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I am pretty sure this doesn't MATTER, but I was shooting a lens test today with a Nikkor 24mm-50mm 4-5.6 lens today
and I had the D700 all wacked out on some kind of crazy settings since I was not paying attention and was in a hurry to get it done at lunch, and I took this shot of one of my bosses cigar figures (why he has em I have no idea) and after the pic fired, I checked the ISO, cause it said in the info window 3200, and I thought CRAP, these are all gonna be grainy as hell, light level or not. The room was well lit. I guess the test is a DIM room at 3200 which I will do, well hell, have done, and see. But this shot is at 3200 ISO and it is clear as hell. I was surprised. http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2d3fbd4e.jpg 94% Crop....color's for 5HI+, but I like that camera. http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...pse0ec8294.jpg Wide angle range test...accidentally 3200 ISO again, no flash http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...psb23c2534.jpg OH, yeah, OK, there's the noise....LOL. Still I do like the camera. If I ever figure out how to keep it all together long enough to shoot well with it. http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...psb52a4cd0.jpg Might have a bad pixel, too....I can deal with that, though. http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/...psac05a052.jpg |
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That's the main advantage to a full frame DSLR Brad. They have much lower noise at higher ISOs than a crop-sensor DSLR.
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Well I got my PC in. It's set up now. Just downloaded classic skin to make this stupid Windows 8 have a classic start menu on it. Hauling the PC off to work tonight to have PS CS6 and LR4 put on it :noon
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I already broke my pledge to only use my DSLR for normal focal length photography.
THIS IS WHAT I WAS AFRAID OF, lol. Lensalympics has begun. Damn you DSLR! I need to actually take some photos and stop testing lenses and cameras. I have bought FOUR DSLRs in two weeks. Shocking. If I see a good used deal, I think of a relative that would like a DSLR, lol. The odd winner of the photo quality games was this weird, OLD, Olympus Evolt E-330. It was the first 'live view' DSLR, and it was not what I would call an excellent iteration of Live View. But the camera takes really great photos, and its only a Four Thirds sensor. I am not gonna say it takes better pics than a D700, but as I have yet to bring that wild stallion to bay, FOR NOW it does, lol. It is NOT easy to master that D700. My photos so far are mostly high Rez mistakes, lol. But for a $99 used camera body, and a $69 dollar used lens, I was STUNNED by the color and clarity and contrast and quality. Stunned. |
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Pfft....I have Photoshop SIX...not CS6, but 6.
You people with your NEW software really get my grits, lol. I may have to get off my ornery old man chair and get a newer version though, because while I can correct for a lot of things in 6, nothing is semi-auto like in the newer photoshop. And by that I mean barrel distortion and what not... |
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Brad, Adobe has made CS2 free to everyone now FYI, well basically.
http://majorgeeks.com/Adobe_Photosho...ree_d8081.html |
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WHAT?!?!??? I highly doubt those tight-a55ed basterds would do THAT. Lemme check this sitcho out and
see if its not just a bootleg, lol. I'd be a fool not to upgrade if that were the case. thanks for the heads up. Liking that new camera?? Hmmm... Sketchy.......but then again, I am a sketchy guy. Thanks. |
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I mean they have the DL and they give u the key so...
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My OLDEST digital camera, cheap is not the word for it, and apparently it wins
all kinds of awards for durability, too....well, not REAL awards, but the damn thing is still working. If I bought it back in 2001 it HAD to be almost discontinued then. Owing to how I'm so cheap and all. Now it serves very well as a BBQ pit 'proof of smoking' camera. [http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6016/5...469e1bf6a4.jpg St. Louis Cathedral, NO, LA by MemphisBrad, on Flickr] http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps7d4e767d.jpg |
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Had a couple cool cars set up near where I live...
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8239/8...d8c1b664_b.jpg IMG_1101 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8105/8...2c1fa75d_b.jpg IMG_1092 by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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That Rat Rod VW is cool...that is an actual thing now, nice cars that look like 5hit.
I never would have guessed it but its so. Today was a humbling experience. I am used to my good point and shoot cameras, they have active viewfinders that SHOW you what you are doing. If your settings are going to make you shoot a dark shot, the VIEWFINDER shows you a dark picture. If you are about to blow it out, it blows out your viewfinder picture. These damn ACTUAL TTL viewfinders mess me up something awful. I am SO lazy and SO used to shooting how I shoot, that today I took 100 5hitty pictures. I was not paying attention to what I was doing, in the wrong white balance settings half the time today, and always over-exposed and just all-around shitty. It was humbling to say the least. I don't ever shoot AUTO with a camera, but when I shoot in Program or Shutter Priority or aperture priority, I don't expect to come home with 5hit. Humbling, that's all I can say. At least in the bar I had it set up right....almost. http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps93b86591.jpg |
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Brad, that's the nice thing about cameras that shoot in RAW. You can almost always go back and fix that in post
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A quick lightroom edit of a zoo pic from a lil while back
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8101/8...1a4a404e_b.jpg IMG_0095 by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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We're going to St. Augustine for the night. Hopefully I can get some nice pictures.
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RAW wouldn't have solved NEARLY enough of the issues I had. Actually that is not all true, let's just say that when
I see that crap on a card, I FORMAT the card, I do not go home and try to fix anything. The bottom line is really my eyes. I am so dejected that life does this to everyone someday, your eyes turn to 5hit and it takes the real joy out of photography. It makes you SLOW and takes the flow out of your game. You have to watch everything and you can't take your eye from the eyepiece and just punch some buttons. You have to put on glasses and make adjustments and then you have to take em off to look in the VF again. Its just sad. As with everything that is also sad concerning vision, though, eventually you can learn the THING and know more by feel and mental map about what to hit and when, and to feel more confident that you can speed up the process and take a little more for granted that you are taking good pictures. I just need to work with both my new cameras and take a LOT of pictures and make all the mistakes. I just thought that with all my years of digital and general photographic experience that I would have been able to pick up that camera and basically hit the ground running. THAT'S my main issue, the disappointment that it was not to be so easy. |
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It took me some thinking last night, not having had the memories of the control panel on my camera to tell me what
I did that was so wrong yesterday. Then in cold light of morning it dawned on me. I forgot one of the most basic things I know. I had a FAST lens with me, and I saw a flower emerging from a very fuzzy bud, and I thought, OK, I am gonna blur the crap out of the background. But in opening the 1.8 lens up all the way, I forgot that the camera is only going to be able to compensate with shutter speed until it runs out of possible compensations to help me with the proper exposure. I HAVE several neutral density filters but didn't have one with me. It was gonna be overcast, so I didn't want to take it and lose it or scratch it. The shots I took looked like crap because I wasn't thinking about what I was doing for long enough to make a good decision. |
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Saw a few new birds yesterday. I never really LOOKED before, even though my back yard is kind of an oasis,
and draws all the birds in the neighborhood eventually. But I saw a Brown Creeper yesterday, which I had never seen in 50 years of knowing about birds. Not an amazing sight or anything, but still everything new is great to me. Starting to see Goldfinches, too, that was new this year. Growing up in LA, I never really saw Goldfinches. But the photo of the day for me is my new favorite bird, the Red-Breasted Nuthatch. These are brave birds and they like me for some reason. http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/a...psf929f8b6.jpg |
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I am not sure if he knows the tool in Photoshop to fix it yet. He told me he was gonna fix it once he got Photoshop,
but when he DID, he used it to boost the color, lol. It's the one that looks like a rubber stamp, J-dog. Pick a radius with the slider, then ALT-click the part of the pic you want to use to cover WITH, then rub the stamp over the area you want to cover up. With a complicated background like that, it will be a little easier. WAIT, he said LIGHTROOM....sorry. Proceed, lol. Justin Photoshopping photos does not necessarily decrease your integrity. Your still the man. |
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Justin doesn't allow saving of his Flickr photos, so I had to steal it here....
Fixed it 4 ya. Also, I was gonna post it on my photobucket so I could attach it here in full scale, but THAT is illegal. I also didn't like that stick pointing at her eye. |
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:r i havent even opend photoshop yet. everything so far has been in Lightroom.
Thanks Brad. |
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Here's two from our visit to St. Augustine yesterday. I just Fake-HDR'd them. I'll mess with them again later.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8244/8...07f730cd_b.jpg Lightner Museum by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8392/8...617fc542_b.jpg St. Augustine Pier by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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More pictures from this weekend.
Wife on the beach http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8246/8...93f30b67_b.jpg IMG_1193 by emopunker2004, on Flickr Sign on the pier http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8246/8...b42163f2_b.jpg IMG_1113 by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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St. Augustine Alligator Farm
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8514/8...f577508d_b.jpg IMG_1234 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8525/8...87d794f3_b.jpg IMG_1317 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8109/8...b76eb1cb_b.jpg IMG_1252 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8511/8...dcbab892_b.jpg IMG_1258 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8110/8...2f79b0a5_b.jpg IMG_1268 by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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Alligator Farm Cont.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8365/8...b959d217_b.jpg IMG_1436 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8249/8...f45b6e01_b.jpg IMG_1235 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8239/8...cd8cd4a1_b.jpg IMG_1451 by emopunker2004, on Flickr http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8390/8...5a9d1af3_b.jpg IMG_1372 by emopunker2004, on Flickr |
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Feels like I was there.
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I like the pier pic. What was done in post processing?
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I have to repost the picture of my wife at the beach, I deleted it because I noticed the hair tie on her wrist. Hair tie gone now. |
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Nice work, Justin!
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I'm seldom satisfied with my photos. What do I need to do to improve them?
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Post some examples Ron so we can get a feel for them and tell us what it is that u dislike
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I have been learning lately from reading all of this There are enough articles in there to keep you busy for weeks. After you have read about half of it, you realize that on one hand, the guy is extremely knowledgable and helpful, and on the other hand, he IS ONLY one photographer, and they tend to be opinionated and think they are right all the time. Like me. But if you can remember he is only one guy, his help is invaluable and insightful. If you want to just skip RIGHT TO WHY you can't take good pictures, you might find the most immediate help in the articles that have those types of titles. He is very blunt about why most people take boring pictures and strives to help you break out of that mold. Some people here may really benefit from this library of help, some may even toss him a few bucks or buy gear through the links he supplies to help him avoid working a real job ever again. Very little in there is what I would term useless. Good luck with your quest to take better photos. I think we all want that. You should create a photobucket or flickr page where we can check out the things you are talking about. Flickr is not the best choice because it is usually a pride and criticism kind of environment. Photobucket is more useful for, well, like a lot of us do here, store photos that we like to post in threads and stuff, where the pics don't clog up the asylum servers. Stuff like this....... http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/a...psda1aa666.gif But also stuff like this..... http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/a...e319copyxx.jpg On Photobucket though, there are not the same kinds of review and criticism, so its a little safer to store things there that you might want people here to help you with. When I say criticism, too, I do not mean just BAD stuff, I mean Flickr is a place where people want others to see and comment on their work. If you want to store things on the bucket, you can use their html tags to post them here like I did with my Smokies stream shot, and we can look at what bothers you and aid you in stopping it, lol. . |
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I agree with Dave, too. If you are not TOTALLY dejected, then striving to find ways to take better pictures
is about as healthy a place to be in as you could be. Satisfaction and complacency in any art form is a death sentence for creativity. If you want to improve, you probably will. Read this as a start. |
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Another thing to note, I doubt seriously you will find many people posting anything anywhere on the net
that has not been jacked up with Photoshop or at least touched by it in some way. More brilliant colors can be had with polarizing filters, but a lot of people can't help messing with everything in Photoshop, BECAUSE THEY CAN, frankly. I know I don't post anything that I haven't adjusted in SOME way. Digital changed everything. So if you feel your pics don't stack up to other photos that are essentially the same, it might also be that you have some post-processing to do to make yourself more satisfied. HDR is all the rage now, taking everything out of the shadows and blasting away with the electric color. I like about 1 out of every 20 HDR photos I see. I think I am stuck in the past, where life looks normal on a photograph, because there was no such thing as HDR processing. I will admit I really, REALLY like it when it adds to the photo. But for my narrow taste, it often doesn't. And look at me. I wanted the photo of the Alum Cave Trail above to be just like I saw it with my eye, so I polarized it on the camera, then took it to Photoshop and boosted the saturation til it was EXACTLY like I saw it. Then I added more, lol. So remember, do as I say, not as I do . :r |
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I guess my main problem is I'm highly critical of myself, regardless of what I do. lol! I'm a perfectionist. I already understand the basics: f-stop, shutter speed, depth of field, the rule of thirds, optical filters, etc. IMO I need to practice more on the subject matter to make my pics more interesting. Then again, what pics that I take that I may deem boring may be raved about by someone else. I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 camera, which is nice but it's limited in what it can do. |
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Care to share any Ron?
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I will agree with you that that Lumix is a good camera, and I think I am one of the only people on this thread
that had a LOOOOoong history of shooting super-zooms and posting that stuff here, too. There is a preponderence of DSLRs here. Those cameras prove that a person can still take a good photo with ANY camera. I bought my sister a FZ18 a few months ago because I believe in superzooms as an upgrade to compact point and shoots, despite them basically both having the same sensor. I believe if you want to take nice photos, you need to be able to turn a few knobs. Those Lumix cameras have very nice lenses, and they TRY like hell, like Fuji, to shoot as well as possible in low light. If you DO know the ins and outs of light control, then concentrate heavily on composition, MOSTLY remembering that anything in a photo that is not adding to the composition is taking away from it. MOVE your body, not your zoom all the time, take a dozen photos of the same thing from 6-10 different spots. I can't help you with the hyper-criticism, and like Emo said, if you can't show us a few photos you hate, we can't be of much help. Share, my man. |
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[http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6095/6...163775f993.jpg
Fall Mosaic by MemphisBrad, on Flickr] This is one of my favorite photos I have taken, but it is not a 'good' photo. It is only fair. You can SEE easily that had I walked to the right a few feet and recomposed, it could have been EPIC. Instead you see brown, ugly vines and the back of a building. You can SEE that the other BG would have been nice fall colors. Ehh...it was a picture, I saw it and took it. I didn't THINK to take 10 pics of it. My mistake. But I LOVE IT. If I don't love a photo, it doesn't go on my Flickr pages. I use Photobucket for the CRAP I shoot, lol. But my photos on Flickr are pleasing to ME, and if other people like seeing them I am happy, and if they compliment them, I am happy, but they are up there to store and share the ones I LIKE, and somewhat to compete with my friend Jesse, who I think has a REAL flair for seeing through a lens. He probably hates that I even HAVE a Flickr page, I only did it because of how HIS photos made me FEEL. I wanted to feel like that about my own photos. Go through all your stuff in thumbnail size and see if at least ten photos JUMP off the screen at thumbnail size. Post em up on the bucket or on flickr and share em. Share a few with us. It is obvious you WANT some form of help or advice, so you have to prepare to GET IT, good or bad. You can't hover on the egde. |
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Awesome SHOTS Thank You !!!
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I am sorry, Shark, I completely forgot to remember who I was talking to. You and I hung out at the Shack.
I have been way off my game for a long time. I remember your camera and everything. Now that I have the face together with the issues, I am even leaning further in. Very interested to know the kinds of things you are shooting that you don't care for. |
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Let's start with this one. Give me an honest critique, other than the foreground grassy area is overexposed:
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps7bc64176.jpg |
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Ron, it's a great shot overall. If u had that image in a RAW file, the overexposed foreground could be fixed easily.
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