StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I've been trying something new lately; having the camera's on-board flash working as a fill light on the subject while using a polarizing filter to keep the background sky in check. Lens here was the Canon 17-85 - I would have used my Sigma macro, but I haven't yet got a polarizer in the right thread size.

Apologies for the smaller than usual preview pics - accidentally set the width in DPP to 1280px instead of 1024px, and this is the next smallest that Flickr generated.



This one was at a nearer angle to the sun, so the polarizer wasn't quite as effective, although it did prevent the sky from blowing out completely.

My cousin was in a lantern festival so I went and took a bunch of pictures. I made a few discoveries when trying to shoot from my seat without a flash:

• f/4 is not quite enough
• f/1.4 does not help if your effective focal length is 48mm.
• Immense dynamic range (spotlights) = incredibly confused light meter on my 400D
• Monopods help a lot

(Here's the rest of the set)

Sigma 30mm?
What shutter speed did you use? Those dancers are sharp.

DEATH wrote:Sigma 30mm?
What shutter speed did you use? Those dancers are sharp.

Sigma 30/1.4 indeed.

That shot is 1/25, F4, 70mm, ISO 1600.

phongn wrote:

DEATH wrote:Sigma 30mm?
What shutter speed did you use? Those dancers are sharp.

Sigma 30/1.4 indeed.

That shot is 1/25, F4, 70mm, ISO 1600.

They must have been standing in place then, no? F4? Dayum, there must have been some damn good lighting then. (Shooting shows indoors give me fits, my prime is wise and therefore useless, and my Sigma can't focus worth a damn, nevermind the lacking light gathering).

My tip is to mention to whoever's in charge (if you can get in touch with them, and since you hada cousin involved..) that you're a very good photographer, and to see if you can work anything out. It's a license to sit on the first row and to walk around, at the least .

DEATH wrote:They must have been standing in place then, no? F4? Dayum, there must have been some damn good lighting then. (Shooting shows indoors give me fits, my prime is wise and therefore useless, and my Sigma can't focus worth a damn, nevermind the lacking light gathering).

No, the lighting sucked most of the time, especially when the spotlights were turned on and the camera had no clue how to meter.

My tip is to mention to whoever's in charge (if you can get in touch with them, and since you hada cousin involved..) that you're a very good photographer, and to see if you can work anything out. It's a license to sit on the first row and to walk around, at the least .

Later I grabbed a front-row seat, but the stage is raised so that actually just made more problems.

phongn wrote:

DEATH wrote:They must have been standing in place then, no? F4? Dayum, there must have been some damn good lighting then. (Shooting shows indoors give me fits, my prime is wise and therefore useless, and my Sigma can't focus worth a damn, nevermind the lacking light gathering).

No, the lighting sucked most of the time, especially when the spotlights were turned on and the camera had no clue how to meter.

Yeah, it makes even going manual a near impossible headache. Just judge it by ear, that's what your LCD is for (trickiest but is seeing if they're blurred).

My tip is to mention to whoever's in charge (if you can get in touch with them, and since you hada cousin involved..) that you're a very good photographer, and to see if you can work anything out. It's a license to sit on the first row and to walk around, at the least .

Later I grabbed a front-row seat, but the stage is raised so that actually just made more problems.

Yeah, I had that dilemma quite a bit (further back, or lower down?). Best is to stand up on the suidelines, mixed with close up (albeit from a crappy low angle).

Greeny Sea:


People like this one (unedited):

Beats me why though, it's very easy to do, and not impressive/good beyond the "nice effect" level (no prizes for how this was done, it should be obvious, no? ).

Having fun with the (crappy, old, small) Olympus and it's Zuiko lens. Great lens, crappy camera (And 1.5m focus distance? youch)

Magical Mystery tour (Beatles Homage) concert:

[b]Simplicius[/b] wrote:Bounty, I found a lot of 1.5V silver-oxides on Amazon.de that could be sized to fit with a little rubber o-ring. Exell makes a S625PX that fits; that's probably what your friend is looking for since it's specifically meant to replace the mercury 625s and isn't in wide commercial use. My brother's home for the weekend but he didn't bring his camera so I have no way of knowing what battery he got for it until I can get back to the store and see. Sorry I can't be of more help.

The voltage difference will only affect your metering by ~one stop, so while you could spoof the meter with your ISO setting it's not strictly necessary because negative film can handle +/- one stop well. If you shot slides then spoofing would be a necessity.

I finally got round to fitting a 1.5V silver-oxide with two rubber O-rings. With the ASA setting one stop below the actual value of the film (ie 200 for 400) to compensate for voltage, the meter is dead-on; I metered against a few surfaces and the Powershot's shutter priority mode gives the exact same value as the 35RC.

I'll shoot up the last half of the roll in the RC tomorrow. I've got Zorki photos coming back from the lab tomorrow, too.

Bounty wrote:I finally got round to fitting a 1.5V silver-oxide with two rubber O-rings.

I, in turn, have a battery for my Yashica (stole it out of the ES, actually), but I'm putting off frigging around with adapting it and making sure the circuitry works - I'm on a medium format jag with my Konica because it's such a badass camera to lug around. It's so much quieter than an SLR half its size that I am constantly doubting that the shutter works. I can't wait to see what it can do. In the meantime, more photos from January are forthcoming.

Bounty wrote:Don't diss PDN; for anything below really fancy editing work I've found it works great and it has a really easy to use interface (it sure beats Gimp's hunting for menu windows!). If there was a Linux version I'd use it in a heartbeat.

I have resolved to try the demo of Adobe Lightroom after reading some reviews that make it sound like a very useful tool for serious-business photo management; if I like it enough I'll probably start saving up for it. Paint.net chokes on my TIFFs too much to be really useful as a photo editor (it crashed thrice when I was working on the Olson House photo, trying to add a third layer to the image!), while IrfanView is too lightweight for that sort of thing.

Photos for a photo thread: these are from a couple of years back, when I was taking pictures like mad but not really applying myself, when I was using an incredibly cheap digital P&S and an SLR was a dream on the horizon...



Battle Monument, U.S. Military Academy



Ford, Saratoga Springs



View, Saratoga Springs. (I don't usually go for borders, but in this case the border is a symbolic vestige of the wall around the window. The wall needed to be cropped out, but I wanted to keep the view 'in' something, since it looked weird with just the scene.)

Found these 3 randomly in my files:

Fields (Simple, but nice and colourful):


Should have been wider (but impossible technically) and lower (but impossible due to lots of people splashing water):


I tried to slow the shutter speed to blur the movement of the stalks more, but the midday sun prevented that. (And my handholding it).

Death wrote:I tried to slow the shutter speed to blur the movement of the stalks more, but the midday sun prevented that. (And my handholding it).

Death wrote:Why a tripod? And who needs manual controls

Question now answered.

Seriously, this is how you'd do it: 1.) Set ISO as low as it can go. 2.) Set camera to Manual. 3.) Meter the scene. 4.) Pick the shutter speed/aperture combination that gives you a good exposure with the depth of field you want; the narrower the aperture the better. 5.) Set shutter speed two stops slower than previous selection. 6.) Increase exposure compensation by two stops. 7.) Slowest possible shutter speed attained!

Without EXIF I can't know what you did to take this one, but with your Canon and the kit lens you should be able to hit shutter speeds of 1/8 sec. or so, assuming an EV of 15.

As for hand-holding, I've heard the rule of thumb is that you can safely handhold at a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the focal length. This is rule-of-thumb only, though; I have hand-held frequently to 1/30 sec. and once to 1/15 sec. with my 55mm without noticeable issues, even without any kind of digital assist. The key is to keep your elbows at your sides, exhale, and then gently squeeze off the shutter at the end of the exhalation. Oh, and use a short focal length, obviously.

Simplicius wrote:The key is to keep your elbows at your sides, exhale, and then gently squeeze off the shutter at the end of the exhalation.

Yeah, my father teached me this 'technique' years ago, and it made it possible for me to take awesome and sharp pictures inside of churches, museums etc. where using flash is either frowned upon or impractical, or both.

Example, this one (in the Louvre). Ok, it was pretty bright there, but trying to just "snapshot" it gave blurry results nonetheless. As the pictures I've posted before in this thread, they look grainy because of sharperning (for printout). I really ought to upload some non-processed pictures



Or this two at night:

Oh so lovely little restaurant in Montmartre, Paris



Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. This goddamn church looks to imperialistic, being there at night I literally had the imperial march playing in the back of my head

So say a fellow has been following this thread and might like to take a few pictures himself, but he doesn't have a lot of money to get started and wouldn't want to make a big investment anyway without knowing if he would stick with the hobby. Say the subject he'd probably like the best is architecture. Are there any places to turn to for helpful advice for getting started?

RedImperator wrote:So say a fellow has been following this thread and might like to take a few pictures himself, but he doesn't have a lot of money to get started and wouldn't want to make a big investment anyway without knowing if he would stick with the hobby. Say the subject he'd probably like the best is architecture. Are there any places to turn to for helpful advice for getting started?

In terms of equipment or in terms of technique?

Bounty wrote:

RedImperator wrote:So say a fellow has been following this thread and might like to take a few pictures himself, but he doesn't have a lot of money to get started and wouldn't want to make a big investment anyway without knowing if he would stick with the hobby. Say the subject he'd probably like the best is architecture. Are there any places to turn to for helpful advice for getting started?

In terms of equipment or in terms of technique?

Both, I guess, though I suppose technique should be a priority, since I gather good technique can make inexpensive equipment look good while bad technique will make expensive equipment look like shit. Basically, equipment wise, I'm just looking for something where there's a reasonable possibility of taking good pictures. I'd also like it to not be a piece of shit that's going to break on me; I fucking hate piece of shit equipment no matter what I'm doing with it.

It's going to depend on your budget and what you plan to do or how versatile you want the camera to be. If you just want something with manual controls for no money there's pretty good film SLR's from way back when selling for $20, but learning to work with all their quirks might not be what you want. A decent digital camera with manual controls can be had for under $500, but then you might find yourself wishing you'd sprung for a full-featured DSLR down the road... but those are pricey.

Do you have a camera already?

Bounty wrote:It's going to depend on your budget and what you plan to do or how versatile you want the camera to be. If you just want something with manual controls for no money there's pretty good film SLR's from way back when selling for $20, but learning to work with all their quirks might not be what you want. A decent digital camera with manual controls can be had for under $500, but then you might find yourself wishing you'd sprung for a full-featured DSLR down the road... but those are pricey.

Do you have a camera already?

My parents have an old Nikon they never use since they got a digital. I gather it's a nice camera, but I really have no idea. I'll be visiting them this weekend so I could take a look at it. My luddite side likes the idea of using real film, but film and development are non-trivial costs.

Simplicius wrote:Without EXIF I can't know what you did to take this one, but with your Canon and the kit lens you should be able to hit shutter speeds of 1/8 sec. or so, assuming an EV of 15.

EXIF for that image.

RedImperator wrote:My parents have an old Nikon they never use since they got a digital. I gather it's a nice camera, but I really have no idea. I'll be visiting them this weekend so I could take a look at it. My luddite side likes the idea of using real film, but film and development are non-trivial costs.

That'd be quite enough to learn on (I first used a Canon AE-1). Film and development shouldn't be too expensive, I think, and you'll be able to transition those skills to digital anyways.

RedImperator wrote:My parents have an old Nikon they never use since they got a digital. I gather it's a nice camera, but I really have no idea. I'll be visiting them this weekend so I could take a look at it. My luddite side likes the idea of using real film, but film and development are non-trivial costs.

The camera should work out great as long as your parents didn't store it in the garage or something like that where the elements can work it over and kill it. Film can definitely get a bit costly if you shoot a lot, on the other hand you probably won't lug a larger film camera with you everywhere and snap pictures of everything around you like many people do with digital.

Personally I like the look of film better than digital, the problem for me is it's a real pain in the butt to carry anything larger than a compact digital camera with me everywhere. My film camera is kinda the good bottles of liquor that my wife picks up from the duty-free shops; it's only for special occasions.

Digital does have the massive advantage of letting you muck around for free. I enjoy shooting film but for trying out lighting tricks and practising nothing beats digital.

Bounty wrote:I enjoy shooting film but for trying out lighting tricks and practising nothing beats digital.

For practising, no doubt, but I've found that digital sucks for lighting tricks. Part of it is because I'm used to the light response curve of film and digital is completely different, the other is that the response curve of film lets you do things that are extremely difficult or impossible with digital. There are ways to get around it in Photoshop but it's a fair bit of work.

Alright, so presuming I just load up the Nikon with film (it's been stored carefully; there shouldn't be any problem with that), what's a good resource for finding out the basics of composition, lighting, that kind of thing? Right now, I'm a total noob. I look at a good photo and I know it's good for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it and wouldn't know how to reproduce it.

RedImperator wrote:Alright, so presuming I just load up the Nikon with film (it's been stored carefully; there shouldn't be any problem with that), what's a good resource for finding out the basics of composition, lighting, that kind of thing? Right now, I'm a total noob. I look at a good photo and I know it's good for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it and wouldn't know how to reproduce it.

Here's a site on composition. Also, which Nikon do you have?

aerius wrote:

Bounty wrote:I enjoy shooting film but for trying out lighting tricks and practising nothing beats digital.

For practising, no doubt, but I've found that digital sucks for lighting tricks. Part of it is because I'm used to the light response curve of film and digital is completely different, the other is that the response curve of film lets you do things that are extremely difficult or impossible with digital. There are ways to get around it in Photoshop but it's a fair bit of work.

For a bit of a contrary view - I enjoy doing available-light photography and digital is eminently superior for that. Commonly-available film just doesn't compare to CMOS. Though, that said, the dynamic range of film (esp. B&W) makes me envious.

phongn wrote:For a bit of a contrary view - I enjoy doing available-light photography and digital is eminently superior for that. Commonly-available film just doesn't compare to CMOS. Though, that said, the dynamic range of film (esp. B&W) makes me envious.

Yeah, digital is definitely a lot better at capturing shadow details so even if it's horribly underexposed from poor lighting it's still pretty easy to fix things up with the curves tool in Photoshop. Digital's better with the shadows since it has a linear response curve down low while film works better with the highlights in that it doesn't "hard clip" and blow out.

Many of the pictures I take tend to have huge dynamic range so with digital I have to deliberately underexpose and then fix up the shadows, midtones, and colours while with film I just take the picture and let the response curve of the film do all the work for me.