The Photography Thread

[bangaio]

At small apertures you get diffraction in the mix so you can loose critical image sharpness, wide open like Gareth said you looks sharpness too. That is why a lense that is sharp wide open costs a fortune!

Also at 300mm on a digital slr (unless an eos 5 or 1ds) you are shooting in old 35mm film terms at 450mm! You need around a 1/500 shutter speed to get rid of camera shake at those lenghts so in low light you will have a tough time! The old 35mm rule of reciprocal shutter speeds still holds true for digital and catches me out all the time.

[Alastair]

Thanks for the aperture information. Wikipedia and a book I've just got from the library suggest f8 is around optimal for sharpness. Will try a few more test shots to see how I get on.

Tried something new today:

I strongly suggest viewing this one large!!

Also had the unusual chance of chatting to a pap! He (and others) were waiting outside a trendy Brighton eatery for Heather mills, gave me some good ideas for getting into making a living from photography. very interesting to hear what he's done to get to where he is now.

[PeteJ]

That's cool, love the effect. What was the secret?

[Ginger Tosser]

gave me some good ideas for getting into making a living from photography. very interesting to hear what he's done to get to where he is now.

Feel free to share them if you can

[Alastair]

That's cool, love the effect. What was the secret?

How do you mean "secret"? To the shot?

[PeteJ]

Yeah, to the effect you've done.

Also the stuff the pap told you

[Richard.John]

Great shot Alastair. You guys make me want to cry as I am as creative as a pissed frog

[Ish]

On the aperture and macro sharpness thing. With my macro lens (Nikon 105mm) I've generally had the best success with apertures around f8 to f13. I've also found using a flash helps a great deal - even in bright conditions.

[bangaio]

The phrase f8/11 be there can hol tru but for say a landscape shot where maximum depth of field is wanted depending on the lense focal length you could end up at anything between f16 and f22. The longer the lense the less depth of field you have at a given aperture.

Ali, love the montage. WHat tips did you get form the pap? I'd love to know!

[Alastair]

Yeah, to the effect you've done.

Also the stuff the pap told you

No secret to the shot, what you see is what you get. Lots of exposures taken at funky angles, convert to jpeg, re size to 500px wide (could do original size if you have a massive amount of CPU power). Spend about 2 hours copy-pasting each one into PS as a new layer and then rotating, positioning it so it looks something like the actual scene. Only other decision is which ones should be on top or behind others. Some needed so pp to darken them as the sun decided to come out and then go in again as I was shooting.

No secret either to the pap conversation. I only said he gave me some ideas, mainly that his time spent working at the local rag here in Brighton was an excellent education in photography and he'd highly recommend trying to get a job with them. He now co-owns a photographic agency that does lots of different types of work, not just pap.

Sorry if I raised your expectations of industry secrets, I only said ideas he gave me!!

And thanks for the complements

[Richard.John]

My niece who is eight. She is great to snap as she's so photogenic.

Handheld and unsharpened @
1/200
f/3.2
ISO 320

Canon 85mm f/1.8

[Ish]

Took a trip to the butterfly farm today. Very interesting. Very hot. What I hadn't counted on was my camera completely steaming up the minute I wallked into the greenhouse. Quick tip for anyone else heading into a hot steamy room: take 10 minutes to have a general look round and by the time you're done your camera will have de-steamed.

Still processing my pictures (I took a lot!) but here's one I'm quite happy with. Mainly because I caught the motion of its wings just right...



Probably be more to follow later on

[Alastair]

That's great Ish, amazing capture. Love the face on the big version.

[Ish]

Yeah I got pretty lucky with the focus there!

Couple of others. The one above is far and away my favourite though.

[Alastair]

The lens is going back today, managed to give it a quick test this morning (when the sun finally shone) and got a couple of nice crisp examples at f8 ~1/800 - 1/1000. However, the auto-focus at the long end seems way off, never gets perfectly right unless it's a solid massive object, anything smaller and it misses focus by a noticeable margin.

Will swap for another example and if it has the same problem I think I'll take it back altogether for a refund. Even though it was cheap I still expect it to autofocus correctly. I can live with having to learn how to shoot with it but not with it failing to focus all the time.