Perhaps instead of telling him to use post, you should be telling him to take pictures with correct exposure first.
Tricky one...I'm a great believer in there being no such thing as "correct" exposure because it's an artistic choice how much light you decide to let into the scene. Galen Rowell was a big fan of underexposing by a stop or so to bring out the reds, blues and greens
Obviously blocked shadows and burnt highlights aren't desirable, but I don't think Ben's shots suffer from that. Having said that...
...Mike's right though, some more "pop" would help. I think you could just play around with the Levels and bring the white and black sliders in to where the histogram starts. It's a 5 second job in a decent RAW processor.das_ben said:
Lovely camera, and yeah 8 fps rocks. The sounds when my D3 is firing at 9 fps is apocalyptic...just awesomeOO7MIKE said:
It's a saviour in so many situations, particularly weddings when you've got a much better chance of grabbing the split second smile or glance. Same when the confetti is thrown, firing off 15 plus shots in a couple of seconds means that there's a much better chance of getting the shot where the couple are a) not screwing their eyes up, and b) there's not a blob of confetti covering someones eye/nose/mouth.
Why won't it fire so fast in dark situations though? If it's not an AF thing, what's preventing the camera from shooting at max fps? Could it be the noise reduction on high ISO files slowing it down? Have you tried turning in camera High ISO NR off to see?
Anyway, some old shots from the Amazon a couple of years back. I've linked these before in another thread, but this is probably the best place for them.
Dawn mist just before sunrise
Sunrise across an oxbow lake. Had to do this handheld from a moving canoe, so up-ed the ISO a little to ensure a shutter speed fast enough to maintain sharpness. There's a 2 stop ND grad across the sky to balance it with the reflection in the water.
Long (2 minute) exposure of the Amazon at sunset from the city of Manaus. You can get an idea here of how wide the main river is...and this is still 1500 km before it reaches the ocean.
Typical Amazon riverboats. In a place where there are very few roads, these boats are the lifeblood of communities in the rain forest, bringing in supplies of vital things like kerosene and trading in things like animals and manioc.
Local girl in the Amazon. The one bedroom hut she's in is shared by 3 generations of her family.
Dawn mist rising from the river again...It rained during the night, and as the temperature rises around dawn you see the water evaporating mist rising and obscuring the far bank.
Animal pen made from palm leaves.
Last light of the day on the rainforest.
Every morning, one of these monkeys would come to the balcony of our hut.
This is a freshly caught black piranha. Put some fresh meat on a hook, thrown over the side of the canoe..wait 2 minutes and they start biting. After we'd had a look at his teeth (VERY sharp) we threw it back to the river
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