The Photography Thread

[andrewfee]

Until you come to print - If I keep my prints at 300dpi I can only just stretch to A4. That's 8mp.

Yeah, but the Nikons have more detail in their 6mpx because they're not as processed and have a weaker AA filter, so you'll be able to upsample and get at least the same level of detail / quality of print... anyway, I don't want to turn this into an argument about which is better.

As for tripods, after spending ages going through catalogues / online stores, the Gitzo Explorer 1257 looks like it's probably the best choice of legs for me with regards to size, weight, and strength. They're perhaps a little short at 137cm, but once the head etc is on, it should be up to the 150cm I'll need for eye-height. (of course with the D200 being a big camera, I probably won't actually need that much) I still need to decide about what options to go for though. You can get it with a geared centre column, a leveling one, and they offer a short centre-column too. (I don't know whether that works with the leveling option or not though, and how much weight it would save)

Markins also do a base plate for the 2 series that replaces the centre column completly, which I like the idea of, as I'm probably never going to use it (raising the centre column reduces stability, and the tripod should be high enough already) and not having the column at all should help improve stability even more. I doubt this would work with the leveling model though, which means buying a leveling base to go on top of that, and then the head itself, which seems like it could make it a bit too top-heavy. I'm also a bit unsure of the way the hook attaches to it - it looks like any weight you put on could actually be putting force on the head, rather than the base (or centre column) itself.


I hope you have fun with your 350D Mr Ono.

[Ginger Tosser]

I went cheap for my Tripod (well relatively cheap). Bought a Manfrotto 390b a few years back.

As i tend not to do much tripod stuff didn't see the need for anything else. For a lot of my macro stuff i find it fine. Its been quite a sturdy thing though, copes well with my 5D, GA645zi and Mamiya c33 (which weighs about the same as a small tank).

Must get out and take some more pictures

[Alastair]

Tripod wise I have an old Cobra, I think it's called that. Was my gf's when she did her A'level about 10 years ago, is sturdy but a bit weighty. I don't use it all that much though so it does the trick.

Been looking at a lot of landscape shots recently on Flickr as it really is something I know next too nothing about, the effect some people can get from a seemingly normal hillside is amazing. I had a go yesterday. Don't think I'm quite there yet though.

Was shot wide open with the kit lens and with the polariser on, what do you think? Might need to click to go through to a large version to get a better feel for it though

[andrewfee]

Tripod wise I have an old Cobra, I think it's called that. Was my gf's when she did her A'level about 10 years ago, is sturdy but a bit weighty. I don't use it all that much though so it does the trick.

Been looking at a lot of landscape shots recently on Flickr as it really is something I know next too nothing about, the effect some people can get from a seemingly normal hillside is amazing. I had a go yesterday. Don't think I'm quite there yet though.

Was shot wide open with the kit lens and with the polariser on, what do you think? Might need to click to go through to a large version to get a better feel for it though

Looks good - I think most people just assume it's easy to get a good landscape shot, but it's a lot harder than it looks.

I don't know about the lens you have, but you'll probably find that wide-open isn't going to be its sharpest, and that you'll probably want it stopped down around f8-f11, (you'll have to do some testing really) using as low an ISO as you can, and a longer exposure. Probably the easiest thing to check the sharpness would be to try taking a photo of a printed sheet of paper or something at a distance on a tripod. Manually focus it (or use auto focus and then disable AF so it doesn't change) and put the camera into aperture priority mode so that it'll expose the shots the same, then just adjust the aperture to see what produces the sharpest result. I'd use the self-timer for 10s to avoid shaking the tripod when doing it.

I hope you don't mind, but I did a little editing on your image. The Powerbook is still away for repair, so I'm without Photoshop again, and trying out the Lightroom beta this time. It's surprisingly quick considering the age of this PC, and the complaints people have been making about its performance. I'm not happy at all with the sharpening controls provided though - I'd prefer to be using unsharp mask - this seemed to cause ringing when even just adding a little to the photo.



I thought a tighter crop worked well for this photo, giving it a more panoramic look, and I cropped in from the left slightly as well.

I used the lens correction feature (first time I've tried that) to get rid of some chromatic aberrations, likely caused by having the lens wide open. I found around -14 red/cyan seemed to work best.

I then adjusted the tone curve to remove a little contrast from the image and bring out some hidden detail in the trees/bushes.


The only thing is that the image has been slightly over-exposed, blowing out the clouds in the centre of the image. If I had photoshop, I'd just "paint" that in to get rid of it, but I couldn't see any way of doing that in Lightroom. Canons to tend towards over-exposure though, and with digital, it's better to under-expose than over-expose. (you can always bring out loads of "lost" shadow detail, but highlights are gone for good)

I've left it perhaps a little more desaturated than I had meant to though, I didn't touch colour adjustments at all.

If you don't like me having done this, I'll take it down immediately.


Now, I haven't actually used a polariser, but I'm not sure if it would have added anything to the photo though? I thought all they did was remove reflections from things? (eg reflections on windows, water, and leaves etc up-close)

[MartyG]

Polarisers would darken the blues in the sky and giving it a more "dramatic" colouring (and also take away 2 stops). They aren't much use when it's totally cloudy though.

This pic had a poloriser on the lens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martypg13/179625186/

[andrewfee]

Polarisers would darken the blues in the sky and giving it a more "dramatic" colouring (and also take away 2 stops). They aren't much use when it's totally cloudy though.

This pic had a poloriser on the lens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martypg13/179625186/

Ah right, I knew that they helped make the colours "pop" when photographing plants/flowers, but I thought that was because it was cutting down on the reflections. I'll have to look into it more, thanks.

[Alastair]

Thanks for the input Andrew, feel free to play around with the image. TBH though I like me version better as to my (colour blind) eyes the colours are more vivid which is probably caused by the higher contrast I like to use. That shot was taken at f9 (but with polariser) and was already sharpened. The crop is always personal preference though, I wanted to highlight the sky in this shot as that's what the place is like, everything falls away from you and you get a massive amount of sky there.

I'm not one for all the correction of "chromatic aberrations" etc either, honestly, what's the point? You could spend ages processing a shot to bits and I personally like things less the more I pour over them. I just take the pics, sharpen, level and contrast. If I'm not getting in the ball park of the effect I'm after when shooting then I need to learn more. For studio shots etc this may vary but to me it's taking the piss a bit to completely play around with natural scenes and make them look like something they were not. The lens was wide open for a reason, I like the wide angle look to photos, if I had the money I'd be getting a lens that goes a lot lower than 18mm too. If that causes aberrations then so be it, do people really 'see' them when they look at a picture or do some people look for aberrations when viewing a picture and not actually see what the picture is of?

Not trying to be snotty by the way, just my comments.

[andrewfee]

That shot was taken at f9 (but with polariser) and was already sharpened. The crop is always personal preference though, I wanted to highlight the sky in this shot as that's what the place is like, everything falls away from you and you get a massive amount of sky there.

Ah right, when you said you shot "wide open" I assumed you had meant it was f/2.8, f/4 etc (whatever the lowest your lens goes to)

I must have misread, I thought you said you hadn't used a polariser, sorry.

I'm not one for all the correction of "chromatic aberrations" etc either, honestly, what's the point? You could spend ages processing a shot to bits and I personally like things less the more I pour over them. I just take the pics, sharpen, level and contrast. If I'm not getting in the ball park of the effect I'm after when shooting then I need to learn more. For studio shots etc this may vary but to me it's taking the piss a bit to completely play around with natural scenes and make them look like something they were not. The lens was wide open for a reason, I like the wide angle look to photos, if I had the money I'd be getting a lens that goes a lot lower than 18mm too. If that causes aberrations then so be it, do people really 'see' them when they look at a picture or do some people look for aberrations when viewing a picture and not actually see what the picture is of?

Fair enough - you can't really see them in the smaller versions, but they showed up in the "original" file. The image really wasn't bad for it at all though.

It's something that's really quick and easy to fix though, as your lens will always be applying the same amount at the same focal length/aperture. I'll be doing it to all my images from now on most likely. (it'll be more obvious with my camera anyway) It just helps make things look a bit sharper, especially if you're going to be cropping and adding more sharpness to the image.

Just helps take away a slight "fuzziness" around the trees / bushes and the rocks:

Uncorrected 100% crop:


Corrected 100% crop:

(nothing else done to the image)

Not trying to be snotty by the way, just my comments.

Nah, that's fair enough. When you're shooting with a P&S like I am, you need to do whatever you can to get good images out of it, and kinda get into the habit of it. It's not needed nearly as much on a DSLR.


I agree about the vividness of the colours, I should have added some more saturation, although I do think there was too much contrast in your image personally. (I don't like loads though, unless it's a black and white shot)

[Alastair]

Thanks again Andrew, I can see a slight difference in the two examples you've posted but maybe not enough for me to bother adding it to my PP routine.

I did say wide open when I meant wide angle, sorry.

My old P&S must have been very different to yours. It did all the damn sharpening, colour, contrast etc for me and I couldn't turn it all off. I found the first few batches out of the DSLR very 'disappointing' until I was informed that I had to some PP to get them up to scratch.

It's good to have different opinions of things though of course, I never expect anyone to like my shots and I always try to take on board any comments/feedback.

[andrewfee]

My old P&S must have been very different to yours. It did all the damn sharpening, colour, contrast etc for me and I couldn't turn it all off. I found the first few batches out of the DSLR very 'disappointing' until I was informed that I had to some PP to get them up to scratch.

It's good to have different opinions of things though of course, I never expect anyone to like my shots and I always try to take on board any comments/feedback.

Fortunately with my Exilim, I can adjust just about everything other than the noise-reduction (which I hate, as I bought Noise Ninja last year when I had a D70, and often end up doing noise reduction twice, because of this) but due to having 7mpx on such a small sensor compared to a DSLR, I prefer to put in the work in Photoshop to get images as good as I can get out of it.

This is one of the reasons I plan on buying Nikon, as they barely do anything to the image, whereas I personally find a lot of Canon shots look over-processed, in my opinion. (but everyone has different tastes - many people find images out of a Nikon flat and dull)

As I said about CA; the difference is very small in that shot, as it's not too high contrast / bright there, but when you start adding sharpening (especially on a worse case than that) it will enhance those artefacts more, and you usually have to back off with the sharpness a bit. (or put up with the artefacts) Correction takes about 20 seconds of playing around with two sliders and lets you sharpen the image more. Obviously it depends what the shot is for if it's worth correcting or not. (eg if I was going to make a big print of an image, I'd make sure it was perfect)

[MartyG]

Another great macro photographer on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rob_knell/

[andrewfee]

Just feel that I should point out that the edit I did isn't nearly as good as I thought it was - thanks to windows' ****e colour management, I've just noticed that it hadn't loaded up the profile for this monitor properly, so it wasn't at the right gamma, or colour accuracy etc, and the colour / contrast in your original looks a lot better than I thought it did.

[Ish]

Another great macro photographer on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rob_knell/

Christ that guys good.

[Ginger Tosser]

Yes he is good, kinda makes me want to retire my macro

[PeteJ]

How the hell has he managed such good focus when the tiny insects are in flight? That's just rude!