Results and Feedback for the "Straight from the Camera" Assignment.

[keithsnell]

Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Straight from the Camera" assignment, and special thanks to Lars for suggesting the idea.  I really enjoyed viewing the wide variety of images submitted for this assignment, and this was definitely one assignment where I wished I had more than one vote.  I think it is great to have an assignment like this every now and then to reinforce good shooting technique and help us to think through our compositions and exposure settings before snapping the shutter.

This was also a great learning experience for me, in that it helped me realize that I often teach techniques that are appropriate for a dSLR, but not appropriate for a compact point-and-shoot camera, and that I need to distinguish between the two so that I don't lead people down the wrong path.  For example, I usually teach that your histogram should "just barely touch the right side of your histogram display."  This techniques works great for a dSLR when you are shooting your images in RAW format, but when you are photographing subjects with very saturated colors using a point-and-shoot camera (i.e., in JPEG format and sRGB color space), it is all too easy to "clip" the red channel.  I found that the exposures that worked the best "straight out of the camera" were often the "default" exposures without the positive exposure compensation I was applying in order to move the histogram to the right.  In the future I will try harder to teach techniques for both dSLRs and point-and-shoot cameras and to clearly differentiate between the two.

This assignment also helped me recognize how much I had come to rely on the separate red, green and blue histogram displays on my dSLR.  If your camera has the ability to display RGB histograms, I highly recommend that you use them to evaluate your exposures.  (You can reference this link for more information on using an RGB histogram:  http://community.spiritofphotography.com/index.php?topic=361.msg698#msg698 )  

I thought Jaime's Straight from Kogaku image was a great example of controlling the lighting on a challenging subject to obtain an almost perfect exposure "straight from the camera."  Note the subtle "modeling" provided by the light from the light tent that helps define the features of the doll's face.  I've awarded this image Editor's Choice for Technical Merit.

Straight from Kogaku
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit
Photographed by Jaime Dorotan

Congratulations to Dave Leiker, whose Woodcarver's Shop 1 image won the vote for People's Choice.  I was impressed with the way Dave composed the image to emphasize the art work, but also included the artist and his tools as "context" for the subject.

Woodcarver's Shop 1
People's Choice
Photographed by Dave Leiker

There were so many great images submitted for this assignent that I had a tough time deciding on Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit.  In the end I decided on Tanya's Typical Vermont image, since this was the image that most made me "want to be there."  The light in this scene was beautiful, and helped me imagine the invigorating crisp Fall day this image was taken.

Typical Vermont
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit
Photographed by Tanya Mackenzie

Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Straight from the Camera" assignment.  I found this to be a very useful exercise to emphasize the use of good exposure and composition techniques.

Viewers are encouraged to respond to this thread describing why you like a particular image, or think it was particularly successful at meeting the guidelines of the assignment.

Keith

[girod]

Thanks Keith, greatly appreciate your comments.   jaime