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Yeah I'm moving (to Japan,  tarepanda) and have a Kindle, but I am loathe to buy any photography books for it because of the screen, despite the space/weight they'll save me packing. Realistically I'll probably only bring like 4-5 photography books, but that still adds up.
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May 9, 2011 13:57
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I've moved about four times here and my books only get heavier each time...
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May 9, 2011 14:08
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Gave away pretty much all my books in anticipation of a move (kept like 1 each of Primo Levi, Remarque and some French classics). I now own about a third of what I previously did. It's pretty scary.
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May 9, 2011 15:18
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tarepanda posted:I've moved about four times here and my books only get heavier each time... I have so many books and vinyl's that every time I move I swear next time I'm going to hire some movers. I never do 
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May 9, 2011 17:01
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What the hell white balance should I be using for streetlights and dusk? I've tried all of them and none of them look right 
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May 10, 2011 00:04
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A5H posted:What the hell white balance should I be using for streetlights and dusk? I've tried all of them and none of them look right There isn't enough blue light getting in to properly balance. Your choices are a filter to block red/green wavelengths and get a proper exposure with longer time shutter being open, or go black and white.
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May 10, 2011 00:07
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poopinmymouth posted:There isn't enough blue light getting in to properly balance. Your choices are a filter to block red/green wavelengths and get a proper exposure with longer time shutter being open, or go black and white.
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May 10, 2011 00:24
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So I can't fix these ones I already took? gently caress.
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May 10, 2011 00:30
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MrBlandAverage posted:So would you use a #44 or #50 filter, or what? Not sure, I still need to get one, but I think it's 80A, alternatively, if you're shooting a cityscape and have a tripod, shoot a 2nd exposure at double the exposure time, and merge the blue channel from that one into the properly exposed one, and white balance from there.
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May 10, 2011 00:53
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I was shooting moving objects though. Guess I'll just go black and white. Cameras are stupid.
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May 10, 2011 00:55
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A5H posted:Cameras are stupid. Can we change the thread title to this please?
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May 10, 2011 01:27
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For shooting stuff lit by the typical yellow low-pressure sodium streetlights, you're going to be poo poo out of luck for color because those things put out over 90% of their light on one single wavelength.
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May 10, 2011 01:31
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I bought The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby on a recommendation, and man, it is such a turd.. I can barely stand to read it. There are gems like:Kelby posted:First of all, it's not based on the "sharp as a tack" phrase at all. Tack sharp is actually an acronym. TACK stands for Technically Accurate Cibachrome Kelvin (which refers to the color temperature of light in photographs), and SHARP stands for Shutter Hyperfocal At Refracted Polarization. Now, these may seem like highly technical terms at first, but once you realize that I totally made them up, it doesn't seem so complicated, does it? Now, you have to admit, it sounded pretty Parentheticals everywhere, lots of useless crap I don't want to read about -- I bought your book for photography, not bad comedy -- and no paragraphs. Just walls of text. I can barely stand to keep reading. I do not recommend this author. Edit: Plowing ahead, he does seem to have good advice, but it's obscured by all this nonsense. tarepanda fucked around with this message at 01:58 on May 10, 2011 |
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May 10, 2011 01:54
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tarepanda posted:Edit: Plowing ahead, he does seem to have good advice, but it's obscured by all this nonsense. Yeah, there's some real Fozzie Bear wokka wokka stuff in all those books.
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May 10, 2011 02:00
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MrBlandAverage posted:So would you use a #44 or #50 filter, or what? It depends on the type of lights. Outdoor lights could be tungsten, sodium, halogens, neon, or some crazy mix. Each one is going to cast a different color. At night/dusk you also have to take into account ambient light which is typically very blue. With this mix you'll either need to just decide what the best balance between the two is, or shoot two exposures and use masks in photoshop. Generally I use the former if all the subjects are at street level and the latter if there is a sky/landscape involved.
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May 10, 2011 02:05
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When people speak of fast or slow lenses, they usually talk about f-number, which is the ratio between focal length and diameter. But will two lenses with the same focal length and f-number be as equally fast? If one of them has more glass elements, fewer layers of anti-reflective coating, or more dust on the lens, then that one will transmit less light through, and require a longer shutter speed right? So won't a prime lens be faster than a zoom lens when both are set to the same focal length and aperture because the prime has less glass inside to absorb / reflect light? Also, does "aperture" refer to the projected diameter of a beam of light coming out the exit hole, or simply the physical size of the exit hole? Because poor design can mean that the light beam might be partially blocked within the lens and not all of the exit aperture will be used. INTJ Mastermind fucked around with this message at 03:28 on May 10, 2011 |
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May 10, 2011 03:26
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So getting back into photography with my 50D I've realized my post processing workflow is crap. I think I got the basics down. I shot a car show this past weekend, probably took 400+ pics. Using Lightroom3 on my mac book I first went through and marked the pics as either flagged as picks or rejects. That narrowed it down to about 250 or so, then went through and rated them. They either got 4 or 5 stars or no stars. Then went through the 4 and 5 stars and narrowed them down to just 5 stars. Did some light PP work on them and now I've about 140 pictures left. For now I installed the export to picasaweb publishing service, made a new album and sent all 140 pics there. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this though. I guess, since it was an actual car show, 140 pictures isn't unusual. I have a flickr account but just the basic one so I'm limited on space there whereas at google I've got like 30 gigs of space. I guess what my question is, what's the best way to display my pictures gallery wise and is my workflow generally good? Oh, here's the album in question. https://picasaweb.google.com/mattfl/ArtOfTheAutomobile Also, should I be resizing them before I publish or what?
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May 10, 2011 03:32
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INTJ Mastermind posted:When people speak of fast or slow lenses, they usually talk about f-number, which is the ratio between focal length and diameter. But will two lenses with the same focal length and f-number be as equally fast? If one of them has more glass elements, fewer layers of anti-reflective coating, or more dust on the lens, then that one will transmit less light through, and require a longer shutter speed right? So won't a prime lens be faster than a zoom lens when both are set to the same focal length and aperture because the prime has less glass inside to absorb / reflect light? Same speed, no matter focal length. 1.4 is 1.4 is 1.4. Aperture refers to "apparent size" of the diameter.
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May 10, 2011 03:32
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INTJ Mastermind posted:When people speak of fast or slow lenses, they usually talk about f-number, which is the ratio between focal length and diameter. But will two lenses with the same focal length and f-number be as equally fast? If one of them has more glass elements, fewer layers of anti-reflective coating, or more dust on the lens, then that one will transmit less light through, and require a longer shutter speed right? So won't a prime lens be faster than a zoom lens when both are set to the same focal length and aperture because the prime has less glass inside to absorb / reflect light? Lenses do vary in transmission, but the losses generally aren't all that much with modern multicoated optics, and various lenses of the same nominal aperture will generally be within a third of a stop of each other anyway. And prime doesn't necessarily mean better transmission than zoom - if you poke around with DXOMark's comparison tool, a 70-200/2.8L has a slightly lower T-stop* than some f/2.8 primes. In addition to the number of elements, the quality of glass and coatings also affect this as well as how the elements are laid out relative to each other. *If you really want to get sperging about this, T-stop is the lens's max aperture divided by the square root of its transmission. So if an f/2.8 lens has a T-stop of 3.2, that means that it only lets as much light through at f/2.8 as a theoretical perfect lens with 100% transmission would let through at f/3.2. Cinematographers who need absolute perfect exposure care about this, but for most of us, comparing T-stops is just another form of dickwaving.
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May 10, 2011 04:29
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Beerios posted:comparing T-stops is just another form of dickwaving. I thought photography gear was all about dickwaving...  Thanks for that explanation, makes a lot of sense. I had some experience with astronomy and birding optics, and the level of sperging they went into was amazing. Brand A can resolve 2.3 arc seconds at 75% of the way out to the edge, with Brand B I counted 94 stars in cluster M31, etc.
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May 10, 2011 05:00
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I've seen T-stops used on high-end Cine lenses, presumably because of the necessity of maintaining equal exposure between two shots.
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May 10, 2011 15:49
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A5H posted:So I can't fix these ones I already took? gently caress. YMMV, but I took some night shots in RAW and brought the white balance all the to the left (2000, I believe?) to get them to look right. I was surprised how "normal" they looked at that setting. See below: 
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May 10, 2011 16:52
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mattfl posted:So getting back into photography with my 50D I've realized my post processing workflow is crap. I took a quick look at the album and depending on who you want to show these to, you need to be more selective. The shots are all objectively fine, but you have a TON that are almost identical or just different crops of the same subject. For instance, IMG-0596 to 0598 are all pretty much similar and it looks like you just couldn't make up your mind. It's fine to shoot that way, but part of workflow is making a decision and saying, "yup, that's what I want to display." And going with it. You might find that you improve in your workflow if you set a limit for yourself. I printed some Grand Canyon shots as a Christmas present, and I had to decide to only print 8, because the 45 or something that I really liked just wasn't economical. I took a lot of time comparing and eventually got it down to the 8, and I'm very very happy with them because they're absolutely the best of the 800 or something ridiculous that I took. The effect is also much better than having 45 pictures with a few that are almost the same but slightly different settings or angles. So yeah, what's the purpose of that picasa collection, exactly? Is it just a kind of backup of valuable things, a portfolio, or a link to send to car buddies? Depending on the answer, you should refine your workflow and choose more or fewer shots.
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May 10, 2011 22:50
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edit: sorry, wrong thread.
HookShot fucked around with this message at 12:17 on May 11, 2011 |
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May 11, 2011 08:49
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Would it be at all possible to take a panorama of rugby players in a huddle, or would there be far too much movement which would ruin the stitching? To clarify, I'm meaning a huddle like what pretty much any sports team does before a game.
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May 11, 2011 11:22
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Auditore posted:Would it be at all possible to take a panorama of rugby players in a huddle, or would there be far too much movement which would ruin the stitching? I would say rent an ultrawide and put the camera on the ground facing straight up in the middle of the huddle.
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May 11, 2011 12:36
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Pompous Rhombus posted:I would say rent an ultrawide and put the camera on the ground facing straight up in the middle of the huddle. A fisheye might actually be kinda neat and not too gimmicky for this shot.
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May 11, 2011 15:23
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I'm away from my computer for the summer (hence my Lightroom and Photoshop  ), I was wondering if there was a freeware partner to Lightroom the way Gimp is to Photoshop.
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May 11, 2011 18:46
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Rurutia posted:I'm away from my computer for the summer (hence my Lightroom and Photoshop Picasa?
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May 11, 2011 18:48
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Rurutia posted:I'm away from my computer for the summer (hence my Lightroom and Photoshop Darktable http://darktable.sourceforge.net/ It is pretty rough around the edges still, but it did seem to work when I hosed around with it a few months ago to see if I could develop raws under linux. Interface is a little weird, I watched a youtube tutorial thing that helped.
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May 11, 2011 18:58
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My friends are throw a "The Great Gatsby"/Roaring Twenties style party with people in suits, flapper dresses, and all the jazz. I want to shoot it in, well 1920-30s vintage style for lack of a better term, but I'm unsure on what to do!. From general poking around the only thing I'm kind of sure of is that I would want to convert from color to black and white in Lightroom because I may not be happy with the in-camera conversion. I'm not sure how to utilize flash, and the focal lengths of old cameras utilized back then where. Poking around on the internet gave me "Use direct flash" for the first (though I'm not sure of this is the way to go) and no answers for the second. I'm guessing I'll have to play around in Lightroom for this to get the look I'm going for but is there anything else I can do while shooting to make my life easier? I've got a Nikon D80, an SB-600 flash that can be shoot wirelessly, Nikon 50mm f/1.8, 35mm f/1.8, and a Tarmon 17-50 F/2.8. I'm going over to a friends to browse his collection of mystery nikon lenses so any suggestions would be appreciated.
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May 11, 2011 19:31
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Pretty sure there'll be a lightroom filter out there that does almost exactly what you want.
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May 11, 2011 19:32
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Zikan posted:My friends are throw a "The Great Gatsby"/Roaring Twenties style party with people in suits, flapper dresses, and all the jazz. I want to shoot it in, well 1920-30s vintage style for lack of a better term, but I'm unsure on what to do!. For post processing, Silver Efex Pro is all you'll ever need for black and white conversions. It's powerful but easy to use. If you wanna screw around and make old timey looking color photos, Color Efex has some options. As for the flash, I don't know how to make it old timey. If I were doing it, I'd just light it well and rely on the post processing for the look. As for lenses, I think you're good on that front. Maybe if you can find something gimmicky like a lens baby or diana lens in your friends stash, that might be worth experimenting with.
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May 11, 2011 20:06
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Zikan posted:I'm not sure how to utilize flash, and the focal lengths of old cameras utilized back then where. Poking around on the internet gave me "Use direct flash" for the first (though I'm not sure of this is the way to go) and no answers for the second. For the first, the internet's given you a fairly accurate answer; consumer and press cameras of that era (and for years later) often had a direct flash you stuck on the side of the camera. The trick is that most flashes had a pretty drat big parabolic reflector around the bulb, and a fairly long flash (and the cameras had slow shutter speeds, with 1/100 being blazing fast right on through the 60s). With an SB600, you can probably get a reasonable facsimile by zooming it wide and getting it to the side of the camera—I don't know if you can trigger it wirelessly while hand-holding it, but that would be an option. The easy answer's an off-shoe cord, but those are spendy if your local shop doesn't carry generic ones. For the second, mass-market stuff was typically medium format with a fairly slow normal lens. Since you've got an APS-C camera, I'd guess throwing on your 35, not opening it up beyond 4 or so, and you should have a passably similar optical effect. Modern glass will be too sharp and the multicoating will be too forgiving, but you can dirty things up in Lightroom. When it comes to the B&W conversion, keep in mind most film was orthochromatic, so dial your reds way back.
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May 11, 2011 20:14
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Molten Llama posted:For the first, the internet's given you a fairly accurate answer; consumer and press cameras of that era (and for years later) often had a direct flash you stuck on the side of the camera. The trick is that most flashes had a pretty drat big parabolic reflector around the bulb, and a fairly long flash (and the cameras had slow shutter speeds, with 1/100 being blazing fast right on through the 60s). With an SB600, you can probably get a reasonable facsimile by zooming it wide and getting it to the side of the camera—I don't know if you can trigger it wirelessly while hand-holding it, but that would be an option. The easy answer's an off-shoe cord, but those are spendy if your local shop doesn't carry generic ones. Thanks alot! People are going to want that whole flashbulb thing so that's useful to know. I can handhold it and trigger it wirelessly, so I'm guessing I'm just zoom it out to 24mm or 14mm, put it at slightly higher power then I would normally and let people enjoy getting blinded. Thanks for the orthochromatic point, I never thought of that. Now to make myself a hat that has a "PRESS" card strapped on to it.
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May 11, 2011 21:17
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Zikan posted:Thanks alot! People are going to want that whole flashbulb thing so that's useful to know. I can handhold it and trigger it wirelessly, so I'm guessing I'm just zoom it out to 24mm or 14mm, put it at slightly higher power then I would normally and let people enjoy getting blinded. If you want to be a real goof about it, some people actually still use flash bulbs with dSLRs and slave triggers. This article claims that they're quite useful for cave photography, since they put out a fuckton of light without much bulk: http://theeyegame.com/speleo/Bulbs/ I've been meaning to try using some with my old Duaflex, that thing's still got the bulb holder and a couple of unused bulbs.
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May 11, 2011 21:26
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So, I actually took this a couple weeks ago. It seems that my camera has the ability to x-ray steel, because, well  The left side of the brewstand I'm building really doesn't have a ghost in it, but the picture sure as poo poo makes it look like it. I can't even imagine how that happened. e: it really isn't full of ghosts normally. 
Hypnolobster fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 12, 2011 |
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May 12, 2011 03:20
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I shot this set with a Mamiya press camera and a Sunpak 544 on auto. It was shot in 6x7 format on medium format ISO 100 film: http://www.mikechow.com/Concerts-2010/IncuraJapanese-GirlsMurder/14448462_HLn62 The Sunpak 544 has its own bracket to mount to the bottom of the camera and it's big enough to use as a handle. For an SB-800, you could use a flash bracket like this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/FLASHGUN-Flash-Hot-Shoe-Digital-DC-Camera-ARMS-Bracket-/320537182709?pt=Camera_Flash_Accessories&hash=item4aa18141f5 and use a TTL cable to hook it up to the hotshoe. The Sunpak was actually really easy to use because I set the camera to f/8, 1/250 and that was it. All I had to worry about was focusing and composing. That was with 6x7. With an APS-C camera, you probably could just set the camera to focus at about five feet away and be done with it what with the greater depth of field. As for software, I use DxO FilmPack 2 for B&W conversions and it's fantastic, but then again I use DxO Optics for raw processing, so it works well with my workflow.
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May 12, 2011 06:27
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tarepanda posted:I bought The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby on a recommendation, and man, it is such a turd.. I can barely stand to read it. There are gems like: The writing style is one thing - the other is that the tips are all over the place addressing newbies as well as wedding photographers. Then there are technical errors that should have been caught by the editors. I sent a list of errors to the publisher a while ago; they still don't have an errata page for the book as far as I can tell. v-- see previous page Cross_ fucked around with this message at 21:35 on May 12, 2011 |
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May 12, 2011 21:02
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I have Understanding Exposure, and The Speedliter's Handbook. Both are good for explaining the technical aspects of photography. What do you recommend for a book on composition?
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May 12, 2011 21:10
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