Diamond Chips Need Money Chipsby
DiamondsComment by salmiakki: Greetings from the Critique Club
First of all, welcome to DPC and your first challenge and first critique.
I'll go easy on you since you haven't been around long and would hate to put you off. I also note you are new to using a DSLR, so quite a big learning curve after using a point and shoot.
First off, I think conceptually this is a great idea, but is suffering a bit on the technical side (understandable since you have just got the camera). I totally got the reference to the credit card chip (not sure they've caught up with that concept in the US).
Technically speaking there are a few areas you could concentrate on. The subject, the ring, is out of focus. On DPC this will always result in a low score. You have selected to use a shallow depth of field, understandably to keep the credit card nicely blurred in the background. But this has created extra challenges for you when trying to get the diamond in focus.
As far as the exposure goes, this feels a bit underexposed. The white background has been rendered a neutral grey. I took the liberty of opening the image in some editing software and a very simple tweak to the levels resulted in an image with a bit of punch. Brightening the image overall and enhancing the contrast made it feel not quite so softly focused. One further comment, it looks like it may have been quite heavily cropped from a bigger image (this is my assumption based on the look) Please forgive me if I am off base here. There is some digital noise in the background which is more noticeable due to the cropping. Some noise reduction software could help a bit with this.
Overall, I think this is a good first entry. Keep at it.
feel free to pm me if you would like any further comments.
Sarah
Message edited by author 2011-04-17 07:12:42. 
