The Photography Thread 2

[EJG1980]

Just received a lovely new Sony A65 body in the post to replace my old Sony A55. I'm still more than happy with the A55 but it's almost permanently attached to a telescope these days so I hardly ever use it for normal photography. Good excuse to buy a new body and the A65 had dropped to a price I didn't mind paying.

Hopefully I'll actually get out and use it a lot now I have it! I may post some photos on here (maybe find some old ones to post as well), if I'm feeling brave, but I get put off by everyone else's photos looking so good and making me think all mine look very average

[Anpanman]

Always liked the colour reproduction of Fujifilm cameras; the EXR range has a good reputation, quite tempted with the F770EXR myself at ?119. 20x optical zoom and GPS makes it a great compact travel camera.

Me too, think my S2 though is dying or my 200 f2 has thrown a wobbler as a lot of my shots from the weekend are blurry at the edges, looks like motion blur.

A few came out ok though;

[Anpanman]

Forgot these, daughter came to take some shots of the rice harvest this year;

[Yakumo]

Where abouts in Japan are you, Anpanman?

[Strider]

Can someone recommend me a good macro lens for a canon 500d please

[MartyG]

Depends how much you want to spend. The Sigma 105mm and Tamron 90mm both have good reputations for being sharp for a good price (the Tamron 90mm can be a 2nd hand bargain as can the previous non-IS Sigma - I own this one example pics). The Canon 100mm IS is excellent but pricy.

You can go for the shorter 50/60mm macro lenses which are cheaper, but you lose the reach which makes it less useful for insect macros - so it depends on your intended use too.

[Strider]

Thanks Marty, that's good advice and those pictures you've taken are exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in.

[Anpanman]

Where abouts in Japan are you, Anpanman?

Tokushima - though I'm not physically there at the mo.

[Yakumo]

Ah, a million miles from where I live then. Right at the very bottom of Honshu.

[Strider]

After some advice from MartyG I got myself a macro lens. Started to put pics up. Any advice greatly appreciated. http://www.flickr.com/photos/101862661@N04/

[smouty]

With macro photography the DOF is usually microscopically narrow so you have to pay more attention than usual to focus.
That for me separates the good macro from the bad.

[MartyG]

Yep, DoF really is pretty shallow, although it is possible through focus stacking to get some remarkable results: http://wordlesstech.com/2013/09/30/i...raphs-insects/

[EvilBoris]

I was having a look at magic lantern on my 6d, they've figured out a crazy method of getting over 14 stop of dynamic range from it.
This means you can take HDR images in a single shot of even something moving and process it for HDR, you can also use the same technique to create lower noise high ISO raw images. Crazy stuff.

[charlesr]

New Nokia Lumia has 41MP camera. With a lens that tiny, can this possibly be of any benefit over a 10MP one?

[EvilBoris]

I think it's now the 3rd model with that sensor/lens .I don't think it ever outputs a 41mp image unless you ask it to.

What it does allow is for an insanely good quality digital zoom and when you do use the whole image it down samples it to remove and grain. It's a very clever way of achieving a better quality image.

There are sample images knocking around where you can download the full res version, check it out.