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?"

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

quote:

I keep seeing �crop factor� or �APS-C� mentioned. What�s that?

I'm going to add something here for the benefit of newbies, and if I say it badly or it's confusing or just plain dumb, just let me know and I'll take it out.

Crop factor vs full frame: for 99% of you, absolutely none of this poo poo matters, and run fast and far away from any salesman who tells you different. Why? Because unless your last camera used 35mm film you don't know the difference, you have nothing to compare to. Yes, the crop factor on most intro cameras means that your view will be a little more "zoomed in" than it would on a full-frame camera with the same lens. But unless your other camera is full-frame - and unless you're coming from film it's probably not, because you're reading the newbie thread - what do you care? There are some people who, when mentioning a lens, will say something like "I bought the 100mm macro for my 40D, which of course is actually 160mm with the crop factor." If you hear those words, kick 'em squarely in the nuts because no, it's not. It's 100mm, because if you're shooting a crop-sensor camera, that's your world. It's like pointing out a pretty blue flower and the guy next to you says "Well, technically, to colorblind people it's actually green." Unless you're colorblind, who cares, right?

If you have to ask whether or not you need a full-frame camera, chances are the answer is no. Are you doing architectural photography? If not, the answer is no.* By the time you need it, you'll know enough that you don't have to ask.

* Do you have enough money that the difference in price ($1-2k) is meaningless to you? Then fine, the answer is yes, go for it. That and architectural photography are really the only times a newbie would want to dive into full-frame.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 23:19

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 17:13

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

alkanphel posted:

Most just buy it because they believe (rightfully) that it will make their photos sharper but then they realise it's an added thing to carry around and they didn't want to spend on the lightest carbon fibre ones and it just stays in the storeroom forever after that.

Yep, this. I have a tripod because once a year or so I need one, but I'll move heaven and earth to keep from having to bring it out.

And speaking of tripods, it's tempting to think you can be smart and save money by buying a cheaper tripod from a great brand: you can't. Or maybe you can, but I certainly didn't. drat thing holds exactly as much camera and lens as I owned at the time, now it'll barely hold my body alone, forget the lenses. The quick release is plastic, and trust me when I say that that poo poo'll make you nervous real quick.

Either A) spend $30 for whatever walmart's selling (and I highly recommend A when you're just starting out, because I promise, that love you feel in the beginning for your tripod wears off fast), or B) spend the money and buy something strong enough to last you past the equipment you own now.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2013 23:46

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

rcman50166 posted:

What are you guys doing that you never use tripods? I use mine when I go past 200mm, when I do macro,

gently caress that. When I got my 100mm macro I thought I'd be using my tripod all the time, because there was some guy in a macro thread taking amazing shots using his, really brilliant stuff, but every time I brought mine out it was either too windy or the bugs kept moving. There's nothing to get the blood pressure cooking like spending five minutes setting up the tripod perfectly only to have your subject fly away at the last second.

Eegah posted:

I've had descent results using a business card to bounce a flash upward, apart from the fact that it blinds me every time even if I'm looking through the viewfinder.

Seconding the business card bounce - I did it as a guest at a wedding last summer and was amazed it worked so well. You look like a moron doing it, but whatever.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2013 17:52

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Has anyone ever been to one of Bryan Peterson's seminars? I went once, and he mentions - over, and over, and over - this flash that he recommends for beginners because it has around 90% of the functionality of the good ones, but at something like $50. Fully manual. It could've been him just recommending it because he's paid to, but I got the feeling he was being honest. I can't remember what it is, but if someone's seen him and knows it, it might be a nice addition to the OP. I remember it being some no-name brand I'd never heard of.

Edit: after some googling, I think it was the LumoPro LP160, but it looks like they've discontinued it; there's one for sale on ebay, starting at $80. So nevermind, I guess.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2013 18:03

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Mr. Despair posted:

Get a yongnuo, it sounds like what you want. I have the 560ii and its a really nice all manual flash for the money.

I've got a decent flash, I just thought it would be a nice addition to the OP. We've already got people in the thread asking about the Canon 430EX, so it would be nice to tell them there are cheaper, better alternatives out there, before they go spending ~$300 on what I've always heard is a flash of questionable quality.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2013 20:07

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Did the standard 17-50/2.8 (not VR) get significantly improved over the past few years? I paid $400 for mine on amazon back in 2008, now it's selling for $500 and the only difference seems to be the addition of a few more nonsensical acronyms in the name. XR Di-II LD SP versus Di-II LD.

If they're basically the same lens, keep an eye out for the older version because they're selling about $150 cheaper than the newer version.

Edit: Just looked it up, apparently in the newer lens XR stands for "Extra Refractive Index Glass" (means it's shorter) and SP stands for Super Performance (oh, so now we get the super performance). Correct me if I'm wrong, but in an entry/mid-level lens I'd have a hard time justifying the $150 difference between this and the older version, and an even harder time justifying the extra $300 for VC.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2013 18:38

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

CrushedWill posted:

That was going to be on the list of my follow up questions, i.e. what kind of reputation does the Canon refurbs have? Sounds like they are a good bet

Anecdotal, but my XTi and later my 40D were both Canon refurbs bought off of ebay, and if it hadn't been for the auctions saying they were refurbs I'd have thought they were brand new. I think the only way you can get a bum deal on a Canon refurb is through outright fraud, i.e. someone's selling one with the Canon stamp that wasn't actually refurbished. Which I've never heard of happening, but I'm sure it's possible.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2013 00:52

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

I'm selling something in SA Mart that might be appropriate as a first DSLR, but I don't wanna link it in this thread if that's gonna be a problem. Anybody got a problem?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 02:27

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Not to mention, it's drat near impossible to take a photo of something under normal restaurant lighting and have it be anywhere near appetizing, and that goes double if you're using instagram filters on it. "Check out this delicious meal I'm about to eat - gaze upon its yellowish, stale beauty as I work my "Valencia" magic on it!"

Mmmm...pasta!

(above picture is tagged #delicious, #OliveGarden, and #foodie, which ought to be a crime in itself)

If I owned a restaurant, that would be my number one reason for banning cameras: the resulting photos are more likely to scare away customers than bring them in.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 21:44

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

FISHMANPET posted:

I'm looking to take some risque pictures of my wife, and I'm not sure where to start.

FISHMANPET posted:
Ironically enough he'll hand it over to the wife next time they see each other, which could very likely be for a risque shoot.

evil_bunnY posted:
Buddy you don't need to tell us what it's for.

I think we're a few hours away from a FISHMANPET thread asking "Help me critique these risque pictures of my wife."

# ¿ Apr 12, 2013 20:43

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

ExecuDork posted:

The most important feature, bar none, of any camera is that you WANT TO HOLD IT IN YOUR HANDS.

Eh, I'm politely calling bullshit on that one. Everybody always says this, as if picking up the "right" camera will cause it to emit a faint glow while a chorus of angels hums Panama from behind the register. The fact is that unless you've got hands like Andre the Giant or a malnourished 8-year old, you're going to get used to any camera just by using it for a while. And by "a while" I don't mean a few years, I mean a few weeks. If a camera's fit is so bad that it causes you to lose interest before a few weeks have passed, face it, you weren't gonna stick with it anyway. I've gone from an HP Photosmart (lovely in every possible way), to a couple of piece of poo poo Minolta "bridge" cameras, to a Canon XTi, to a 40D, to a 7D, and aside from the 40D-to-7D jump every one of them offered substantially different bodies - all of which I learned to use and love in about as much time as it takes to break in a pair of shoes.

By all means, if you get the chance to handle a camera before buying it, do so, and if it just feels "off" compared to others you've picked up, then trust your gut and move on. But there's no Ollivanders: Makers of Fine ~~Wands~~ Cameras shop out there ready to hand out the One True Body for you; what there are, instead, are engineers who spend a lot of time designing camera bodies that are easy for anyone to use.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2013 21:48

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

ExecuDork posted:

Fair point, I like to overemphasize the ergonomics point because so often I see people (not so much here, but other places on the web, especially Facebook) getting obsessive about long lists of features and counting megapickles and spinning irrelevant anecdotes about their uncle's opinion about some bridge camera from 8 years ago.

That's totally true - of all the dumb poo poo people worry about when buying a new camera, ergonomics is more important than most of it, so that's a real good point.

ExecuDork posted:

It's pretty hard to buy a bad camera anymore, I think.

Yep!

# ¿ Aug 28, 2013 16:14

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Casu Marzu posted:

Edit: poo poo, I forgot about the night I got drunk and bought Reich's Nikonos, and I ended up getting a box with that, a pic of his junk, and a jar of lube. Best box ever.

Holy

that's awesome, I need to remember that. The last time I sold something on ebay I added an extra lens that I wanted to get rid of (it was 20 years old), clearly I'm doing this wrong.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2013 18:10

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

ExecuDork posted:

- Turn off the beeps. All of them. Nobody else needs to know you've achieved focus confirmation.

God, this. I went to a lighting workshop last year, and had to listen to the guy next to me beeping with every damned click of the shutter. Nothing says "I put it on the green-box and leave it there forever" more than your camera beeping.

ExecuDork posted:

- Turn off the flash. No, try again - make sure it's actually loving turned off and WILL NOT pop up because the camera thinks its little GN-13 pop-up will be able to correctly expose both the lurking-in-shadows presenter and the big PowerPoint screen from 20 metres away.

BUT: know how to use it, if you have to. Because sure as hell, one day you're gonna be somewhere without a flash and need to get the shot, and you're gonna want to know how to add some fill flash, or how to bounce with a business card. As for the business card thing, it really does work. I used it when I was a guest at a wedding last year, and it was absolutely the difference between getting the shot, and having no shot at all. It aint perfect, but it beats using the built-in flash head on.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2013 15:33

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

ExecuDork posted:

Can you tell us more about these classes? My encounters with descriptions of "Photography for Beginners" classes, never having taken one myself, are mostly about how it was a waste of time and the idiot sitting next to you kept insisting on P-means-Professional while their camera beeps out focus confirmation and other idiocy with every ham-fisted shot.

The trouble with classes, in my experience, is that there are good ones for beginners, and good ones for professionals, but drat little in between. The beginner classes aren't worth poo poo to anyone with experience (and seriously, all the focus beeps going off will make you want to claw your ears off), and the classes for professionals are prohibitively expensive because they're taught by well-known photographers. I'm talking "Jose Villa in Napa Valley for $3,000" kinds of classes; you've got to really want to invest in learning to sign up for something like that. I'd say the best bang-for-the-buck I've ever gotten was going to a lecture by Bryan Peterson (the Understanding Exposure guy) a while back; the guy spent a lot of time talking about on and off-camera flash, it was good stuff. Only cost around $60, if I remember right.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 19:54

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 17:13

jackpot: Aug 31, 2004; First cousin to the Black Rabbit himself. Such was Woundwort's monument...and perhaps it would not have displeased him.<

Delivery McGee posted:

Personally, I shoot RAW, and make a habit of switching to P mode whenever I turn the camera off, just in case.

I've gotta say, in the RAW vs. JPG argument I used to say RAW, every time, because gently caress it: hard drive space is cheap, right? But goddamn, then I bought a 7D and the RAW files are routinely around 25mb, and I'm killing my hard drive (and burning through CF cards) when nine times out of ten jpg will do me just fine. If I'm shooting something I absolutely have to get right I'll do RAW, but for the past week I've been shooting jpg (average file size around 7mb) and saving gobs of space, and haven't found anything I can't edit successfully.

To each his own, of course, but there's something to be said for having a 16gb card that shows only 450 shots left in RAW, but then says "999" as soon as I switch to large jpg.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 21:35

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