The Photography Thread

[Rossco]

Here

Wow, they are stunning. So many of them just blow me away. Really impressive in my opinion.

Especially this, gorgeous photograph!

[Tirian]

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Just change the brackets to [ ]

Yeah, tried that - won't do a darn thing. I guess the site has some kind protection for images you host there. Hmph .. guess it's back to Imageshack then ..

[bangaio]

Wow, they are stunning. So many of them just blow me away. Really impressive in my opinion.

Especially this, gorgeous photograph!

Thankyou very much. The one you posted went through about 5 attempts to get right. I took it on the way to school a year ago - I just had my camera and the field was really frosty but this small path grabbed me and I had to get it so to speak!

The other day a valley near here was filled with mist like a huge bowl. There was a frost for the first time this autumn and I had left my camera at home. Gutted!

[Ish]

[Ish]

Been out and about and generally very busy with my camera. Some of my faves:

[Richard.John]

I have a quick question about opening RAW files in Photoshop. When opened the app seems to automatically apply various adjustments to the pics so am I right in assuming that if I untick 'Use Auto Adjustments', the pics will revert back to their orginal untouched settings?

Also why is RAW preferable over jpegs? I have noticed that I can adjust the exposure which seems handy when dealing with blown highlights but what else can it do? I apologise in advance for my ignorance!

[Alastair]

I don't know about the PS bit but I find RAW gives me truer colours than a jpeg, (with my cam anyway). Seems much more adjustable for fill light, tint, WB and exposure too.

I use RAW shooter essentials.

[Ish]

I've noticed the same thing about the colours since I started shooting raw.

One of the benefits to raw is that when you tweak colours in a jpeg you're tweaking something thats already been tweaked (so to speak) when your camera converts it to jpeg. Whereas with raw you're tweaking whats been directly read from the sensor. As I understand it anyway. Hence why you can mess with the white balance and stuff. These are all things your camera does when converting to jpeg.

I use Aperture for my photo editing. Its designed for working with raw all the time and is a great package.

[Richard.John]

Thanks for the replies guys. DSLRs are certainly hard work but a ton of fun as well.

[bangaio]

When your camera shoots a jpeg it sets the image in stone. The White Balance, the sharpening, teh saturation etc all using in camera processing.

A RAW file is literally each pixel as taken. You then use a raw editor - RSE is great I use RSP but essentially same deal and you will be the one who determins the white balance. You can adjust pretty much anything such as levels, curves, saturation, adjust exposure compensation if you have over exposed (or under) recover shadow detail, recover highlite information etc. Then you set your image in stone in maybe a tiff format of change the colour space for print or web etc.

You can apply sharpening amounts or leave it unsharpened and use something better/different in PS. The sky's the limit really.

I've been playing with Adobe lightroom beta and it's coming along nicely and has some RSP features there since they were bought by Adobe or download RSE from pixmantec.com

Think of a raw file as (cliche alert) a digital negative where you can control how it is processed and printed (to a file)

Enjoy - Raw rules.

[Bada Bing!]

Nice pics. Particularly the ones with the car in. Is it yours?

Yep, my '06 111R.

Where they taken?

Look really good, like the bottom one, looks impressive!

Just down from the house, at Dunure, looking across to Arran. The pic with the mountain was taken at Leadhills, which is the highest town in Scotland. It felt like it, my head was killing me after a while!

Bada Bing - nice car and nice shots, need to work on the horizon on the last one though (I'm guessing the car was actually parked slightly uphill and you wanted it straight).

Your lucky to have such stunning scenery nearby. It's on my list to visit Scotland again soon.

Yeah, I really messed up the horizon on that shot, but never even thought it would be an issue until afterwards. The piece of land I parked on was all over the place, so I should have known!

You can't go wrong with the West Coast, there are so many beautiful places from where I am, heading North up to Fort William, then down to the mull of Kintyre. I'm going to brave the elements and take some autumny pictures if I can be bothered putting trousers on.

[Alastair]

Went to an RSPB reserve today, the birds were so damn small and far away though (even with a 300mm) that it was hard to capture anything interesting. Ended up mainly with cows!

[Ish]

I like the last one. Its just cows. But cows doing something interesting

Another from me

[Ish]

And another. I quite like this one.

[Alastair]

Is that beer again Ish? I'm starting to worry