Here are some candid shots I took recently of Ryan and Dylan in a mini pool. They were all taken using the Nikon D300 with a Tokina 11-16 mm f/2.8 lens. The first version is unedited - either resized or cropped but untouched otherwise. In the second version, I just used Auto Color and Smart Sharpen (Amount : 100%, Radius 0.2 pixels, Lens Blur) Comments please on the crop, focus, colour, etc. To be frank, I'm rather sloppy (lazy!!!) these days. Just shooting as it happens. But it would be good to start picking up some pointers. Picture 1 (Unedited) Picture 1 (Edited) Picture 2 (Unedited) Picture 2 (Edited) Picture 3 (Unedited) Picture 3 (Edited)
In all the unedited versions, the camera WB selected a warmer tone which seems better than the neutral/cold feel of the auto. In general I'd always avoid the "auto-everything" functions since they don't know what you want from them. I'd also be careful of using the combination of wide angles with vertical orientation for portraits, the perspective distortion is more exaggerated this way.
Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? The distortion when used vertically is very obvious. It gets even worse if I'm using a full frame camera, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe I shouldn't keep using this wide-angle for everything. But I have to admit - the speed is intoxicating, especially in low-light conditions.
Same, that's what I usually do as well, unless the white balance is off, or there's a specific effect that I want to achieve.