The Photography Thread

[PeteJ]

LOVE the cat shots

I've got a semi-regular wedding photography gig now (4 left until the end of the year), just got back from one now and totally knackered. Disater struck very early on though - batteries in my 430 flash leaked inside and totally pooched it Quite amusing though, the flash would randomly fire (even when switched off!) and a few times it would fire incredibly quickly for as long as it took for me to wrench the battery lid open!

The on\off switch is now completely seized on the 'Off' position so I'm going to have to try and take it apart tomorrow for some surgery. Hope I can fix it else all my profits go into something I've already got - operation 5D seems so far away from completion...

Oh, and another disaster - I asked for turkey and they gave me fish

[funkydan]

Here are some shots I took on Friday night of the band Joeyfat at my local venue:

[Ginger Tosser]

Great pics from the last week or so. Anyway, not been up to much since I got Leopard (other than fixing Apache). So now it works, here's some pics.

The rush

The Purchase

The Box

[Ish]

Seeing the pics of the queus in the Apple stores makes me soooo glad I ordered it online!

Niced band shots funkydan - though there isn't anything that leaps out of me in the way there has been in some of your other sets (no offence meant!!), fourth one down is probably my favourite.

Not much photography from me lately. Been too busy with work

[funkydan]

Hi Ish, it's a fair comment mate as they're not quite as good as I would have hoped (although I think the first one is nice and sharp ); however the band decided to have a 500w halogen lamp shining on the stage from behind them in the entrance to the stage (you can see it behind the drummer in pic 3) and it really played havoc with my settings and confused the f*ck out of me in general! That's my excuse anyway There's more of that set here

[MartyG]

A couple of scans I did





And not really a very good shot, but a sign I saw on the walk to work this morning which made me smile briefly - Yes! You! Apologise for the mess ...

[Alastair]

Those sunsets are lovely Marty, especially the first.

Can anyone explain to me how to get shots from my 300D to A3 size at 300dpi for printing? I thought I knew what I was doing but I'm not so sure now as they look a little 'grainy' (not high ISO) but as I don't normally do A3 size work I'm not sure if it should look like that or not.

What I've done so far is get the RAW file at full res into CS2 which then gives me a dpi of 240. Using the crop tool I set the dimensions to A3 (dpi left blank) and then crop the bit I want (pretty much the full frame in most cases). That takes the dpi down to around 170 in most cases. To get it back to 300 I then used the crop tool with the same dimensions but with the dpi set at about 8-10 percent increments and re-sized the image as many times as it took to get to 300 dpi.

Is that right or is there a better way? I'm in a bit of a rush as 13 images need to go to the printer tomorrow and it'll save me (well the person paying in the long run) £4.50 per print if I deliver the files ready to print.

[briareos_kerensky]

Can anyone explain to me how to get shots from my 300D to A3 size at 300dpi for printing?

You can't. When the original image is at 240dpi, enlarging it will decrease the dpi as the computer doesn't know how to fill the gaps, let alone increasing the dpi in the first place. If you want to increase the dpi from 240 to 300, you'll get a smaller image than the original.
You can try to increase the pixel count in camera raw while keeping 240dpi and then use the unsharp mask filter to make the picture less soft, but you're telling the computer to create something that doesn't exist, you will always get some kind of loss in image quality.

[Alastair]

Thanks briareos, that's kind of what I thought and I'm sure that's why the quality has gone down (although not all that much). I understand the maths behind re-sizing so I knew it must be adding duff data into the files.

I'll pop over and talk to the printer again to see what an image at 180-200dpi will look like as that's pretty much the best I'm gonna get.

[MartyG]

That advice isn't really right there - there's a reason that you need to increase the DPI for printing, its down to the way printers work, and images can be dpi increased just fine with photoshop without reducing the image size. PS can interpolate using one of a number of selectable techniques. Obviously there are limitations ( you can't get something for nothing ), and this depends on how much you're trying to get away with, but you tend to get less grain by resampling than having the printer try to cope with it.

If you don't increase the DPI, you'll get the news paper image effect on your prints ( ie, you'll get that "dot" effect ). When you resize in Photoshop, and you want to resize while keeping the DPI, check the re-sample checkbox

See here for more information on understand resolutions when printing: http://luminous-landscape.com/tutori...solution.shtml

[Alastair]

Been across to the printer to ask their advice, as backed up by the article you linked to Marty he said that it's hard to tell the difference with the human eye from about 200 dpi up so he suggested rather than trying to up the dpi by interpolating loads to get a larger dpi in the same size image just concentrate on getting it to around 200, even 180 gives good enough results he says though they obviously wouldn't be fine art level they would be more than adequate for general viewing.

I now have to re-work all my images tonight and hand then in tomorrow morning so they are ready to be collected by close of play on Friday, joy, I love post processing again and again due to my mistakes. I've done them twice already

[MartyG]

It's easier with the wet printers - but with Ink Jets it's quite important to get the DPI right for printing.

[briareos_kerensky]

Tut tut tut - that's some bad advice right there - there's a reason that you need to increase the DPI for printing,

I've worked for more than two years with prints, and simply adding DPIs in Photoshop without reducing the image printing size is a very bad advice. The article says in moderation, and probably the writer didn't stressed it enough. Increasing DPIs and increasing image printing size is something that you don't want to do, even the best interpolation algorithm, it's the fastest way to lose quality in your print.
Resizing should be done without the computer adding anything, if the resulting document is 200dpi or above can be printed without too many worries.

[Gareth C]

Yes I think you are right BK. I produced a book for a client last week with some images at 150dpi, some at 200 and the rest at 300.

Really not much difference between them, although 150 is a little low.

A lot also depends on likely viewing distances. The huge billboard posters are often produced at incredibly low dpi because they know it won't be seen up close. A3 prints will likely be viewed from at least a few feet away most of the time whereas traditional photos tend to be held a foot or so from the eye.

[funkydan]

Right, been invited along to photographerise a band who is playing before a large firework display near where I live, so needless to say, I plan on taking some shots of the fireworks too! Using t'interwebnets, I think I have narrowed down the ideal settings for my DSLR (Nikon D200 - I'll probably use my 18-135mm lens as opposed to the 50mm simply because of the zoom) and just wondered if you'd agree:

Manual mode
AP: recommended setting seems to be between f/8-f/16 - so I thought I'd use f/12 and maybe alter it to see what happens
Shutter: 1/250th but most likely BULB setting
ISO: 100
No flash
Manual focus set to infinity

Does that all sound good? Also, what about white balance? Maybe set it to auto? Or is there a better setting to use?

Thanks

Dan