The Photography Thread

[Thisco]

Yesterday I did go out and out of the various pictures I made, these came out best:

Cathedral:

http://static.flickr.com/13/92289708_ae4dff5168_b.jpg

Birds near the water:

http://static.flickr.com/26/92293289_752ec99c8b_b.jpg

Row of benches:

http://static.flickr.com/43/92289713_0baa6ae802_b.jpg

'Het Steen':

http://static.flickr.com/13/92289711_416dfe6787_b.jpg

Tower view 1:

http://static.flickr.com/30/92289709_901c66bac4_b.jpg

Tower view 2:

http://static.flickr.com/34/92289712_267582505f_b.jpg

A view of the left bank:

http://static.flickr.com/39/92293290_a587f62510_b.jpg

Please leave comments :-D

[bangaio]

Thisco - totally understand where you're coming from re the PS thing but.........(deep breath) Post production is 100% necessary in digital photgraphy. If you take a jpg your camera processes the image to certain parameters. You take a RAW file then you control it. Now ages ago people moaned about pp but think about it. The developer used effects the image on film. Dodgin and burning during B&W printing, changing the grade of the paper, using filters for contrast. You name it, it was processed for film so for digital it's just the same. It's all cool, the file or negative/tanny is just the start for a great photgraph.

Here're a couple that benefitted from a light bit of pp but no masking or anything drastic.

[bangaio]

OK this rgb adobe rgb thing is annoying the hell out of me so here we go, lets try the first pic that i just processed straight up as an sRGB image. Processed in Raw Shooter Premium.....lets go:

Wahey it works: the greens hold more colour and aren't as washed out! Great! whoohoooooooo

[Thisco]

Hey bangaio,

Nice pictures!

As for the whole Photoshop-thing: it's a wonderful tool, but the foundation still remains a good photograph. You're entirely right about people using effects BEFORE digital pictures existed. The whole 'these-days-all-pictures-are-in-some-way-fake-because-they-were-all-altered-slightly-or-drastically-using-Photoshop' is indeed completely pointless. 'Back in the days' they were MANY things you could do with your negative which were just as much 'faking' as nowadays. Hell, even cropping can have a HUGE effect on the impact of a photograph.

Prime example is the way Stalin had Trotsky removed from all official pictures once Stalin had enough of him. :-D

Will post somemore pictures once I have some new and exciting ones :-)

[bangaio]

Yep, it can be used artistically or to bend what you see although that can still be creative. You can't rescue a dreadful shot but you can help your artistic vision by using post prodcution whether using silver halide or a CMOS chip.

Here are a few more. Realised I should trawl my old pics from the last few years. I can never leave them alone!

[Ginger Tosser]

Nice traffic trail shot Bangaio. Here's one i did earlier. Slightly adjusted the colours to make them look a bit more like the actual slide rather than the scan.

[andrewfee]

OK this rgb adobe rgb thing is annoying the hell out of me so here we go, lets try the first pic that i just processed straight up as an sRGB image. Processed in Raw Shooter Premium.....lets go:

Wahey it works: the greens hold more colour and aren't as washed out! Great! whoohoooooooo

Incase anyone is on a Mac and is puzzled; Safari and Omniweb support colour profiles when rendering image, so both of those will look identical. (apart from the second being slightly bigger)

I'm not aware of any colour-managed browsers on Windows though, and on a Mac, Firefox / Opera don't either.

There's a quick test to see if your browser is compliant here: http://www.color.org/version4html.html

[DaiSuki]

Is there some technique to getting rays of light, like the ones in this?

Looking at the camera settings on that shot, there's nothing particularly unusual but I never seem to be able to capture beams of light that way, regardless of shutter speed or F number. Am I just not finding intense enough light, does it require a specific lens/filter or is there a trick I'm missing? I'm sure it's not just photoshop trickery - I see beams of light like that all the time, I can just never seem to get pictures of them.

[Ginger Tosser]

No real technique other than standing in the right place and metering the light level away from the light ray. That way your exposing for the surroundings rather than the light. With print film no matter how you expose the shot, the developers will over compensate for bright light.
Thats why a lot of snow shots appear flat.

[DaiSuki]

Cheers While I get the gist of what you're saying, though, more questions have been raised

Some quick instructions on metering (what is is, how it affects things) would be handy, if anybody's got the time and inclination. My camera offers me 'spot', 'centre' or 'multi'. Any ideas..?

Apologies for being an intolerable newb

[MartyG]

You need a dark background to help too, helps provide some contrast. The photo you've linked isn't a great example - over exposed, noisey, lacks any sharpness. Looks like it's been in photoshop and had the levels risen to me, the camera used definitely isn't that poor in the CCD department at ISO 100.

Spot - metering is done from the spot in the middle
Centre - metering is done mostly from the middle, but takes the rest into account
Multi - metering is done all over the frame from a matrix of zones

This page explains it very nicely with diagrams too

http://www.photozone.de/4Technique/metering.htm

[DaiSuki]

Aye, I was just looking for one that demonstrated what I meant I claim no fondness to the picture.

While anyone is describing metering, a quick spin through ISO would be handy also. Again, I vaguely understand the principle but don't really understand its practical application. And there's something else on my camera... OEV, or something like that? Can be set between -2 and +2. No idea what that does, but I suspect it's something else which changes the effect of shutter/aperture.

Cheers for that Marty

[Ginger Tosser]

I think its the same as whats on my EOS 50e (auto exposure bracketing). It takes 3 pictures in this mode at different exposures.

Normal exposure
Minus exposure
Plus exposure

Google bracketing might give a better technical answer

[MartyG]

The ISO rating is to do with how sensitive a film is to light. Lower ISO ratings mean it is slower at reacting, higher means faster reacting. So, if you want to to use shorter exposures, but still want big apatures, the ISO rating of the film needs to be higher. The downside being higher ISO ratings tend to mean noisier shots. My D50 allows this to be set from 200 to 1600.

The EV settings (Exposure Value) adjustment is used to compensate for dark objects on light backgrounds (go negative), or light objects on dark backgrounds (go positive) on your cameras metering. When bracketting is mentioned, it's usually to do with bracketting the exposure, so the camera will take a photo at -EV, 0 and +EV. My D50 allows this to be stepped in .3, .7 or 1.

[DaiSuki]

Splendid, cheers chaps

So... if I want to use a longer exposure while there's still a fair bit of light around, then lowering the ISO will add to the effect of narrowing the aperture and and let me take a longer exposure without overexposing the shot?

And EV is more about the contrast of subject and background than it's about actual exposure?