PF Photography: Tips, Tricks, & Photo Sharing

[Kronos5253]

Nice work Kronos, composition ideas are great but you notice the hardware limitations indeed.

Next shots in one session ware made with a EOS 450D with a Tokina 12-24mm wide angle zoom, mostly at 12mm wide in the hunt for the photo contest perspective, all but one are on 18% of the real size, with some crops on the original 100% size, so you can judge if you can settle for a camera phone or if you need heavier hardware.

crop on 100% of the standard jpg output.

Same crop from a RAW image after some processing, sharpening, reducing noise reduction, and some more image tuning

and the uncropped frame again on 18% after RAW processing, obviously the changes will be more clear on a poster of 24 inch.

Some more unprocessed JGP's:

(this one was cropped to remove some nasty signs)

Oh I'd love to have a better piece of equipment rather then use a phone.. But I be poor haha My wife is big into photography and she wants a nikon D90, but we don't exactly have the spare cash for that haha The Nikon Coolpix actually takes really decent pictures though, but I'd much rather have, say, my dad's 35mm manual focus. It's like, 20-30 years old, but it takes BEAUTIFUL pictures. Someday I'll inherit it.. Some day. But for now I guess I'll just have to stick to my phone or the Coolpix.

Those are great pictures though... I think I would have used the under the tree picture (5th one down) for the perspective shot. I like the angles and the way the line for the water passes through the picture.

 

[Andre]

Right the fifth one down was on the short list as were all these. However maybe a bit too artifical looking. Suspicious persons could think of photoshopping. I almost went for #1 but that was maybe too dull. So I thought that the one I selected had the most extreme perspective.

Anyway, nice to have a hardware dream. I do too, it's called Canon EOS 7D, but there is also something like rational acceptance factors. The Nikon D90 is a fine piece. Just keep an eye on the sales market. It's prices will come down as new hardware floods the market.

 

[Kronos5253]

Right the fifth one down was on the short list as were all these. However maybe a bit too artifical looking. Suspicious persons could think of photoshopping. I almost went for #1 but that was maybe too dull. So I thought that the one I selected had the most extreme perspective.

True true, and I agree, the last one has the most extreme perspective. Makes the building look way bigger than it is, and the cannon adds a nice touch to the line of sight :D

Anyway, nice to have a hardware dream. I do too, it's called Canon EOS 7D, but there is also something like rational acceptance factors. The Nikon D90 is a fine piece. Just keep an eye on the sales market. It's prices will come down as new hardware floods the market.

Of course, good advice, and dually noted :) The one you posted is the one I'm looking to get, but my wife adores the D90 lol She likes the way it fits in her hand. Prices are a bit much, but it'll happen soon enough.

 

[GeorginaS]

A friend of mine got a Canon PowerShot SX20 IS for Christmas. Apparently it takes pictures on the macro setting, but she can't figure out how it works. (This camera is more automatic and less manual.) Anyone here familiar with the camera and have any hints and/or tips for taking amazing bug shots like Andre and Turbo and Borek do?

 

[turbo]

Hi, Georgina. It's my understanding that the manual shipped with that camera is a truncated version (though it ought to have SOME instructions for putting the rig in macro mode) and you have to go on-line and download the remainder of the manual. In a review, I read that the manual in the box is more like a "getting started" guide, still there ought to be an intuitive way to get to macro mode. Often, there are quick menu options, and "macro" will often be signified by a symbol that looks like the silhouette of a tulip. My Panasonic DMC-ZS3 is a bit too automatic, too, but it has pretty decent macro performance. I bought it because walking a rambunctious young (and incredibly strong) dog several times a day has cut into my DSLR forays, and I needed a pocket camera.

 

[Andre]

I am not familiar with operating that camera, but I assume that it could be similar to other superzooms like the Panasonic FZ18 - FZ28 etc. As far as I know these camera's only have macro capability in the wide angle range and that is not very encouraging.

So what I did for my FZ-18, I bought a dedicated converter tube and a set of macro (close up) lenses to fit on that camera and then the possibilities are awesome, allowing a good distance between subject and camera, so not to disturb them

Some result:

 

[Andre]

Meanwhile I found the user guide; check page 72

http://www.abt.com/images/products/PDF_Files/SX20IS_use.pdf

But as I thought, only in wide angle and that's not "bug"-friendly

 

[Andre]

So what I did for my FZ-18, I bought a dedicated converter tube and a set of macro (close up) lenses to fit on that camera and then the possibilities are awesome, allowing a good distance between subject and camera, so not to disturb them

Here is that setof tubes and a close up lens with the Panasonic (bridge) camera, which is roughly the same idea as the SX-20

and assembled here:

And this image was taken with that combination, hand held with only light from the monitor from a distance of almost 2 feet / 50 cm (picture size reduced to 20%)

Althought the image quality is definitely less than the Canon 100mm macro lens, it's still the most versatile option to hunt bugs in a dynamic environment -without tripod. Also the lack of image quality is compensated by an effective anti vibration system and a much better depth of field in the macro range.

 

[Vasara]

Hey, here are some pictures I've taken.

You can click on them for (slightly) bigger versions.

 

[lisab]

Hey, here are some pictures I've taken.

Very nice, Vasara .

 

[GeorginaS]

Here is that setof tubes and a close up lens with the Panasonic (bridge) camera, which is roughly the same idea as the SX-20

Thank you for your help, turbo.

Andre, my friend told me to tell you that you're brilliant to say thank you to you. She's going to go get the attachments tomorrow. She's otherwise been very pleased with the camera save that function.

 

[Andre]

My pleasure Georgina,

Your friend is also to experience that there is quite a bit more to it, catching a bug real good, balancing shutter speed, aperture, ISO, but beyond all, the focussing. (S)he should also anticipate deleting hundreds of failed shots. Luckily it's only electronics, in the old days it was pretty frustrating (costly) shooting, develloping and printing several films of 36 exposures for only a small handful of reasonable pictures.

The message is: practice.

 

[Andre]

To elaborate a bit more on the quality difference for bug hunting between the Panasonic FZ-18 bridge camera with close up lens (#1) and the Canon 450D with 100mm macro lens I shot some roses:

For both: F8 , distance about 2-3 ft, image reduced to 20% size:

The best of the Panasonic (8x zoom) and #1 close up lens:

The best of the Canon

Although the colors of the Canon are much more accurate, there is not a lot to choose in between in this magnification in terms of detail. Note also that the back ground clutter is more reduced in the Canon (better bokeh)

Mind that Canon $ + macro lens $ = 3 x Panasonic $ + close up lens $

The real differences can be seen on pixel level in the 100% crops below (Canon left, Panasonic right).

Original JPG output on ISO 100 sensitivity:

Original JPG output on ISO 400 sensitivity

Note the substantial differences in noise, note also that the crispness of the Panasonic is surprising. The ISO 400 shot of the Canon appears to be slightly blurred due to vibrations perhaps, but that's what you can expect without image stabilisation.

We can edit the noise and sharpness somewhat by manually processing in dedicated software like photoshop. This is the best result using the dedicated DPP for Canon and Silkypix for Panasonic:

For the ISO 100 shots:

For the ISO 400 shots:

So, the bottom line is that you pay a lot $$$ for extra image quality only visible when printing poster format.

 

[Borek]

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photography/

 

[turbo]

There's a guy that writes action plug-ins for Photoshop, and this is the result of applying one of his latest actions. It's called StarFilter Pro (there's also a Lite version). Pretty cool. You have complete control over the number of spikes, the length, intensity, rainbow effect and many other variables. Just the thing to "spice up" images from car shows, or make dewy flowers sparkle.

He's also got image processing plugins for sharpening and correcting common image problems. http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/

 

[Borek]

Lol, when I started to read for a moment I thought he made enough money on his latest plugin to buy this bike.

 

[turbo]

Lol, when I started to read for a moment I thought he made enough money on his latest plugin to buy this bike.

Not yet! When I bought this bike it was goobered up with all kinds of HD "bling". I stripped off about 50-75# of stuff, and trimmed it out as simply as possible so the paint would steal the show. It was almost 20 years old when I took this shot to make some on-line ads, and I still got $12K for it. I should never have let this one go, but my wife's back was bothering her, so I bought a big comfy Road King and sold the Wide Glide. What a mistake that was.

 

[Andre]

If you can't beat them you can always shoot them.

 

[matthyaouw]

An absolute age ago I remember someone saying they wanted a really strong Neutral Density filter but were put off by the price. For anyone who is interested, here is the cheap option: welding glass.

You can pick it up off ebay for very little money. I paid a couple of pounds for mine from this guy: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Glass-filter-welding-lens-shade-10-/170494160622?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item27b23e6eee. Once you've got it you need to attatch it to your camera in a way that won't let any light in round the back of it. The easy way is buy a http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Kood-P-Series-58mm-Adaptor-Ring-Also-Fits-Cokin-UK-/350351913782?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraLensesFilters_JN&hash=item519299f336 and fix the glass on tightly with a ring of blue tack. It's not the most elegant solution and can cause bad lens flare if direct sunlight strikes one of the exposed edges (which are pretty sharp by the way!) but it does the trick. Since I got sick of hurting my fingers on the edge of it and having to shade it with my hands to stop flare I picked up a http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Stepping-Ring-Step-up-77-82-mm-77-82mm-/120578665753?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_CamerasPhoto_CameraAccessories_CameraLensesFilters_JN&hash=item1c130c6d19 then asked a man at a glass workshop to cut my glass down to fit. It took him about a minute and he charged me £1. It rested nicely in the ring so I fixed it in with superglue and plugged any gaps round the edges with blue tack, job done.

I now have a 13 stop filter (that is, I have to double my shutter speed 13 times to get the picture as bright with the filter as it was without) for just a few pounds. I used shade 10 glass, but it also comes in shades 9 and 11 if you want a lesser or greater light reduction.

It's not perfect. Pictures actually come out extremely green, but if you set a custom white-balance with the filter on it should sort it out nicely. I'm pretty pleadsed with the results, for the price I paid anyway:

f11, iso100, 141 seconds on an overcast but quite bright day.

f11, iso100,243 seconds in early morning sun

 

[~christina~]

great idea matthyaouw since ND filters ar very expensive
Have you tried it out at sunset?

Andre, great photo of aphids!

 

[Borek]

Interesting idea & some material for thought.

 

[Borek]

There was a thunderstorm over Warsaw about an hour ago.

Unfortunately, looks like I have to buy a new camera. ISO 100, exposure time 90 sec. This is unacceptable and partially visible on both images above (especially on the second one, as it is cropped to about 50%).

 

[Borek]

LOL

I just took a closer look at the pictures. When I started taking them there was a short firework show, here in Marki. Unfortunately, it was in such a place that it was obscured by part of my roof, so I couldn't see it in full. But it seems like I got both kinds of fireworks on a picture - those natural, and those human made. This is a very corner of the picture, no crop, so very poor quality - still, you can see both

 

[waht]

There was a thunderstorm over Warsaw about an hour ago.

Nice filaments.

 

[matthyaouw]

Nice pictures Borek!

Unfortunately, looks like I have to buy a new camera. ISO 100, exposure time 90 sec. This is unacceptable and partially visible on both images above (especially on the second one, as it is cropped to about 50%).

For 90 seconds that's not too bad. 5 minutes with the clone tool would sort it out but if you'd rather not go to the trouble then long exposure noise reduction would sort it out for you.

 

[matthyaouw]

great idea matthyaouw since ND filters ar very expensive
Have you tried it out at sunset?

Not yet. 13 stops might be a bit much for sunset. I've worked out exposure times could be over an hour (assuming the light doesn't fade, which it would)

 

[Borek]

long exposure noise reduction would sort it out for you.

Trick is, when taking pictures during thunderstorm automatic noise reduction is unacceptable - I want to take pictures one by one, and automatic noise reduction means I have to wait between pictures for as long as I was exposing them.

Edit: oh, and it wasn't that bad 3 years ago. It is getting worse each year, that's what troubles me.

 

[redpenguin]

First post here... biology student from Minnesota. Thought I'd drop by and share a few shots with you guys.
Thanks for looking.

 

[Borek]

Nice ones

Please remember to resize the pictures, when they are too large they break forums formatting. In my experience 800 pixels wide is a reasonable maximum, but if you want to enter one of the contests you are limited to 650 pixels.

 

[redpenguin]

Well... there goes my introduction. Sorry Borek.

 

[Borek]

Is it just me, or does this leaf look concerned?

 

[turbo]

I keep seeing a perpetually angry cartoon character's face in my wife's pansies.

 

[Borek]

Faces, faces everywhere.

We are preprogrammed to see them.

 

[lisab]

Faces, faces everywhere.

We are preprogrammed to see them.

Indeed, our brains are hard wired for it.

http://happychairishappy.com/" .

 

[lisab]

First post here... biology student from Minnesota. Thought I'd drop by and share a few shots with you guys.
Thanks for looking.

Those are great, redpenguin! The red bridge is stunning.

Welcome to PF!

 

[~christina~]

There was a thunderstorm over Warsaw about an hour ago.

Very nice pictures, Borek.

I took a lighting picture awhile back but it needed a lot of editting.

 

[Borek]

While taking pictures of Wisła water level I looked up.

 

[redpenguin]

 

[Andre]

Thanks Redpenguin, nice.

Looking at these, it occurs to me that management of background blur (bokeh) is very important in this kind of photography with a clearly defined subject.

If you do some basic math with the lens formula you'll discover that the circle of confusion is a function of aperture (Av), focal length (f) and magnification. The modern small cameras have very small sensors (hence small agnification) and small focal lengths, so they won't excel in blurring the background. Then you're better off with DSLR's. Let me demonstrate:

The subject is a little tree with a disorderly piece of garden in the back. All pix are reduced in size the crops in lower right corner are on 100% showing background just to the left of its trunk.

Camera: good old Panasonic FZ18, small sensor (crop factor 0.17 compared to original SLR size) of and at minimum focus (4.6 mm wideangle) and max aperture (f 2.8). No blur:

If we move backwards and zoom in a bit (4x), it only helps a little bit, also because the maximum aperture reduces with this type of zoomlens (f 3.6), countering the blurring.

So if we take the DSLR with a larger sensor (crop factor 62.5% compared to the original SLR size) with a 100mm telelens at full aperture (f 2.8), we get this:

Note I was using small size pictures (2592 x 1728 pixel) for experimenting. On large size the crop would be about twice as big).

So if you want a blurry background, move backwards, use the maximum tele position of the lens and, if you can control it, the widest possible aperture (lowest (Av -) number).

But then again if you want a real wide depth of field, then reverse all those numbers, like this: DSLR f: 12mm, Av 11

 

[~christina~]

The second image is the best looking image even though it is from the Panasonic. It might be the composition and the white balance though. (DSLR image seems to be a bit on the blue side)

 

[~christina~]

Not yet. 13 stops might be a bit much for sunset. I've worked out exposure times could be over an hour (assuming the light doesn't fade, which it would)

That is a long time. I noticed that you did have some sunset pictures taken at longer exposures on your Flickr page. Did you not use a ND filter for those? (I assumed you did)

 

[Andre]

The second image is the best looking image even though it is from the Panasonic. It might be the composition and the white balance though. (DSLR image seems to be a bit on the blue side)

Exactly right, compared to the Panasonic the Canon is very conservative with color saturation. And these came straight from the camera. Look what a bit of editing does:

I suppressed red a bit, got a bit more green and increased contrast and saturation.

 

[~christina~]

Exactly right, compared to the Panasonic the Canon is very conservative with color saturation. And these came straight from the camera. Look what a bit of editing does:

I suppressed red a bit, got a bit more green and increased contrast and saturation.

There might be a setting in the Canon to increase saturation. (I have one in the Nikon D40X)

I don't think it's the red that's the problem. (Red probably should have stayed)
I tried playing around with the image in photoshop. This is what I got.

[PLAIN]http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1028/2qsqbeo.jpg

 

[Mororvia]

In honor of the upcoming US Independence Day:

[PLAIN]http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/694/sdc12743.jpg

 

[Andre]

This is the place where my oldest daughter works

I shot this pic for the front page of her thesis, which is due next week. She supervises a group of mentally retarded 'clients', who produce things like these ceramic objects on the right in front, attached to these metal strips. Production is going well, customers have to wait some weeks before their orders are ready.

To get everything sharp, front and back, I used a extreme wide angle shot, 12mm with the Tokina SD 12-24mm at F/11 aperture. Unfortunatly I did not consider shooting in RAW, which would have enabled lens fault correxions, while post processing. Ah well, I can always take another shot.

 

[drizzle]

This is the place where my oldest daughter works

I shot this pic for the front page of her thesis, which is due next week. She supervises a group of mentally retarded 'clients', who produce things like these ceramic objects on the right in front, attached to these metal strips. Production is going well, customers have to wait some weeks before their orders are ready...

Interesting! Don't you think it would look more consistent if you only focus on the ceramic objects without showing the bulding's entrance? I think it's just distracting from the main theme... Unless, you meant to show the place where she works. Wish her the best of luck.

 

[Andre]

You're quite right, Drizzle, if the subject was the ceramics. However her thesis is about processes going on in that building, hence the building is the main subject in the picture, however I thought that it would be nice to include those things in front, showing some of what is made inside.

 

[drizzle]

You're quite right, Drizzle, if the subject was the ceramics. However her thesis is about processes going on in that building, hence the building is the main subject in the picture, however I thought that it would be nice to include those things in front, showing some of what is made inside.

Sure, let us know how it goes!

 

[Dembadon]

I got an unexpected bonus this year! Since the wife and I have been wanting a new camera for quite awhile now, we started doing some research on beginner DSLR cameras. I've always owned <$200 point-and-shoot cameras, so, needless to say, I haven't really been inspired to take very many pictures outside of family events, major vacations, etc. Since the bonus gave us a significant amount of financial freedom this season, we decided that it was a good time to buy a real camera.

After quite a bit of research, we decided to go with the Canon EOS Rebel T2i (EOS 550D in Europe and Asia). We bought it yesterday, and I've been fiddling around with this amazing camera (on full-auto mode) for a few hours; I'm thoroughly impressed. It has inspired me to add a photography class to my schedule next semester so that I can learn to use it to its full potential. I'd like to get to the point where I can do everything manually and have no need for the preset modes.

I'd also like to get a telephoto lens and a tripod so that I can start taking pictures of wildlife and my siblings' games/performances, but I think we're going to let the dust settle before spending any more money.

I'm looking forward to participating in the photo contests!

 

[turbo]

Congrats, Dembadon! Canon has a very nice selection of lenses, and reasonable upgrade-paths. Their best lenses are $$$$, but there are some nice L-series zooms that will cover a lot of territory. I have a 100-400 IS USM and it delivers really crisp contrasty images. I was doing film photography back when zooms started getting popular, and avoided them like the plague. The 100-400 performs almost as well as my old dedicated Olympus and Bronica primes, and performs really well as a macro, too.