more expensive than your little Casio. You should be very pleased with what you've achieved; congratulations!

WOW! You make my photos look good, How did you do it, and with what tools!

 

[djmattm]

Hi there, i'm a new member and i wanted to post my submariner, bought for 40 euros in a street in spain.......i'm quite satisfied with it; i put it on a 18mm nato and i think it's really nice!! I'm not good with my crappy camera but here it is:

 

[Pix]

Good first trial
The picture is original IMO and not blurry, a good basis to have a very good shot in the end.
What needs to be healed is the dust (let's call it noise).
Two solutions : air spray or Photoshop

Apply a denoising and/or blurring filter on the image after having excluded the watch of the selection.

Then work on the watch by making deeper blacks, very slight sharpening. Here's the result, your picture deserves a prize... Come on, go on with the lumeshots

 

[spider87]

Got a new cam for vday should be taking some more pics soon!!! Also, on a side no alviando I love that Allure stuff I'm wearing some now (A sample haha)... where did you get it?

 

[alvinado]

Got a new cam for vday should be taking some more pics soon!!! Also, on a side no alviando I love that Allure stuff I'm wearing some now (A sample haha)... where did you get it?

Singapore Changi Airport Duty Free. 80SGD which makes it 52USD

 

[PHicks]

WOW! You make my photos look good, How did you do it, and with what tools!

I used PhotoFiltre to clean up the dial. Pretty easy really. Zoom up. Use the polygon tool and take hits around the dial to form an ellipse. When you get close to the start point it will snap the last point. All editing that you do will now only effect the dial. You can play around but I found the gamma correction to be the easiest. I also applied some sharpness. If you don't like the last change then select Cntrl Z and it will revert back one edit.

I then used Picassa to add the blur.

Congratulations on the new Camera; what did you get?

 

[alvinado]

Congratulations on the new Camera; what did you get?

Not me. Spider87 did! so spider, what did you get??

 

[PHicks]

Not wishing to be outdone...

 

[spider87]

I assume by 'copy the whole post to another to edit' this is what you meant:
I also know the pictures are bigger than 640x480 but I assume that is ok as I am not posting full pictures here just links to the full pictures.

EDIT: ADDING MORE PICS (LUME1&2, SET1&2&3)
Here's my entries:

My first pic: (only a little clear because it was taking with a nice video camera)


All pics aside from the first one ^^^^ are taking with an older 3.1 MP EasyShot:
AFTER:


Used my well worked rubiks cube in these to prop it on:
2 Lume shots (The lume on my watch sucks this is taken under a blacklight in complete darkness then overlayed and all it is is the 2 hands.) I couldn't decide which edit I liked better (watch at 50% opacity or 100%) so I uploaded both:
LUME:





1: Set Design:::

"Ode to Robosapien" (He wouldn't hold his hand up very high for me watch too heavy haha.
SET1

SET2

SET3



ATTEMPT 1 FLARE:
Him fixing my comp for me. He has such tiny little hands I trust him to fix my hard drive:


Hope you like anyway let me know..

EDIT: To add an attempted flare haha


Here's a few wrist shots, edited and unedited:
Un:
Edited (Some sharpening and color balancing) :

Here's my own creative little touch on the valentine's day pics(Everyone loves a pink domo):


EDIT: TO add some pics with new cam and vday pic (Possibly more to come of that need to find some flowers haha)

BY THE WAY: The camera is a Sanyo VPC-S1080 nothing too flashy just enough to do the job and very well IMHO ))

 

[spider87]

Got a new cam for vday should be taking some more pics soon!!! Also, on a side no alviando I love that Allure stuff I'm wearing some now (A sample haha)... where did you get it?

Singapore Changi Airport Duty Free. 80SGD which makes it 52USD

Sweet will be awesome if I ever make it to singapore haha.

 

[alvinado]

Sweet will be awesome if I ever make it to singapore haha.

Haha Singapore is not too expensive to come to..haha

 

[djmattm]

wow thanks!!! I know i have a lot of dust on my keyboard....... I've to exercise with photoshop

 

[fakemaster]

I'm entering watchman1 into this. This is the photo he posted of his PO.

 

[alvinado]

This thread is dying!!

 

[fakemaster]

Seems to happen with anything involving participation. Very disturbing.

 

[PHicks]

Don't knock it Alviando; your looking good for a prize at the moment.

As they say, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink it.