PF Photography: Tips, Tricks, & Photo Sharing

[Borek]

When I was a kid we had a drawer with sewing utensils. After sewing we never threw away thread that was left, it was always left attached to the needle and pinned into the spool (you know, it may save you some time next time). After many years all these threads created a large ball.

It looked similar.

 

[Andre]

The pic is a close up shot from that right framed work over the little hamlet that I showed in the other thread. But for that pic I removed it and got the idea to shoot some close ups from it. Yes it's produced locally.

The blouse idea is worth thinking about.

 

[Andre]

Anyway, there was another photo contest with the title "deadline", in whatever way you wanted to interpret that. Obviously there were several cemetaries with rows of graves but I entered this:

An old abondoned mine line somewhere in the pyrenees not too far from Andorra and Montcru.

 

[Andre]

Todays loot, gutter stalactites

The full shot uncropped on 15% size

The EXIF (may be interesting for Dembadon)

File Name IMG_5807.CR2
Camera Model Canon EOS 550D
Firmware Firmware Version 1.0.9
Shooting Date/Time 24-12-2010 15:10:09
Author Andre
Copyright Notice Andre 2010
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/80
Av( Aperture Value ) 8.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation 0
ISO Speed 200
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Focal Length 210.0mm
Image Size 5184x3456
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode One-Shot AF
AF area select mode Manual selection
File Size 23121KB
...

 

[Dembadon]

Todays loot, gutter stalactites

The full shot uncropped on 15% size

The EXIF (may be interesting for Dembadon)

Nice gear!

Thanks for showing the EXIF data. I've been taking more pictures in aperture priority mode lately. In fact, I'll probably use Av mode more often than not from now on.

 

[dimensional]

I've got some pics I took from my 2009 spring break trip out west.

Here's a sunset in the Arizona desert. Looks like a painted sky.

[PLAIN]http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2577/85/13/635517292/n635517292_1608773_6209723.jpg

Here's the Valley of Fire in Nevada.

[PLAIN]http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2577/85/13/635517292/n635517292_1608781_1988483.jpg

 

[Andre]

Looks nice Dimensional.

So today I walked to the city to make piX of a silly sculpture for the photonbcontest "Is this really art". I shot this thing:

... known as aardappelmannetje (potato man).

But I past along this... gutter

Actually I waited about 20 minutes to get a little bit of sun shining on it like on the pic, and these are some of the results:

 

[Borek]

It can be still visible here:

 

[Andre]

You're lucky, dense clouds here.

 

[Borek]

Slightly to the right, and a little bit up:

And yes, that was sheer luck - clouds are dense here as well, it was a short moment when they were not as thick.

Edit: I forgot to add it was more luck than just the weather. I knew there will be an eclipse today, but for some reason I was sure it will be not visible in Poland. If not for the Junior's call ("Hey, look up!") I would miss the event completely.

 

[Andre]

So instead I made a first 7D entry in a challenge here.

 

[Andy Resnick]

So instead I made a first 7D entry in a challenge here.

That's a nice one- I really like it. Good luck!

 

[Andre]

Thanks Andy, oh the zippers came in 7th of 43.

 

[Borek]

Quoting from another thread:

Got the heck of a deal too, with the 7D this morning.

I have a question about 7D (and to some extent 550D). What is a size (in MB or GB) of a 1 minute HD movie shot with the camera?

 

[Andre]

That's huge indeed. Get a shot of 14 sec doing 76Mb and one of 19 sec being 108Mb. The format is MOV The files are so huge that normal PC software is unable to give a smooth replay. Still searching for the right software for that. Of course you can convert to WMV or anything. Replay from camera to TV directly is no problem.

But have a few 8 or 16 GB cards for a lot of filming. Also notice that the card used in the 7D is compact flash, not SD format

 

[Borek]

Size of the file is not a matter of format, but of the codec used. But it doesn't matter much, I already know what I wanted. Thanks.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Thanks Andy, oh the zippers came in 7th of 43.

Congrats- that was some stiff competition.

 

[Andre]

Congrats- that was some stiff competition.

Thanks Andy

Anyway I wondered indeed about that "competition" in that challenge.

You can see the voting distribution for instance here (below right of the pic), and I wondered about sock puppet votes (you can't vote for your own entries). So I did some duplication of the voting in the spreadsheet that I uploaded here.

I see that my averages are different form that of the site itself, except for #1. So I wonder where the bug is. But I also see several votes aprroximately outside the two sigma range (highlighted yellow) and even three sigma range (highlighted red). I have shared my concern with the staff of the site, but no reaction so far. Obviously obnoxious vote behavior can be tracked and identified easily this way.

 

[Borek]

I guess this picture will not qualify for the contest, even if editing was minimal:

 

[Andre]

Actually my voteless entry in that contest ended up as #6 of 119 here.

Anyway, we happened to have a good vase of roses this week. Nice to practice.

The uncropped image at 15%

From the EXIF:

Type: Canon EOS 7D
Aperture: F/11
Shutter:4 sec
ISO-100
F: 100mm
No flash

 

[Andre]

Anybody recognizes this?

 

[Borek]

DVD?

forum software doesn't allow short and correct answer.

 

[Andre]

Right, Borek, CD actaully but No doubt you all saw it, it's a life size crop of this picture:

You can have a lot of fun with CD's.

Actually notice the difference in focus between these two :

Anybody care to explain?

 

[drizzle]

CDs! I knew it!

Btw Andre, love the color of that rose, just like like watermelon's color, what's it called?

 

[Andre]

CDs! I knew it!

Btw Andre, love the color of that rose, just like like watermelon's color, what's it called?

The rose was bought in one of the abundant flowershops here and unfortunately they don't tag the name on it and I don't know the name of that variety.

 

[drizzle]

Beautiful, I set it as my desktop's background.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Actually notice the difference in focus between these two :

<snip>

Anybody care to explain?

Nice photos, Andre! (The rose, too- really well done!)

I'm guessing one photo was off the top (plastic) surface while the other was of the metallized layer?

 

[Andre]

Beautiful, I set it as my desktop's background.

You're welcome. I just uploaded the original to my gallery -link below- If you visit that or follow this link, you can download it in several sizes for better quality and detail.

 

[drizzle]

Oh, I see my name there, thanks.

 

[Andre]

Nice photos, Andre! (The rose, too- really well done!)

I'm guessing one photo was off the top (plastic) surface while the other was of the metallized layer?

Thanks Andy, not sure, the differnce in focus seemed to be more. I'll try again and notice the distance.

 

[Andre]

tried it again but now with artificial light under controlled conditions. The difference between CD in focus and reflexions in focus is always some 30-40mm. It appears that the reflective surfaces acts as miniscule convex mirrors creating an imaginairy subject about that distant behind the CD.

I'll upload some in a while.

 

[Andre]

Three spotlights were positioned to the right, creating the three beams as reflexions

With the CD in focus at the minimum distance of 31 cm (1:1 with the 100mm macro lens, F11):

with the reflections best in focus with the focus ring showing 35cm distance (camera unmoved on tripod).

(note that the apparent/virtual zoom changes with change in focus distance)

 

[Andre]

This is a though one to take.

The focussing system refuses to work on all that black, so that had to be done manually and guess what Gizmo does when you hover around him with a big camera close to his face.

Anyway, it's entered in the challenge "yellow"

Drizzle, you can download again.

 

[drizzle]

OMG! *faints*

 

[Andy Resnick]

Three spotlights were positioned to the right, creating the three beams as reflexions

With the CD in focus at the minimum distance of 31 cm (1:1 with the 100mm macro lens,

with the reflections best in focus with the focus ring showing 35cm distance (camera unmoved on tripod).


(note that the apparent/virtual zoom changes with change in focus distance)

Just tossing out ideas, what happens when you focus to infinity? The diffraction pattern should still look sharp since diffraction picks out specific angles. And, where was the light(s)- how far from the lens? Were you perhaps imaging the lights in the second photo?

 

[Andre]

Just tossing out ideas, what happens when you focus to infinity? The diffraction pattern should still look sharp since diffraction picks out specific angles. And, where was the light(s)- how far from the lens? Were you perhaps imaging the lights in the second photo?

The last is the most likely, appartently the distorted imaginary images of the lights are a few centimeters behind the CD, when the focus is distinctly sharpest. The actual position of the three spotlights was some 15 cm to the right. At infinity setting everything is blurred.

 

[Andre]

In case I was missed, The weather was excellent and I was on a photo mission today.

One token of the result here:

check here for a larger download

 

[Andre]

Also made this one that evening:

It's entered in the week challenge here.

http://masters.galleries.dpreview.com.s3.amazonaws.com/923334.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=14Y3MT0G2J4Y72K3ZXR2&Expires=1297976772&Signature=MGTqZqzipdf5DpqZC0ag%2b90nmAg%3d

 

[Andre]

The challenge is conceptual photography, for instance expressing a word that's not clear from the picture

So I entered this:

But which word is implied??

 

[redpenguin]

Here's some more shots from the mill the day after the 35W collapsed..

 

[redpenguin]

Some signs that didn't make the cut...

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Nice, redpenguin, I really like the photo you entered in the contest, and also the one of the same subject here, particularly, as well.

 

[redpenguin]

Thanks for the comments fuzzy.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Since we had a snow day today, I worked on photographing a glass bowl. Nothing fancy- just a pressed-glass pattern. I had a blindingly white background (snow through a window), and took two sets- one backlit with the snow, and the other side-lit using the 85mm f/1.4. The images are 100% crops. I wanted to capture the diffractive effect of glass, and with my eye I could barely make out faint rainbows. Well:

[PLAIN]http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/912/dsc4386.jpg

[PLAIN]http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/9322/dsc4384v.jpg

[PLAIN]http://img573.imageshack.us/img573/3274/dsc4391e.jpg

[PLAIN]http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3564/dsc4390t.jpg

These are unprocessed, and look a kajillion times more vivid than by eye. The first pair of images are backlit, and show that stepping down the aperture (f/1.4 top, f/18 below) increases the vividness of the color. The next two are sidelit, same apertures, and show that in this case, stepping down the aperture increases the contrast, but the vivid color is always present.

My thinking is that shooting glass (or ice, or water) is fundamentally different than shooting opaque objects- water and glass don't absorb the light, only scatter it, and so photographing glass objects is a lot like photographing a light source directly: extreme changes in contrast, etc. I guess the message here is that shooting with as small an aperture as possible will help bring out any rainbows present.

 

[Borek]

These are unprocessed, and look a kajillion times more vivid than by eye.

"Unprocessed" or "not processed by me after it was automatically processed by the camera"

 

[Borek]

I have a problem here:

Same prime lens (100mm 2.8L macro), same ISO, both pictures taken from the tripod standing in both cases in exactly the same position, with the same external flash, distance about 2 meters, ISO 100, 8.0/200 - the only difference is a body. One is 400D other is 7D. Both crops 1:1. "Standard" picture mode in both cases (which means slight automatic sharpening).

7D is much less sharper. I would say surprisingly less sharper. Does it mean it is defective? I have no idea how they should compare, but I don't like what I see. From the 1:1 crops Andre posted I felt like the image should be crisp sharp, but it is obviously not a case.

 

[Andre]

Yes that's clearly not good.

This is a 100% crop (albeit fully sharpened with dpp)

of this 1:1 shot with the 100mm non-L lens on the 7D.

For better benchmarking you could use the test pictures of dpreview,in any test, for instance:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicDMCGF2/page18.asp

Scroll down to the 4 crops with coins visible, select any camera you want in the pull down menu and compare. You can also download the full shot from that.

Incidently, the concept of this particular picture was "magnificent" or 'magnified cent'

 

[Andre]

Does it mean it is defective? .

Obviously the result is not right but it could be a focus problem. How stable is the tripod? I see that my tripod is not stable enough, so I shoot using remote control in the life view mode (using manual focussing), so the mirror is already up.

The problem could also be the image stabilisation fighting the tripod. IS should be off on the tripod. Furthermore, it could be a calibration problem of the focussing. make an oblique picture of a yardstick, noting the exact focus point and see if there is a shift in focus. The 7D allows for individual lens focussing adjustments (menu C.Fn III 5). One of the reasons why it's so expensive.

 

[Borek]

Obviously the result is not right but it could be a focus problem. How stable is the tripod? I see that my tripod is not stable enough, so I shoot using remote control in the life view mode (using manual focussing), so the mirror is already up.

1/200 sec and a flash, that shouldn't be a problem. But just in case pictures were taken with 2 sec self-timer to avoid shaking.

The problem could also be the image stabilisation fighting the tripod. IS should be off on the tripod.

And it was off, forgot to state it in the first post. But at short times it is not that important, it becomes an issue when taking tripod pictures with longer times, like 0.2".

Furthermore, it could be a calibration problem of the focussing. make an oblique picture of a yardstick, noting the exact focus point and see if there is a shift in focus.

That's the only thing that remains to be checked. DOF is about 8 cm in front of the books and 8.5 cm behind, book that lies flat is less than 2cm behind the fronts, so there is a little bit of error margin. I have spotted problem using other lens, so I am afraid it is not lens related (edit: or it will be a problem with all lenses). But I will check.

 

[Andre]

Right it's indeed beginning to look like a camera problem, although the focussing may be off for all lenses by miss management of the microadjust menu. But if that doesn't help to get something crisp and clear, then you run out of the options.