The Photography Thread

[funkydan]

Dan, the slingshot 100AW is what I'm using at the moment and that's a very good price. I was just starting to think about offloading mine as I need something bigger. Think I'll be going for a mini trekker soon enough.

It is a good price. I haven't purchased it yet though - waiting on payday. However, please keep me in mind if yours is in good nick and you are selling it sometime soon

[Alastair]

Will PM you now Dan, Wicky, added you as a friend

[fuse]

My first attempt at doing a 'proper' b&w conversion. Normally I just throw down the saturation to zero and maybe up the contrast, but I decided to follow a proper guide this time. All this time I've probably used 0.0001% of what photoshop offers!

Love it - would be really interested to read up on anything like this too if people have any links. Afraid I'm just as bad when it comes to B&W conversions, so would be good to swot up on what I'm doing wrong.

Crossing my fingers BIG TIME that my 50mm lens arrives today, as a mate from uni is playing a gig tonight up near King's Cross, and it would be the ideal way to kick things off with it. *prays to Mr DHL*

[funkydan]

Hope you get your lens fuse - the 50mm is the shizzle for live band shots! Is it the f1.8 or 1.4?

[winky]

not been keeping up to speed much, been awfully busy. The black and white picture was delicious Mag.

Just going to quickly say I use the 300AW (I think) and its great, can hold all my cables, batteries and chargers, 2 lenses and a flash gun plus the camera and lens. Still have space for another lens.

Its comfy if you are running with it on your back. Only thing is the side opening is great for getting the camera but I sometimes worry I will forget to close it properly.

Will post later when I have more time.

[fuse]

Hope you get your lens fuse - the 50mm is the shizzle for live band shots! Is it the f1.8 or 1.4?

'tis the 1.8 (Nikkor) - just had word from housemate who's going to the gig tonight also that it's arrived and he'll be taking it up with him for me. Result!

[funkydan]

'tis the 1.8 (Nikkor) - just had word from housemate who's going to the gig tonight also that it's arrived and he'll be taking it up with him for me. Result!

Nice one dude - you'll be amazed at the amount of light those little buggers let in. And if the stage/venue lights are good, you won't need to use flash

[Magnakai]

Nice one Fuse! I'm sure you'll really enjoy the low-light possibilities of it. It'll totally change the way you look at evening shots. If you get addicted to the speed of a prime, it might be worth considering the Sigma 30mm f/1.4. That'll give you a more natural field of view, which is really good for your everyday stuff. I've got the Canon 28mm f1.8, and on a crop camera it's a really lovely range. Most of my non-gig shots are on that lens actually.

Love it - would be really interested to read up on anything like this too if people have any links. Afraid I'm just as bad when it comes to B&W conversions, so would be good to swot up on what I'm doing wrong.

I used to use this method (scroll down a bit to find the instructions), and got some ace results from it. Nowadays I just stick Lightroom into grayscale mode and fiddle with the sliders until I'm happy. I should try using that Carr method again actually, I was really fond of it.

Alastair, that shot's lovely. I thought there'd be a loss in quality from the extender, but it seems to have held up really well. I love the detail of his mouth chewing on the netting. Cheeky little thing.

Let me know how the Slingshot bag works for you. I've been thinking about getting one myself. I currently manage to fit my 400D with the 28mm and 50mm inside a medium Crumpler Ben's Pizza bag, which is small enough to comfortably fit inside my backpack. Then if I need my flash, I just throw it seperately in my bag in its cosy little case. It can be a bit fiddly at times, but it does mean that I can take my SLR literally everywhere I go. That's the one real upside of the 400D - it's relatively quite small.

The other bag I was considering was the quite expensive Crumpler Daily Large. It'll fit about a few extra lenses, a flash, and my laptop all together, plus it feels really nicely made, and you can take the photo compartment out altogether and just use it as an everyday bag.

Marty, I was quite taken aback to see that poster. I haven't seen any about in the wild, but it's real scary stuff. I love random street shots, and someone not looking at a shot as a potential photograph might think I'm eyeing up that car park or traffic light for a potential terrorist attack. I spent 20 minutes just wandering around Centerpoint the other night taking blurry photos. That's a bit weird by most standards, isn't it? Maybe I'm subconciously planning on decapitating the giant Freddy Mercury outside the Criterion Theatre!

[PeteJ]

I used to use this method (scroll down a bit to find the instructions), and got some ace results from it. Nowadays I just stick Lightroom into grayscale mode and fiddle with the sliders until I'm happy. I should try using that Carr method again actually, I was really fond of it.

Wow that's completely different to the one I used - http://www.photocritique.us/2007/01/...-photoshop-cs2
Photoshop is a scary beast.

Yeah I'm off to Vegas next month I might just take my 24-105 and tripod to save space, though the 100mm macro may be useful...oh and the nifty fifty. I may also need the 200mm...
Drat and double drat.

[Magnakai]

What if you want some medium format shots? And a range of different filters would be useful. You may also need to bring a small off-camera lighting setup... how about a couple of strobes, some stands, some wireless triggers. A couple of umbrellas and some reflective bounce cards. Hmm... how about a chartered jet?

There's a photographic exhibition called Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography at the Tate Modern starting in May that some may find interesting. It's going to have a whole bunch of photos from such luminaries as...

Francis Alÿs, Diane Arbus, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rineke Dijkstra, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson, August Sander, Cindy Sherman, Malick Sidibé, Paul Strand, James Van der Zee and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Blimey.

[PeteJ]

None of which I've heard of I'm sure they are lovely people though!

[Ginger Tosser]

Mapplethorpe liked to take pictures of wood!

[funkydan]

[butthead]huhuhuhuh...he said wood uhuhuhuhhuh[/butthead]

[fuse]

Sooo... long story short, I suck at using manual focus

Really need to get to grips with this prime, as 90% of my shots last night were out of focus and rubbish. However, I was very impressed with the speed of it, and in low light conditions it was just the ticket. Really looking forwards to playing with it some more - perhaps get used to the focus in some portraits or something rather than chucking it on the body in a nearby Subway then diving straight into a pub to try it out...

Here's the best one I got:



Also quite keen on this, was a good excuse for me to try out the B&W conversion methods listed

[funkydan]

A couple of nice shots there Fuse (not sure about the stuff on the right hand side of your b/w conversion though - I would crop some of that personally and try to keep the engineers hand in, but that's just me )

I confess though that when I do live band shots, I use auto-focus. It's quicker for the most part, timing being of the essence when shooting a band. I just find it easier as things happen too fast - sometimes if I want a shot of say the singer and guitarist with a gap in between them, I will switch back to manual, otherwise the AF locks onto the space in between them and that's no good! But then, I'll go back to AF as it is quicker and makes it possible to capture those moments that you might miss if you were trying to focus the pic yourself.