Photography - equipment, help hints

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Nice work Eric!

 

[RabidAlien]

I prefer to get the shot the first time, not "create" the shot from a mediocre image on the PC. The little bit of editing I do (PS3) relates to brightness/contrast, and maybe a bit of color balance. Oh, and those ever-present dust spot removals. I need a new long lens...my current one is about 15 years old, doesn't like to focus much anymore, has gotten dusty inside, and has a bit of haze on the glass somewhere. So I usually just shoot macros anymore these days.

 

[Gnomey]

Agreed RA. Always best to get the shot the first time, although I generally do a little touch up here and there because the pictures which seem to be exposed enough on the camera seem underexposed on the computer.

That being said it is pretty cool the changes that you can do to a photo once you get the hang of the photo editing program you use. The number of people I've removed using Photoshop to give the impression on the perfect undertouched landscape picture is quite numerous...

 

[GrauGeist]

Excellent work, Eric, that came out really nice!

Not sure if I've asked this before, but do you use a polarizing filter on your setup to eliminate haze and canopy glare?

As for my shots, once in a great while, I'll "salvage" a less than decent shot...a classic example would be the A6M photo that I took under terrible conditions during the 2009 Redding airshow. There was considerable smoke from nearby forest fires and the angle of the sun was working against me. Actually, I shouldn't have bothered to take the shot, but I will anyway...just because you can't have enough shots of warbirds...even if they are terrible shots!

After fooling around with the image and getting frustrated, I decided to go "vintage" with it, which actually was alot more fun and turned out far better than if I had tried to "fix" it as a modern photograph...

Before:

After:

 

[evangilder]

I never put filters on my glass. I don't like any more surfaces that can reflect light than absolutely necessary. You can do some filtering in Photoshop that does some great enhancing (warming and cooling filters can make some nice subtle differences). I agree that it is about getting the shot when you shoot it, but sometimes things like cockpit glare on the canopy are unavoidable (unless I start wingwalking, which isn't going to happen!). When you get that, it's nice be to able to eliminate it, especially when you have a potential buyer for the photo.

Black and white is a great way to salvage some photos. That one looks great in the vintage look, Dave.

 

[RabidAlien]

Dang....that vintage version, I wouldn't have been able to tell it was from a recent shot! That's frikkin awesome! Just needs some "nibbled" corners and maybe a crease mark down the middle!

My wife has bought a bunch of "actions" for CS3 that she uses to tweak some of her photos, basically they're just automated widgets that do what you could do manually, but once you set the settings you like, you get the same amount of sepia/contrast/blurring/etc every time. Since she's the pro (she does portraits/events as a side-job, hopefully will kick off and become a viable source of income at some point), she's welcome to them. I just do my basics.

Couple I snagged using her Nikon this weekend at the Dallas Arboretum (botanical garden)...lovely weather, with mid-low overcast and very little wind, so no motion or harsh shadows:

(dunno why, I always liked my B&W's a bit darker and contrasty. Just personal preference, I guess...to me, it brings out a bit more detail and really sets the subject out against the dark background)

 

[Marcel]

Jpeg is a compression format. It takes raw pictures and throws away as much as possible without you noticing it, at least that's the theory. So it's quite possible that you see more details on raw format. The biggest problem begins when you start editing jpeg. Every time you safe it, It tends to be compressed more, throwing away more data and causing more jaggies round the edges. So this is only the case when safing, not when copying it around Therefore when editing, always use raw as intermediate format, minimising the times that the picture is compressed.
I myself don't use raw on the camera as it uses an insane amount of space and I only have a 4 gb chip. So I shoot my pics in jpg, convert it to raw on the computer to edit and finally safe it in jpg again.

 

[evangilder]

Damn, RA, that first flower shot has really rich color! The contrasts are really stunning!

 

[RabidAlien]

Thanks, Evan! It was a cloudy day (seriously massive thunderstorms the day before, still had a bunch of low overcast hanging around the area), so the shadows were at a minimum, but everything was sorta washed out and flat. I tweaked the brightness/contrast a bit, did a tad bit of color balance to get the background back to green (had a lot of blue in it), and this was the result after about 2 minutes of fiddling. The B&W versions took even less than that.

 

[Gnomey]

Nice shots RA!

Only have one filter myself that is physical (a polarising one) rest is Photoshop.

 

[gumbyk]

I have played around with canon's RAW format a little bit, but nothing recently. What I liked about it was the ability to change things like white-balance and exposure after the fact.
A couple of times I used it to create an HDR image from a single source image, because I had some dark low-lights, and over-blown highlights. Because RAW doesn't compress the data, all of this information is still there. The down-side is that because of the file size, you need a fast memory card if you want to take multiple shots.

If anyone wants to play around with RAW, I used a free program called UFRAW. It also apparently has a plugin to GIMP. I don't use it any more, but only because my computer with it died, and I had to downgrade to one that won't handle images that big.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Interesting Gumbyk, thank you for the information.

 

[Lucke.stz]

I'm used to setting my camera on Aperature Priority: f/8.0 when I'm using my 70-300...this also depends on the lighting conditions

I use some more, about f/5 with this I can use less ISO and get less noise... I have a Nikon D7000 and a 55-300, I like to use more aperture and use low ISO... but I´m starting nnow in the world of photography

 

[ontos]

Fantastic shots RA, the colors look great. I also use a polarizing filter on all my lenses and rest in Photoshop.

Eric your work on the second shot is great. I tried to get my sky that blue but didn't work to well, I guess I need to look at more tutorials

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Merv, on the shots you took. If you under-expose enough to get the sky bluer the aircraft will be black shadows. If you will press the menu button it will bring up your menu. Go to the second section in the menu titles on the top of your screen. It will be the second red square. Go down that list to WB SHIFT/BKT and hit the set button. This will bring up your RGB scale and you can adjust how the sensor picks up the colors. You should now have a color grid scale up on your screen. Move it to the left into the blue more and the blues become bluer. You have to be careful though or you will end up with the entire shot looking blue. Likewise, if you have a color like the green that saturated my first skull photo in the woods you can adjust this scale to eliminate the unwanted saturation. I found this a few years ago and it really helps . You have to play with it some to get use to it but it's free and it can really make the photos pop.

 

[ontos]

Thanks for the great tip Aaron, I have had this camera how long and still don't know all that it has to offer

 

[wheelsup_cavu]

Oh, and Merv, Windows cannot show RAW photos in Windows Pictures. You need to download a free app to get it to show them. You can find them on line. The one a friend had me download does not work. Go figure. I have not looked for another yet but I will.

You can't save them as RAW files but Irfanview will allow you to open and edit RAW files then save them as jpeg's or a few other types of files.
Irfanview is a free so it won't cost you anything but the time to download it to check it out.

Irfanview: IrfanView - Official Homepage
List of supported Formats: IrfanView formats


Wheels

 

[ontos]

Thanks wheels I might give it a try.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone use a zoom lens extender? If so how do you like it.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

I have thought about purchasing one to Merv. Everyone I spoken to says the 1.4 give a better quality shot than the 2.0. Don't know though, I might see if I can rent one and try it sometime soon.

 

[GrauGeist]

A 2.0 will degrade the quality of the photo slightly, the 1.4 not as much. If you keep that in mind when working on your composition, you should be ok.