The Photography Thread

[bangaio]

Of course photoshopping is allowed, it's pretty much what people have done in dark rooms for years. Nice duo tone thing there by the way.

Anyway, my new toy is this beauty....................

It's an Epson R2400 printer. Pigment inks goes to A3+ size (32.9 x 48.3 cm) and you can see some prints I've run off already. Now I've made prints using pigment inks before but this thing rocks and the driver is amazing. Anyone serious about this get a good printer. The black and white prints are brilliant and the colour on fine art papers is better than any wet print I have ever seen - it's that good. (You can tell I'm pleased can't you!)

[Paleface]

Ooh, that Epson is lovely. The girlfriend's dad has one. Huge, but great output.

Marty - http://flickr.com/photos/infovore/tags/d50

I've taken more but this lot are the only ones fit for publication; I've got a sequence of kitchen shots to go up when I go Pro on Flickr. Taking nice pictures - and getting into the swing of things again, which is good; waiting for better light to take way more. And also, I need to find more subjects. It was so cold last weekend, and the light wasn't great. What do you think so far? (The futureofwebapps ones were all indoors, at a conference, and quite far from the stage, so there's a bit of cropping, plus some ISO1600 action, but they came out not bad, I feel).

[Magnakai]

That's a really nice printer, but I could give you printer envy. My mum got this recently.
omfug.
yeah.

[bangaio]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm yep that gives me printer envy. Same inks though so output's the same. That's what i'll keep tellign myself. I printed a photo I too at Christmas, i'll put a cmall res version up tomorrow but it's simply the best print i have ever made, ever and close to galelry standard prints i've seen else where.

I'm in love with my printer! (sad I know) That's ?500 well spent!

I remember this guy's diary - check out the 4/18/04 entry here!

http://www.outbackphoto.com/printinginsights/pi013/Epson9600_03.html

[MartyG]

I looked that printer up earlier for costs, a nice to have, but atm I think I'd rather spend the money on more glass ... not that I have the money to spend on either mind.

I did after reading the post dust off (literally) my old Epson Colour 980 after finding I'd got a pack of unused Ilford Printasia satin photo paper. Really nice stuff actually. My printer isn't going to win any awards, but it seemed to cope quite well with a couple of A4 prints. There's some banding issues, but it only really stands out under close scrutiny, so I think I'll have to make do with that for the time being. I'm happy enough to get a couple of frames at the w/e to place my better prints in.

Paleface - I did go and look at your shots quickly earlier today, after I realised you're on my contacts on flickr and noticed them. Not an awful lot on there that stands out atm for me as they're just snap shots, but like you say, this w/e gone wasn't really filled with great light and it all helps getting to know the camera. I shall keep an eye out for new uploads.

I took delivery of a 1 GB SD card today, which in RAW mode holds abour 130 frames, which is plenty for using that mode now. In the large resolution medium quality jpg setting I have been using it'll hold over 500 shots

[spagmasterswift]

Spag - yeah post on phot thread but.....say you set the shutter speed to 1/1000 sec then that won't let much light in. The camer will try and open the lens aperture as much as it can (that the f stop - a diaphram in the lens that controls the light entering the lens)
Now say it's opened the aperture as big as it will go f2.8 for example and it's still not letting enough light in your pic will be under exposed - dark.

You may be able to get say 1/250 sec f2.8 but if you ask for 1/1000 you will get 4x less light in and that will be darrrrrrk!

You may have had a warning that your pic will be under exposed like an arrow pointing to the left on a scale of something.

If you are shooting in S or Tv mode (shutter priority) then try AV - this lets you prioritise the aperture so you can set it as wide as pos and therefore get the fastes shutter speed.

The rule is large aperture = more light and faster shutter speed

smaller aperture = less light and therefore longer shutter speed needed for the same exposure.

The aperture also affects depth of field. Just ask if you wanna know!

Thanks for the responses fellas in the other thread - I'll get my girlfriend jumping up and down again tonight with a spot light on her and maximum aperture to see what happens. The reason I'm so keen to suss this out is I took teh below rather naff pic of some taxis in NY with my Camera phone and was a bit miffed they were so blurred. Now it all makes sense.

Now about that depth of field bit - care to explain anybody?

[DaiSuki]

If you have a quick shutter speed, and a wide aperture then the subject you're focusing on will be sharp and defined, and the rest of the picture will like as not be out of focus and fuzzy.

If you have a slower shutter speed and a narrower aperture, then the subject you're focusing on will STILL be sharp and defined, but the rest of the picture will be sharper and more defined as well. Of course, if your shutter speed is slow then you have to make sure you can keep the camera absolutely still while the shutter is open, or you'll get a blurry picture like you discovered with your phone camera.

Wide aperture and fast shutter speed


Narrow aperture and slower shutter speed


If there's a problem with linking the images, the wiki article is here, it's quite useful

[bangaio]

Indeed - DOF is a function of aperture size and focal length so (science bit)

a short lense with an aperture of say f5.6 will have less dof than a long tele lens.

eg a 24mm lens and 5.6 will have quite a bit of dof whereas a 400mm at 5.6 will have a very very narrow dof - only a bit will be in focus. This is important to realise as digicams have short lenses as they have veryt small chips in them so the have a 7mm lens which has a huge dof whatever aperture. On the other hand a large format camera using 5x4 film even a lens that gives a wide field of view has quite narrow dof.

Anyway just remember that all these things do is change how much light the camera lets hit the film or chip and they can balance out as shown above.

[bangaio]

Here's an example i have - f22 and f4.0 .... can you guess which is which. Shutter speeds at 1/5 and 1/125. Excuse the sensor dust and crap composition!

Anyway the out of focus bits are know to photo geeks as bokeh - and different lenses render this subtely differently and some people make this quite an art form on its own. No DOF can be a good thing!

[MartyG]

This might be fun or totally useless, it's a Depth of Field calculator: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Can't vouch for its accuracy though; with practice the DoF you'll get with any setting can be guessed pretty accurately

Along with the factors mentioned, focal point is also an important factor in DoF management. DoF extends backwards and forwards of your focal point, which is why for example, the best focal point for a typical portrait is the eyes.

[Paleface]

(bokeh, specifically, are the circles/rings that appear when things go out of focus. the number of sides they have - and how round they are, etc - are a function of the blades of the aperture diaphragm-thing).

[MartyG]

Mirror lenses have mega bokeh

http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/Odd-Stuff/14x-8x-8x-6x/rings-1.jpg

http://web.mit.edu/cjoye/www/photo/img/Bird02_filtered.jpg

The upside is they have massive focal lengths in a compact size, but they also tend to be quite slow.

[Pavey]

Bangaioh,where do you work? Think i know you. Are you in the photography industry?


(a hunch)

[MartyG]

A page about mirror lenses: linky

[bangaio]

Not even close! Used to work in the city but am now doing teacher training out in the sticks!