The Photography Thread

[Magnakai]

Today's your lucky day, good sir!

DP Review have done a round-up of budget compact cameras.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408budgetgroup/

The Panasonic LZ8 sounds really good for the price, and would be the one to pick based on their test.

[Alastair]

My Dad's just emailed me to say he's ordered a 5DmkII and will be picking it up on Thursday. Can't believe it. Shame I don't live a bit closer to him as I want to play with it.

[Garf]

My Dad's just emailed me to say he's ordered a 5DmkII and will be picking it up on Thursday. Can't believe it. Shame I don't live a bit closer to him as I want to play with it.

Ooh - serious bit of kit, very nice.

At last, managed to get out with the camera, so have something to contribute to the thread again..

[Magnakai]

I got to play with a 5D Mk II. It's very nice, and the low light capability is astounding. This was shot on ISO 3200 - which my 400D can't even reach - and it looks pretty decent. It's a RAW taken through ACR with default settings and no sharpening.



I've been doing quite a bit of photography lately, but a lot of it involves children, which I don't feel comfortable posting up here. Some more soon, though.

[winky]

wow just looked at the full size image, beats the 40D by miles at 3200 - but so did the 5D. Isnt the maximum ISO something ridiculous like 12800. I will go dig about for some tests I think.

After being really busy in work for months I literally hadnt took a photograph since the end of summer. I spent a morning walking the clyde the other day and I really enjoyed it. I forgot how much fun it can be - no comments on the cliche composition please :







PS they may be a little dark because I keep working from a laptop and keep forgetting to fix the screen angle - let me know what you think

[Magnakai]

Actually, I think those look really nice Winky. Do some large prints of those and flog them.

[dataDave]

New friend I've adopted:

[Richard.John]

For lovers of really tall things.

[Alastair]

Love the windmills, love the Clyde shots, love mount Fuji. DO NOT love the spider!

Seems we've all been out with the cameras recently. Yesterday was a lovely day down here.

[funkydan]

Nice to see this place humming with wonderful activity again! Fantastic shots guys

Here's a couple of mine, usual band stuff I'm afraid:











Few more in the set here

[winky]

I agree with Alastair; spider is horrible! what size is that thing? it looks huge

Good shots from everyone. Dan you got some good angles in that set, did you get to move about a lot?

[funkydan]

I agree with Alastair; spider is horrible! what size is that thing? it looks huge

Good shots from everyone. Dan you got some good angles in that set, did you get to move about a lot?

Thanks Winky, yes I did get to move around a lot - the gig was at the Astoria 2 and I had access all areas, which meant I could get into all kinds of nooks and crannys, bizarrely though, I was unable to stand right at the front! The night was an unsigned night and so the venue took it upon themselves to remove the barrier at the front of the stage, meaning I was unable to get many straight-on shots, but to be honest, the stage was mainly backlit, so when I did try, I was blinded by massive white spotlights anyway, so it all worked out for the best in the end.

This was my second time photographing this band, My Preserver, and I'm actually doing a photoshoot with them this Sunday at a disused (multi-story) car park near Waterloo - quite looking forward to it as it happens. There will be a full lighting set up so it should be a good experience for me. Does anyone have any tips on this sorta thing, re: camera set-up etc? I will of course play around and am taking the laptop with me as well so I/we can review shots properly an' that, but I am open to any tips and tricks

[Alastair]

What's your idea of a 'full lighting set up'? Flash, strobes, hot lights?

You need to learn the relationship between flash/strobes and aperture and then how to capture ambient light with shutter speed. If that's your first time with lights then good luck to you. It can be worked out fairly quickly to get a decent looking shot but knowing what light, what diffuser and when to bounce/gel/snoot etc takes years of practice and built up knowledge that I don't have yet.

Know the shot you want and then work towards it. When I've worked on proper productions it's taken around an hour or more to get a 2 or 3 light set up looking as the photographer wants.

It'll be great fun though, if a little cold at this time of year.

[funkydan]

Thanks mate

I don't know what I mean 'exactly' by full lighting set up Al, but the singers father is a camera man and is providing the lighting, so it will be good quality. It will be a steep, quick learning curve that I will have to adapt to with speed, but I'm confident that I can get some decent results, I think.....I hope!

At the end of the day, it is an amateur shoot, with an albeit decent, but still amateur band - so if it all goes terribly wrong, I'm not that fussed - but I will try my hardest to make it work. The band have a fairly strong idea of what they want, which helps so I need to incorporate that into my own ideas and strategies. I'm in at the deep end but I like that and as you say, it will be fun, and cold

[Magnakai]

Good luck Dan, lighting is really complicated but tremendously rewarding when you get it right. At the very least, go to The Strobist and watch the video linked on this page.

If you've got time, read through some of the other posts. Don't worry much about the exact bits of kit he's using, pay more attention to the type of thing he's doing with it and how he's metering the camera and balancing the power and colour of the different lights.

I was assisting on a shoot a couple of weeks ago where we had eight Elinchrom heads - nine actually, if you include the Ranger set. We only ended up using one of them plus the ambient!

I just wanted to note that at this time and date, my shot is on the Flickr 5D Mk II page in the macro section. Hehe! That's the closest I'll ever get to Explore.