The Photography Thread

It's been well over a year since I came this way and almost as long since I actually made use of a camera - I just got a dslr and took it to an arts/music festival over the weekend. Here's some of the shots

 

wish i was a little more skilled in CS2 but here's some pictures of my pond.







when my dad is done with the Pond-Zyme treatment, ill take some pictures of the American Goldfish and Japanese Koi

 

Great pond and yard. You don't have bird problems with the pond exposed like that?

 

yes we did 3 weeks ago. my dad took the net off yesterday thinking they're long gone.

i doubt it

 

Just black was out of stock with no ETA, its monsoon season and i needed new tires before the rain, picked up the black with red. Now I need something red to go with the red. Red lug nuts are on the way, any other suggestions?

and yes I'm lowering it, springs get here tomorrow

 

Red pinstripe? Badges? I don't know.

Please keep some silver on the wheels.

 

the lug nuts are chrome and red

 

My suggestion would be sell those and get the all black ones

 

Hey I saw a pretty neat camera today which isn't one of these huge DSLR's like what you have but was still pretty close but with one built in lens which does wide angle and has long lens in as well. Its called a Fuji S9600, anyone know anything about the camera and opinon on it will be helpful!

 

The Fuji S9xxx series is pretty neat. I prefer the feel of SLRs though. It also helps that SLR lenses don't exhibit the chromatic abbheration and Look around, you might be able to get a Nikon D40 kit for a similar price. Olympus has priced their E-420 pretty cheaply too.

 

May I ask, what does chromatic abbheration mean?

Also, one of the particular reasons why I was enquring about this camera is that its listed as £200 off Amazon, personally I think this is reasonably cheap for a bridge type camera! I'd personally be surprised if I can get my hands on Nikon D40 with the base lens and the long lens.

I'm also only moving up from a Fuji Finepix F40fd so would you say the full leap to a DSLR is perhaps the best move or going to the "bridge" type being the right idea?

 

Jump to DSLR. You'll be disappointed if you go for the bridge, it just doesn't provide enough of an improvement over your F40fd.

 

I must also add that this all depends on whether my Summer job pays decently, hopefully I will get quite a bit of money, allowing me to then decide then.

But if I were to go for DSLR, what brand or model should I be looking at? My RAF work experience recommended Canon's although they used Nikon D2X's which they all seemed to not like. So what particular camera should I be looking at, what price as well and how much would particular lens' cost? Such as long lens.

 

You can't go wrong with either Canon or Nikon, both are very, very equal in terms of practical features and performance, simply go for whichever one feels the most comfortable in your hands. I'd choose Canon's entry level dSLRs (1000D, 450D etc.) over Nikon's though (D40, D60) since Nikon's entry level cameras lack an internal AF motor in the body, so you'll be stuck manually focusing with lenses which don't have built-in motors. D80 prices are dropping though, that's the camera I use and the only upgrade I'd see for myself would be a D300 or the much rumored D10/D700. As for lenses, Canon do a pretty good 55-250 IS for about £200 and a 70-300 for about £350. Nikon's equivalent is about the same too. There are third party manufacturers that make good, cheap lenses though, but for long zooms like that I prefer sticking to first party ones as they often have image stabilisation and better optics. Both are still pricey so better get working.

 

Chromatic Aberration is the purple/blue fringe you see around the edges of some pictures. Cheaper lenses and super high zoom lenses tend to display this characteristic. Even my 55-200mm pentax lens is prone to this under certain lighting conditions - and that's an SLR lens.

Pincushioning and barrel distortion are another issue you'll find with the big zoom lenses on pro-sumer point and shoots. This is where the image gets warped just slightly. You notice this more on shots with straight patterns on them.

You also don't get as much flexibility in terms of aperture.

Don't discount pentax cameras though - considering the price, they're just as feature rich as more expensive cameras from Nikon and Canon. Of course, Pentax only has two models - K200d at $600 for the body or the k20d at $1100 for the body.

 

Dont forget, if you have a camera which can shoot in RAW, you'll be able to counteract that chromatic abberation in Adobe Camera RAW. Does anyone know the specific conditions in which CA tends to occur, i'd rather remember how to avoid it than have to edit it out later...

the caption for this photo should be: 'Renault's formula 1 engineering team pulled together to make the racier traccy a success!'

 

I suppose thats my major probelm, lenses aren't exactly what I would call "cheap" and sadly its one of those major probelms which will be difficult to overcome. Just looking at the base price for a Canon EOS 450D including a EF-S 18-55mm IS f/3.5-5.6 non USM Lens Kit. That works out at about £483.30. Now presuming the 18-55mm is a standard lens I would then be wanting a longer lens which, because the 450D is compatible with EF or EF-S lens means I can get a EF 75-300 F/4.0-5.6 USM III lens, this costs about £138.00 which makes up my total of £621.30. Thats alot of money for a teenager, perhaps too much? I must point out I'm not trying to put myself off a DSLR, I'd love a DSLR is more the fact of buying what I can afford...which isn't a lot. I'll list a couple of reasons why I checked out that Fuji S9600 to begin with:

• Its fairly cheap sitting at £200 or less at most places
• It also has a decent lens being a 28-300mm meaning I get my nice long lens capability which I want. I'll just take a quote from someones review "The hugely versatile lens caters for virtually any situation from really close macro stuff right up to 10.7 times magnification which is awesome and the results even at this length are staggering" to me that sounds quite appealing having all the lens in one meaning I don't have to struggle to find the extra money to buy more lenses.
• Something I'm not overally fussed about but it's still a point, it means I don't have to lug around the different lens and change them according the situation I'm in and what kind of photo I want to take.
• It still has most the DSLR's features which I would probably use and if I felt stupid I could always relay back to the camera's preset modes (Auto, etc).
• It has the capability which bondy talked about being able to shoot in a RAW format as mentioned on its product detail list, I'm not sure I'd know what to do with that though.
• Something else I'm overly fussed on is that it has a movie mode, might be helpful at motoring events like MPH. But still I could probably survive without.

I mean I'd love to go to DSLR don't get me wrong but my family isn't the most wealthiest family I know and if I want something expensive I have to earn the money the hard way like people with jobs would. Money is always the biggest aspect...sadly.

Thanks for explaining that it makes my life a whole lot easier when I know what your on about.

I won't discount any company until I've even found out what my budget is going to be and that is also if Morton's even give me the Summer job, they said they would be in contact but whether they can gurantee one isn't up to me its up to them.

I've already mentioned about this further up saying the one I was looking at has a RAW facility.

______________________________________

Just out of intrest, do you think I should create a new thread about this instead of clogging up the thread with photo's which might be passed by because of me trying to sort this out?

 

Well i have a S9500 (same camera basicly but the screen is slightly bigger on the s9600 iirc)
did some stuff on it here
Night pics here

and another pic here


The video mode on it is rather good,it adjusts the level of the mic when at concerts so it isnt overpowered. (first 2 videos is pretty clear and that was standing right next to the speaker, the second shows it goes abit wierd if it gets overpowered.)




Same with cars too




Its good for what it is but you just know your gonna go to an event and see pictures that someone else has took with a DSLR and they just look so much better.If you have a small camera shop near you go in and just say your a student,dont have much money to spend etc and see if they are willing to do a deal.You might even be able to get a cheap kit off ebay.

 

Random snap shot I did with my ancient DC4800 and a mini tripod on my desk tonight. Like the look, so I might do a bit more with it later once I have ahold of my dImage Z3 again.

 

I have the same camera as you.

My work with the S9500:

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=3056264&postcount=3581
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2876683&postcount=3078

 

I've started using a new gallery program for my site. Pixelpost was nice but its more oriented towards a photo blog than an actual gallery. The program I'm now using is called zenphoto. It has some nice features and best of all its free =)

http://www.zenphoto.org/

anyone else using this?

 

Shot some RAWs of my dog today and went in Ps to see how RAW worked and stuff. Shot in really bad light and super-high ISO. The post-processing was more complicated than I thought it would be. Does Lightroom or Aperture really make things streamlined enough to be worth it in comparison?

Here is the result. Looks a little dirty to me but I'll have to see how things go when I have something taken in good light with better exposure.

 

Work on your focus a bit more... As for Lightroom, I use it for organising and doing quick adjustments and toning, the heavy stuff is done in Photoshop, but the RAW editing is pretty much the same.

 

Okay, I guess I'll stick with Ps then.

You're right that the focus is soft. It's a really shallow dof too. The "brow" hair was what I focused on and they came out real sharp. I think a lot of-- or at least some of-- the softness came from trying to correct the grain on my own. I haven't looked up how to do that properly and haven't looked into any plug-ins or anything yet.

 

Look for things that your eye will immediately jump to. Those are what should be focused. The very sharp highlights on the eyes along with that off blue they're producing is what should be focused, not a patch of hair.

I like the soft glowing feel the shot has though. Good start!

As far as editing, Lightroom is the 80/20 reduction of Ps (80% of the users use 20% of the functions) so I find it useful to bat through photos quick and simply, but PS is way better for touchups and working in specific spots.

 

It was hard to see the eye sharpness, so I figured if the hairs just above were sharp then I'd get lucky with the eyes. Thanks for the advice.

 

I use Lightroom for organising, keywording, rating and exporting images. I also use it for basic level-type adjustments to the whole image. Exposure, white balance, some contrast, and some saturation work.

I find Photoshop to have better algorithms for asjustments though, so doing levels and curves work (which LR can do) in PS usually produces a more pleasing images, especially where high ISO was used.

Omnis: Are you sure there's no shake in that image? The whole thing looks soft to me, which is a shame, because it's a nice shot with good exposure.

 

I use lightroom/aperture as well for organizing. I find that Lightroom has better RAW processing than Aperture for the shots I took. It's just nice to have a good database driven application to handle tagging and most of my basic post-processing needs.

Personally, I'm having a pretty hard time with RAW so far. I like the effects I can get from it, but it will take a few weeks for me to learn how to utilize it all.

 

I'm pretty sure there's at least some shake. It was handheld just off the floor and my lens doesn't have IS/VR/VC. Anyway, it was the best of the bunch of shots I took so I had to go with it. Tried to fix everything the best I could.

 

Quick reference for still-subject photography: anything under 1/100s you have to make a consious effort to stabilize your hands and anything under 1/60s you shouldn't be touching the camera at all. Check your EXIF data to see what that shot was at; it wasn't retained in the upload.