Chopsticks

[soosing]

Hi, I'm very new at this, having only just gotten my Nikon D90 in Dec2010.
Decided that if I'm going to improve, I might as well learn from others - so thanks in advance for any advice.

1. in what area is critique to be sought?
Composition; Camera Settings; anything really

2. what one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?
I wasn't really trying to achieve anything, but experiment, and see what turns out (read: newbie) - but I did want only the bright green to be clear, and rest blurred out - and yet for the colors to stand out,

3. under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)
I just bought my lens for a few days, wanting to try and experiment using it.
I was walking through Chinatown, and the colorful S$1 chopsticks really caught my eye.

I find night photography a lot trickier than day, so I'm still using "Program" setting about 70% of the time, seeing what settings the camera uses, and also "Aperture" to experiment. I think I used "P" on this, using a 35mm f1.8 lens on a D90 body, which gave me the following settings:

Exposure 1/50
Aperture f3.5
ISO 1000

And no post processing on the pix - except to make it bit smaller.

4. what the critique seeker personally thinks of the picture
I love the colors, it makes me... happy? It's also simple/unfussy.

I love not using flash - there was enough light from the street/shop, and the lens is really nice at night.

I also like trying out a shallow DOF, and do find the bokeh interesting - how the front bits, is different with the back bokeh, those nearer the middle is rounder, and "Ovaler" if closer to the edge. There are bits in the upper right part, not so nice - the strip of horizontal light.

 

[mitsucolt]

what i learnt about macro rule of thumb.

1/3 bokeh in foreground and 2/3 bokeh for background

would create a nice pix.

not sure if ur focus setting is correct as it is sharper to the left than to the right or center or this is diffraction problem.

my understanding is preferred macro setting is still f8 and f11. or 2 stop above lens. maybe I am wrong.

 

[Adrian1987]

did u use auto focus? I think there might be an issue with the focus.. try manual focus and try to get it to only focus the green ones.. newbie here as well.. just a comment..

 

[soosing]

Mitsucolt: Not really intended to be Macro shot. It's sharper on the left (green choppies) coz that was the point of focus. Havn't started on taking Macro shots - although have already started perv-ing after Nikon 105 macro lens

Adrain: You're right! I used AutoFocus, I think it would have worked better if I got more of the bright green chopsticks in focus (use slightly smaller aperture?), and the rest blurred - which Manual Focus would have given me more control.

 

[kei1309]

Adrain: You're right! I used AutoFocus, I think it would have worked better if I got more of the bright green chopsticks in focus (use slightly smaller aperture?), and the rest blurred - which Manual Focus would have given me more control.

smaller aperture would get you a greater Depth of Field, meaning more will be in focus. when shooting close-ups, using MF would get your focus closer to what you want

but you see, if you use a smaller aperture to get a greater DOF, you'll find that more of the light blue chopsticks on the right will be in focus too. if you just want ONLY the green chopsticks in focus, then you might want to try out a different angle to shoot.

 

[allenleonhart]

i thought pencils:x uhave to frame in in such a way it becomes obvious, thats my take:x