My First DSLR - "Is 'Dunning-Kruger Effect' a Photoshop plugin?"

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > My First DSLR - "Is 'Dunning-Kruger Effect' a Photoshop plugin?"

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

beergod posted:

I was shooting a dog beach with my kit 50-200 Nikon lens and I noticed that a lot of the photographs are out of focus. I was shooting aperture priority at f5 and trying to take a lot of action shots. Is this more of a function of the aperture priority mode (i.e., I should have been shooting in manual at a faster shutter speed) or the lens being sort of slow and unable to focus quickly? Should I be shooting in "area focus mode" or "single subject focus mode"?

Without knowning what your shutter speed came out as it's not possible to speculate. That said, action shots and slow shutter speed = blur.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2013 05:03

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 03:33

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

beergod posted:

What is baseline shutter speed for photographing moderate-speed activity, like dogs rough housing?

To freeze the action you probably want something around 1/1000. You'll have to play around and see the difference it makes. Some motion blur isn't always a bad thing either.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2013 05:16

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Depends on what you're shooting, but it's easy to shoot ridiculous amounts if you're into bird/nature photography or doing anything with macro rails. I just came back from a ~12 day trip with 24k shots, and that's after pruning a bunch in camera as I shot.

Thank god for breeze browser.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 02:39

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

busfahrer posted:

When testing a lens in a store to see if AF is slightly broken, is it fair to compare AF images to images that I took when focusing manually using live view? Or is some discrepancy expected?

About the only way to get a decent test is to use a tripod, mirror lockup, and remote trigger for both AF and manual shot and compare those results. I can't imagine doing that in a store.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 19:51

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

SMERSH Mouth posted:

Speaking of AF and that sort of thing, I'm running into what I'll call.. 'unexpected performance levels' from my new-to-me (used) 7D and my trusty 400mm lens. I'm going to sit down with a focusing target, AF micro adjustment scale, tripod, tethered live view, etc. to see if I can work it out for myself, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to post this example of what I'm getting in the chance that someone here might spitball a few reasons I'm seeing this, or has seen it before. I'm really not sure if the problem lies in the camera, the lens, or me.
...
These are far from the results I get with the same lens and a 5D2, or adapted to an a6000.

It generally looks to me like shake-induced blur rather than improper focus. Maybe I'm suddenly coming down with parkinsons, but I've also considered ... mirror slap? But that wouldn't cause issues at 1/800 - 1/1250 shutter speeds, would it?

I don't think there's an optical problem with the lens, as I can still get it to produce sharp results from time to time. I wonder if maybe the shutter is running slow. I look at the metadata for these examples and the target shutter speed is something like 1/819. Can I trust that number to be the real measured speed of the shutter? It's not exactly 1/800 so that suggests to me that it really is accurate, which would mean the shutter is working fine.

First thing you need to do is get that body on a tripod in a controlled test; there's just too many variables to account for otherwise. The problems you're experiencing sound exactly like what I went through with my 7D as well and those were all from my technique.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 15:32

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

The one thing I hate about lightroom is the crap performance for browsing. I use breeze browser to do my initial pruning simply because I can point it at a directory of 3000 raw files and get instant thumbnails and if I click on a picture I get an instant image shown. I still use it for pretty much everything else though.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 16:36

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I once through it was a good idea to give an electric can opener as a Christmas gift to my SO, so a used DSLR sounds like a dream gift in comparison.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2016 18:18

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

The only time I've used full zone AF was when shooting falcons chasing pigeons. They come in so fast that full zone was necessary to lock onto them quickly -- trying to catch them with a single AF point usually resulted in a miss and then the lens goes hunting to infinity and back meaning you missed your chance.

For a stationary subject I don't know why you'd ever use anything but single point.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2017 15:12

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

chitoryu12 posted:

I only ever delete photos that are totally unusable, generally meaning that they're blurry or something got in front of my shot.

I'm with you. One of my best selling shots is one where I was shooting and I had a metal bar from the canopy of my vehicle directly in front on my lens, causing this effect:

A little bit of tinkering produced this:

I also had someone pay me $50 for a photo of an owl's underside one time. I guess he was a sculptor and needed a reference photo (or had a weird fetish), and I had a million various angle shots of the owl he was after. Stuff I would never consider posting but kept around because how do you run out of storage space these days?

# ¿ Oct 17, 2017 15:18

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

akadajet posted:

People buy rebels to get better pictures, then use that lens because it came with it. Then they get these low contrast, muddy images and think the cameras are crap. Canon is doing themselves no favors with those things.

On the other side of that is someone dumb like me that got frustrated with those junk pictures out of the rebels with kit lenses and upgraded to something better, leading to a slippery slope of me giving Canon a small fortune.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2017 16:16

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Ratspeaker posted:

As mentioned, I'm trying to get into wildlife photography. I've sampled a few different cameras in the past, and regular point and shoot models don't have the range or the speed to capture targets the way I'd like--especially birds, my subject of choice. So I'll need something for outdoor with good portability and longevity, as well as the ability to photograph in low-light conditions at times. I've heard that Nikon is better for low-light shots, but Canon has a faster and more reliable autofocus system. Is this true?

Stabilization systems are also important to me. I have a slight essential tremor in my hands that makes long-range shots tricky, but I don't want to be completely reliant on a tripod. I know stabilization is mostly done in the lenses nowadays--is there a significant difference between the quality in Canon vs. Nikon's systems?

I'm not opposed to buying used, if you can recommend a good place to do so. I'm not sure how up-to-date the links in the OP are.

If you're just starting out (especially with a budget of $600) I wouldn't focus on which brand has the better low-light or AF performance. Get as cheap of a body as is possible so that you can spend as much of your budget on your lens. Wildlife photography is a black hole for money to disappear into, but starting out with a solid ~300-400mm lens is going to give you the best bang for your buck. When I started I got the cheapest camera body I could find (Canon Rebel) and put all my money into a 100-400 lens. Even though I've gone through 5 different camera bodies since then, I still use that lens all the time.

# ¿ May 16, 2018 17:09

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 03:33

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

azflyboy posted:

I've got a Nikon D3300 that's having an issue with images randomly coming out excessively dark (like there's a shadow on the lens) for reasons I can't figure out.

From what I've been able to determine so far, it only occurs with one lens (a Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G lens), and seems to mostly happen in the middle of shots being taken fairly quickly, either with the shutter button or by using burst mode. As far as I can tell, it mostly happens toward the longer end of the zoom range, but tweaking the aperture and shutter settings doesn't seem to have any effect. There's no filters involved, and I've made sure the lens is clean.

I suspect this is a technique issue on my end or a setting I'm messing up, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong here.

Unless you are in full manual mode with auto-ISO off, this is (probably) just your camera metering each picture slightly differently.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2018 23:09

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > My First DSLR - "Is 'Dunning-Kruger Effect' a Photoshop plugin?"