The Photography Thread

[Ginger Tosser]

He must be a freak of nature with lightning reflexes

[PeteJ]

Just noticed this shot of his - amazing detail 'n what not, but saw his lens was 'only' a 105mm macro, shot at f13 and 1/500 exposure...tell me, does that mean he has several extension rings and one uber flash?

I'm pretty sure my kit couldn't get that, even if (in the unlikely chance) my skill could.

[andrewfee]

It's possible that he's got a serious lighting rig - check out this guy's one for taking photos of hummingbirds:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...ssage=18956906

(and more bird shots here: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/re...9092468&page=1 )

Or it could just be that he's really lucky, really puts in the time (eg throws away a load of shots) or is just really, really good at focusing manually.

[Ginger Tosser]

Does seem a little strange. Maybe the EXIF details don't display any info about extension tubes. I guess our 100mm Macro could achieve simular results with extension tubes.

As for the skill, i guess practice makes perfect. Wonder how mant duff shots he has to take to get a good macro. Currently my ratio is around 100 duff to 1 good!

[Alastair]

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.

Hi, I've changed my user name.

I still think this is the main problem with digital photography, every picture looks different on every-one's screens. I guess it always will be a problem though as there will never be a default screen setup will there.

Those macros are ridiculously good, I couldn't even start to imagine how they've done the in flight shots!

[andrewfee]

Hi, I've changed my user name.

I still think this is the main problem with digital photography, every picture looks different on every-one's screens. I guess it always will be a problem though as there will never be a default screen setup will there.

Yeah, although many people do tend to pick up a Spyder2 or some other colorimeter, so that helps things a lot. The problem is that most people just go for whatever is cheapest, and only the expensive ones seem to let you set a white-point of D65 with 2.2 Gamma. (most calibrate to 6500k which could be close, or could be way off)

It's amazing how "off" a display can be though, despite it apparently being at the "6500k" setting. My monitor has gamma options, and even the closest one to 2.2 is way off.

Note: If anyone is interested, I'm considering selling my Spyder2PRO kit and am thinking about upgrading to something more accurate. (like the Gretag Macbeth Eye One spectrophotometer, which is about £1000) It's not that there's anything wrong with the Spyder, it does a fantastic job, but clearly you can see how anal I am about getting things just right.

If you're considering a Spyder, you need to order from Colorvision directly (about ?250 inc VAT and postage) to make sure you have the latest v2 (iirc) sensor. Most places that are selling it for less will have the old one. (I've just had mine back and replaced with the latest version from them as the USB cable was damaged) It's about 6-8 months old, but has a 2-year warranty, and as there are no moving parts etc, it's not likely to ever fail)

[Darwock]

Maybe this will be frowned upon but if you guys want to get exposure for your photos, you can upload them at this site (nothing in it for you except the kudos but hey)

http://www.stockphotox.com/

The site belongs to a friend of mine so that's why I'm pimping it, mods can delete if they like. I just started another thread cos he's got some striking photos of the Bravia TV ad, check em out.

[andrewfee]

Oh how I love Windows..




Lightroom is the correct rendering of the test image, with Firefox (and presumably most other Windows apps) rendering the same as IfranView, and then XP's built-in app is screwing things up completely. (I tried out IfranView after noticing it, but while it improved things, it's still wrong)

[PeteJ]

It is subtle to the untrained eye (me), but I can spot some differences. I was enquiring about Window's ****ty Colour Space a few pages back, as couldn't work out why XP was displaying an image so much worse than CS2 was.

Makes me wonder if the "too dark" gang on Flickr have their monitors setup right

How does one of these spiders work then? I've heard people talk about them but never figured out how they work.

[andrewfee]

It is subtle to the untrained eye (me), but I can spot some differences. I was enquiring about Window's ****ty Colour Space a few pages back, as couldn't work out why XP was displaying an image so much worse than CS2 was.

Makes me wonder if the "too dark" gang on Flickr have their monitors setup right

I don't think it's a case of having the monitors set up right - if you're using Windows, or on a Mac using anything other than Internet Explorer, (god forbid) Omniweb, or Safari, then you won't be seeing the "correct" image even if you have a properly profiled monitor. (I'm not aware of any other colour-managed browsers)

As for the differences, as I said, the middle is "perfect" (but if you're on XP viewing that picture, it's probably not right. ) and the differences are most noticeable with the skintones at the bottom and the three flowers at the top.

When viewing in Lightroom, the skintones are absolutely perfect, and look totally natural, like they're actually inisde the screen. (if that makes sense) Everything in the scene has vivid, but realistic colours like you could reach out and grab anything off those shelves.

In Windows' "Picture and Fax Viewer" colours are far too saturated, making skintones look unnatural and too red (particularly #3) with too much contrast and a lack of detail in the darker areas.

In IfranView (and most other Windows apps) it's the opposite - colours aren't saturated enough, giving everything a slightly faded look, and gamma seems slightly too low, making things a bit brighter than it should be, showing off too much detail in the darker areas, removing the depth from the image.

How does one of these spiders work then? I've heard people talk about them but never figured out how they work.

For the quick & easy explanation, you tell it what kind of screen you have - CRT / LCD / Projector, pick a calibration target - gamma and colour temperature, stick the sensor on the screen, wait 5-10 minutes as it flashes colours up, give the new profile a name and you're done.


Long Version: The kit comes with a Spyder2 colorimeter - a sensor that can measure the light output from screens etc, and the software package you ordered. (all the Spyder2 sensors are the same now - only the software differs) With the most basic package, I believe you can only choose 6500k and 2.2 / 1.8 gamma as your target. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that's what they should be calibrating to. You should be calibrating to 2.2 gamma, and a D65 temperature. The thing is that 6500k is a line on a CIE chart.

Here's an example of this:



As is explained on the right there - both points on that would be 5000k, but only where it crosses with the horizontal curve is D50. This means that you could have quite a colour cast if you only calibrate to 6500k instead of D65. (usually a red tint, basically)

This is critical, because colour temperature is calibration of the greyscale of the display - the way images are displayed is that the colour is basically overlaid on top of a greyscale image, so if your greyscale isn't perfectly grey, then you'll never get colour right. Only D65 (or D50 etc, depending on your needs) will provide a "pure" greyscale.

It asks what controls you have available on your display, and will get you to set the optimal brightness, contrast, and backlight settings for it.

If you have hardware controls on your monitor to adjust r/g/b, then this is used as a "precalibration" of the greyscale - many people adjust this incorrectly if they're getting too much red in their image etc, thinking it will fix it, completely screwing up greyscale in the process. The Spyder will put up a white box, and take readings of it as you adjust these controls, showing you the balance of red/green/blue in the greyscale. When you've got these levelled out at the specified temperature, it then goes onto profiling the display.

This basically involves it sending 15-20 or so red, green, blue, then grey patches, working their way up in brightness, and taking a reading of each. This is a profile of your display, so the software knows how it "works." From this profile, it is able to compare what it is actually displaying in relation to what the target should be, and then creates an ICC profile for the display. This colour profile basically tells the videocard how to correct for what the display is doing.

Say, for example, it's sending 245 red, and your screen is showing 255 red, it'll tell the video card to send out 235 red, which the screen will end up showing as the intended 245. Now, it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's basically what it's doing.

[MartyG]

A new(ish) photo sharing web site - might be worth looking at http://beta.zooomr.com/home - it integrates google maps into the tagging, then people can browse a world map to see photos taken at a location.

[Ish]

Yeah I was playing with that the other day.

If GPS is ever incorporated into a camera and output in the exif it'd be fantastic. As it is I can barely be bothered to even enter tags....

[andrewfee]

Yeah I was playing with that the other day.

If GPS is ever incorporated into a camera and output in the exif it'd be fantastic. As it is I can barely be bothered to even enter tags....

Most high-end cameras support hooking up an external GPS device for the tags - I doubt we'll ever see it built into the camera though.

[MartyG]

I don't see why not, when the technology becomes GPS on a chip cheap - you can get Garmin satnav for under ?130 now, and a GPS position locator for well under ?80, we'll see them on mobile phones->camera phones->exif tags.

[Ish]

And finally on that day I will be able to stalk the object of my desires remotely