Photography

[Guest Murph]

Oh, Yes, the Canyon De Chelly, a must, must. And Zion as well. Please post some of your work.

 

 

If at all possible, do the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and Canyon De Chelly in the northeast end of AZ. And of course the Hoover Dam, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, ...

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[Ivanhoe]

Oh, Yes, the Canyon De Chelly, a must, must.  And Zion as well.  Please post some of your work.

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I'll have to scan them in first* (not to mention finding that damn sheet of paper where I recorded my acct & password for my online photo album). Scanning them in means I've got to clean my desk to make room for my scanner. Needless to say, don't hold your breath. Also will need to pull the prints from the cheap binder pages they're in.

 

* Most or all of my shots from AZ were done with print film, mostly Kodacolor VR-G 100 and 400.

[Guest Murph]

http://www.wisner.com/

 

I like 4x5, I have a buddy who uses an old 5x7 Deardorff and an 8x10 Korona. He really wants an 11x14" camera.

 

Nothing beats large format for making you LOOK at your photography. Plus with a pack of 6 holders (12 shots), you pick and choose the best photograph.

 

http://www.calumetphoto.com/ctl?PAGE=Contr....CatTree&page=4

 

A 5x7 Wisner, a mere $3,195 WITHOUT LENS.

[Stevely]

Thanks to work commitments, I haven't had any good opportunities to take photos yet but I should have time on Thursday afternoon, though I won't be able to visit the spots you suggested Ivanhoe.

 

I did manage to snap this:

Pimp my Marine ride!

 

Yes, it's what you think it is.

[Guest Murph]

Anyone know how to apply the Zone System to Digital photography?

[Ivanhoe]

Damn, I need more money. Been grinding over the specs, and I Must Have The Canon EOS-20D. Minor problem is the body is almost twice the price, street, that I can reasonably pay. The Photokina show is coming up but I doubt that price reductions will come in time for a purchase. Anybody here willing to give me about $700US for my Nikon CoolPix 950? I'll throw in a 4-pack of fresh Duracells.

 

Stopped by the local photo shop to pick up some film, and asked if they had a D70 in stock. Nope, they claim Nikon is dumping all their USA stock on the big retailers like Circuit City.

 

I've read recently that its gonna be awhile before D-SLR CCD/CMOS sensors are 35 mm across, which means the focal length multiplier effect is going to be around for awhile, which means it will continue to be a pain to find true wide angle lenses.

[Ivanhoe]

For you "bird" watchers, you'll find some nice photography at http://www.nice-tits.org/.

[Ol Paint]

Thanks to work commitments, I haven't had any good opportunities to take photos yet but I should have time on Thursday afternoon, though I won't be able to visit the spots you suggested Ivanhoe.

 

I did manage to snap this:

Pimp my Marine ride!

 

Yes, it's what you think it is.

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Funny, but I still prefer this one:

 

I am holding off until the Digital Rebel comes down to $400 (in other words, I am too cheap to fork over the cash). I am kind of locked in on this one since I'll be able to interchange the lenses from my Rebel 2000.

 

Douglas

[DesertEagle]

I've read recently that its gonna be awhile before D-SLR CCD/CMOS sensors are 35 mm across, which means the focal length multiplier effect is going to be around for awhile, which means it will continue to be a pain to find true wide angle lenses.

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Yup. It's going to be a while. If you want the sensor, you have to shell out the big money for the canon. Nikon's flagship D2X still uses the APS-sized sensor. On the other hand, it will result in a larger market for the smaller focal length lenses. The market is young but soon you will see wide angle prime lenses other than the 10mm fisheye. Light has to hit the sensor at just the right angle or you will end up with all kinds of ugly stuff. There's a bit of engineering going on right now. Just remember 10 years ago when people said zoom lenses suck. Then came aspeherical elements and ED glass. These are cool times.

 

I'm seriously thinking about a D70. It's got great metering and can flash synch up to 1/500th. That means you can take flash pictures that don't look like they are flash pictures. Buydig has the kit for $1029 after the rebate.

[Ivanhoe]

For the D70, I've tried to come up with a lens plan. Here's one possible lens set;

 

1) Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G kit lens

... checkbook recovery period ...

2) Sigma 24mm f/1.8 macro $300 street

3) Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro $370 street

4) Sigma 1.4x teleconverter $170 street

 

The reason for the two Sigma primes is simply to get reasonably fast speed without coughing up a kilobuck per lens. Ordinarily I wouldn't think about Sigmas, but I've seen some decent reviews of their middlin' and upper end lenses that are fairly complementary. If the supply end of things responds intelligently to the expected demand, then there ought to be nice primes in my price range from Nikon and the secondary makers like Tamron.

 

Everybody waxes poetic over the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens, but with the 1.5 focal length multiplier I'm not sure I'd get that much use out of it. When the weather clears I intend to go out with my T70 & zooms and note down what focal lengths are most common for me; I expect about 35mm equiv for wides and 100-150 equiv for tele shots will be my standards, but we'll see.

[Guest Murph]

If I cannot afford the Kodak DCS Pro/n, then a Nikon D70 w/ 24-120mm lens to start would be OK. I want at least 6.1 megapixels, and would prefer more. BUT....

 

Check out the new Shutterbug magazine for a Photokina report. Shutterbug

[John Nelson]

OK, here's a simple question for those with far more photographic knowledge than I.

The full res photos from my Digital Rebel are 3072x2048 pixels, roughly 2.5 to 3MB in size. If I want to upload them to an online photo service to get developed into 4x6 or 5x7 print photos, what size should the uploaded files be in order to not lose any clarity? IOW, do I have to send the entire 3MB file in order to get optimal picture quality, or will an uploaded 1024x768 file do just as well for a print of that size? How do you calculate how much pixel resolution you need for a photo of a certain size, above which more pixels are not necessary, or below which you start to lose clarity you could have had? Can anyone understand what I'm trying to ask?

[Guest Murph]

Loading them at a lower resolution will lower the quality.

 

D70 or D100? Which is a better camera?

 

24-85mm or 24-120mm lens?

[Spiff]

If I want to upload them to an online photo service to get developed into 4x6 or 5x7 print photos, what size should the uploaded files be in order to not lose any clarity?

 

It depends on the printer that they are using. Remember you are printing so the screen resolution doesn't matter. What matters is the print size (in inches) and print resolution (in dots per inch "DPI"). For good labs that use something like a Pegasus printer a good rule of thumb is to size the photos to whatever size you want at 250 dpi. Keep in mind that your screen can only display a maximum of 72 or 96 dpi depending on your platform

 

The other issue is to just make sure that your screen is decently color balanced so that what you see on the screen is what you get in your printout. If you size this way, and your screen is balanced, you can actually get wonderful prints from Sams Club of all places (and cheap too).

[Ivanhoe]

OK, here's a simple question for those with far more photographic knowledge than I.

The full res photos from my Digital Rebel are 3072x2048 pixels, roughly 2.5 to 3MB in size. 

 

At that size, you must be saving JPEGs. I suggest you read up on using the RAW file format. With Photoshop and other software tools, there are a lot of editing things that can be done, but you can't put information back in after its been lost by the RAW->JPEG conversion. Memory's cheap these days, just transfer the day's shooting to your laptop or whatever. If you get that once in a lifetime shot, that you want to have printed by a quality photo shop, you want to have the best possible data on disk.

[Guest Murph]

Fuji S3 Pro

I've got it bad. I made the mistake of going into San Antonio to the Camera Exchange. I want either the D100 Nikon or the Fuji S-3 Pro. I've got it badly, and need a new Digital SLR. OMG, I need a new camera so I can get back into real photography.S3 Pro review

 

The D-100 feels better to me than the D-70.

 

Nikon D-100

[Spiff]

I've been using the D-100 for a couple of years now. Overall it has been a great camera, and I have no real complaints. It is a great deal for the money. I haven't had any direct experience with the S3. It is about $1000 more than the D-100 and I understand that the color reproduction might be a little sketchy. It seems mainly like a better build quality S2. The S3 has a better sensor which allows you to *interpolate* a higher resolution (the straight unprocessed max resolution is pretty much comparable to the D-100, and allows you to use AA's instead of the Li Ion battery (although see my comments below on this). In all, I'm not sure if the S3 is worth a whole $1000 more for what little advantages you get, but thats just my opinion.

 

A few comments on the D-100:

 

The battery life is incredible. One great thing has been never worrying about the battery conking out at the wrong time. I took my D-100 on a four day hiking trip through Big Bend National Park and still had plenty of battery life to spare (took about 400 pics).

 

The ISO setting only goes down to 200. I primarily do landscape stuff on the tripod and it would be nice to trade some longer exposure times for the higher quality you get at lower ISO settings. Still, ISO 200 is plenty sharp.

Don't use anything higher than ISO 800 or risk having a significant amount of noise in the image.

 

Images from the camera straight out of the box tend to be a little on the underexposed side. I think Nikon did this on purpose because you can always adjust the exposure up but you cant get detail back from overexposed areas. There are several sites out there that have custom exposure profiles you can load to correct for this on the camera. When you shoot photos with this camera meter like you would if you were shooting slide film instead of print film. Metering is excellent.

 

Also... you will need to do some sharpening on all your images after you get them off the camera. If you use the autosharpening feature, the results can be hit or miss so I tend not to use it. "Normal" sharpening tends to be too soft, and "High" sharpening tends to be overkill. I usually like to go with the more conservative "Normal" setting and sharpen in software when I get the photos off the camera. I have had excellent results this way.

 

Slow flash sync time. Flash sync is limited to 1/180 which really sucks for daytime flash use when you want to fill in some shadows. Overall though, the flash system on the D-100 beats Canon hands down.

 

Like I mentioned before, if your system is calibrated, you can get dirt cheap but excellent prints from any of the Sams Clubs in San Antonio. They are mass production outfits so they are focused on untrained employess putting out print "quantity" rather than print "quality" but the dirty little secret is that they also use top notch Fuji Frontier printers. If you get the color balanced right on your system and send them out to Sams "precorrected" you can get some beautiful prints for a pittance. They key is doing the right preprocessing yourself.

 

Anyway, good luck in your search.

Edited January 16, 2005 by Spiff

[John Nelson]

At that size, you must be saving JPEGs. I suggest you read up on using the RAW file format. With Photoshop and other software tools, there are a lot of editing things that can be done, but you can't put information back in after its been lost by the RAW->JPEG conversion. Memory's cheap these days, just transfer the day's shooting to your laptop or whatever. If you get that once in a lifetime shot, that you want to have printed by a quality photo shop, you want to have the best possible data on disk.

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The Digital Rebel only takes photos in either JPEG or RAW format. The RAW photos do take up a huge amount of file space. I have a 3072x2048 JPEG of the Nautilus that is 2.84 MB. The RAW version (same resolution) is 18 MB and, comparing them side by side, I can't really see that much of a difference between them. Maybe that becomes more apparent if you're trying to enlarge them in photos, but the jpegs, although they clearly must involve some loss, appear just as sharp to me. And I'd like to get more than 28 photos on my 512 MB compact flash card. Is the RAW format that much more advantageous?

 

And geez Murph, sounds like you're going to have to scratch that itch before too much longer.

[Guest Murph]

I know, its tearing me up. But I have to wait for some $$$ to come available, so here is what I am planning:

 

d-100 Nikon, 50mm f/1.4, and 24-120mm lens, 1 gb 80x card.

 

And geez Murph, sounds like you're going to have to scratch that itch before too much longer.

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[Ivanhoe]

The ISO setting only goes down to 200. I primarily do landscape stuff on the tripod and it would be nice to trade some longer exposure times for the higher quality you get at lower ISO settings. Still, ISO 200 is plenty sharp.

Don't use anything higher than ISO 800 or risk having a significant amount of noise in the image.

 

Have you tried using a neutral density filter? If you knock a stop or two off the incoming light intensity, seems like you should get enough time on the CCD to get noise reduction.

[Ivanhoe]

Is the RAW format that much more advantageous?

 

http://www.photo.net/learn/raw/

[Guest Murph]

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond70/page3.asp

 

D70 vs D100.

 

D-100 feels better even though its an older camera.

[Guest Murph]

Brilliant. Check out this guys website. He's opinionated, but hey, that's ok. http://www.kenrockwell.com/

 

The Seven Levels of Photographers

 

A Spiritual and Satirical Guide. I wrote this as a joke one morning and now the whole world thinks it is some sort of Ten Commandments. Lighten up folks!

© 2004 KenRockwell.com

 

Please help KenRockwell..com

Also in English French Italian Chinese Polish Russian Spanish Hungarian

 

(I'm using the Western convention of "he" to refer to both genders)

 

Artist: Top Level 7 (equivalent to "Heaven" in Christian mythology)

 

This is the highest level.

 

An artist fixes his imagination in a tangible form called a photograph. He captures the spirit of place or person, real or imagined, in this photograph and the viewer responds to this.

 

An artist is a complete master of his tools. When creating art an artist transcends common existence as his spirit flies up to meet that which he is capturing. He may practice and learn his tools while he is not creating, however when creating the camera becomes an extension of his mind. No conscious thought is expended on the technical issues with which he is a virtuoso while creating photographs.

 

To make a musical analogy, a musician may woodshed his scales, but when he's jamming he's not even thinking about fingerings. He's lost in the passion of the moment.

 

Just like professional surfers who have a dozen boards or pro guitarists who have 23 axes, an artist may have a slew of cameras, each for a different purpose.

 

Likewise, other artists may only have one camera, or none at all. It just doesn't matter.

 

Artists sometimes dress funny and tend to stay up late. They usually prefer to photograph attractive young women and are proud of it.

 

No one ever sees their work since they have crummy ability to promote themselves, and sadly, usually don't even appreciate their own excellent work. Those that do drop down to Whore, which sadly and paradoxically means you will never see the work of a true artist unless you know one personally. Good artists are usually too embarrassed to show their work to anyone unless you are intimate with them, since their work is their soul.

 

Artists use any sort of camera, including pinholes and disposables, or 8 x 10s. They use whatever instrument they need to create what they want.

 

Whore: Level 6 back to top

 

A whore is an artist who sells his soul by accepting money or drugs for his art.

 

By lowering himself to this level his vision is compromised.

 

Why? Because when one depends on selling one's soul to pay for one's food and pad one does not screw with the program, which means that one does not try new styles.

 

If a whore's work pays his bills after years of trying, it's unlikely any whore will be open to trying new styles while he still needs the dough.

 

Artists with representation (meaning they are represented by a gallery or an artists' representatives just as pimps do in the sex trade) may loose their representation they change their style.

 

Therefore, art for sale from one person rarely gets better or different.

 

The style that sells is all a whore's johns and pimps (representatives) want to see. See Barnbaum's book on artistry. It is extraordinarily difficult for a successful whore to change styles once one has been accepted.

 

More about the whore class at level 10 here.

 

Amateur: Level 5 back to top

 

People who earn less than half of their income from photography are amateurs. This has nothing to do with the quality of their photography.

 

This person loves to create photographs. Good amateurs of pure spirit can transcend the other levels directly to being an artist.

 

People who shoot weddings and etc. on weekends as a side line from their day jobs are still amateurs; they just charge for their photos. And as you read here they may also charge a lot for their snaps.

 

Amateurs who think that better cameras will improve their photos are at risk of descending to the lowest level of equipment measurbator. Too many amateurs have been misled by camera makers into thinking that they need good cameras for good images. This thought is poison to creating art.

 

Amateurs who loose themselves in creating great images are set for a path of enlightenment.

 

Being an amateur is a good thing; from this level one can rise to the level of artist rather easily.

 

Amateurs almost always shoot Canon SLRs.

 

Snapshooter: Level 4 back to top

 

This is my mom and most people. These people want memories, as opposed to photographs or cameras.

 

Snapshooters who are graphic artists or otherwise visually literate people often make fantastic images that impress everyone. These snapshooters are artists and don't even realize it. They usually dress better than the artists who think they really are artists.

 

Believe it: it's the photographer who makes an image, not a camera.

 

Snapshooters use point-and-shoot and disposable cameras, which give the same excellent results as the Leicas, Nikons, Canons and Contaxes used by everyone else.

 

Professional: Level 3 back to top

 

A professional photographer is a person who earns his entire living (100%) from the sale of photographs.

 

Professionals do not create art for a living; they create images for commerce. They usually have some familiarity with the tools and can get out decent images, however they may or may not be able to capture imagination.

 

Of course professionals may create great images, but that's on their own time.

 

Professionals spend very little time worrying about cameras, except when they need to get them repaired. They spend most of their time looking for work and pissing about how all the other photographers in town are dropping their prices.

 

Professionals spend more on film and lab fees each month than they spend on camera gear in a year.

 

There are no professional nature photographers. They all either have day jobs or make their wives support them.

 

Professionals shoot Nikon SLRs, Mamiya medium format and Calumet 4x5" cameras. They cannot afford gear as good as most serious amateurs.

 

Unless you are a commercial photography buyer or know one as a friend you have not heard of professional photographers. The ones you may have seen in camera ads proclaiming that they use this or that camera are just spokesmodels.

 

Professionals don't have websites and don't put out technical newsletters. Those people are usually amateurs.

 

Rich Amateur: Level 2 back to top

 

These are amateurs who, by having too much money, buy lots of equipment which can fetter their freedom of expression. They are mostly men, and many are old or retired.

 

Rich amateurs shoot Leicas, Contaxes, Alpas, Hasselblads and Linhof 4x5s. These are great cameras, but the results are the same as the Zenits, Pentaxes, Bronicas and Tachiharas.

 

The poorer rich amateurs shoot Nikon or even Canon SLRs.

 

Lately these idiots are getting digital SLRs designed for newspapers like the Canon EOS-1D or Nikon D1X, which give technically poorer results than the film cameras used by snapshooters. The really stupid people have waited for the $7,000 Contax N Digital, which is a less useful camera than the Nikon or Canon digital SLRs, and still makes technically poorer images than a cheap film SLR.

 

Bad rich amateurs think fuzzy B/W images of poor people are art.

 

Some rich amateurs fall into the bottom spiritual level easily because they worry too much about equipment, others go straight on to create great art since they don't have any worries about equipment since they think they own the best. Oddly, few rich amateurs produce ordinary work. It either rules or sucks.

 

Equipment Measurbator: Bottom Level 1 (equivalent to "Hell" in Christian mythology)

 

back to top

 

These men (and they are all men) have no interest in art or photography because they have no souls. Lacking souls they cannot express imagination or feeling, which is why their images, if they ever bother to make any, suck.

 

These folks have analysis paralysis and never accomplish anything.

 

Does poring over a microscope analyzing test images has anything to do with photographing a Joshua tree at dawn? Of course not. Even worse, time wasted concentrating on tests is time not spent learning useful aspects of photography and certainly time that could have been better spent actually photographing. Test just enough to know what your gear can do, and then get on with real photography.

 

They are interested solely in equipment for its own sake. They will talk your ear off for hours if you let them, but as soon as you ask to see their portfolio their bravado scurries away, or they think you want to see their cameras or stocks. You can read why cameras simply don't matter here.

 

Most seem to come from technical avocations, like engineering, computers and sciences. These people worry so much about trying to put numerical ratings on things that they are completely oblivious to the fact that cameras or test charts have nothing to do with the spirit of an image. Because they worry so much about measuring camera performance we have dubbed them "Measurbators." Unfortunately, many of them wander into KenRockwell.com looking for information on camera performance.

 

Many of them also play with audio equipment, computers or automobiles. They enjoy these toys just like their cameras for their own sake, but rarely if ever actually use them for the intended purposes.

 

Younger ones play video games or engage in chat rooms and web surfing. Older ones join "camera" clubs. (You should join photography clubs, but never camera clubs or any clubs that try to score art, since art is entirely subjective and cannot be scored numerically.) Likewise, these people never create anything notable with any of this other gear either, but they sure get excited by just having, getting or talking to you about it.

 

The one type of gear these people ignore is the only type of gear that actually helps: lighting.

 

Someone with a decent portfolio is not an equipment measurbator. Someone with more cameras than decent photos just may be. People with websites teeming with technical articles but few interesting photographs probably are.

 

Do not under any circumstances deal with these people, talk to them, read their websites or especially ask them for photography advice. To the innocent they seem like fonts of knowledge, however their sick, lifeless souls would love to drag you into their own personal Hells and have your spirit forever mired in worrying about how sharp your lens is. If you start worrying about this and you'll never photograph anything again except brick walls and test charts.

 

These people are easy to identify. If you've read this far you've probably seen their websites. They always have lots of info about equipment, but very few real photographs. Beware of any information from any website not loaded with photography you admire.

 

Other people have other words for these people. This article here adds some more perspective.

 

I had to pull most of the photos of equipment off my site because these people were spending more time looking at my equipment than my art! The bandwidth for which I pay was being eaten up by these idiots looking at my lenses, instead of looking at the photos in my gallery which is the whole point of this site. That's why all the stupid pages like this one are in yellow, so that their eyes hurt too much to waste too much time on the nuts and bolts.

 

Most people who waste my time e-mailing me with technical and equipment questions through this site unfortunately belong to this unenlightened bottom group. Almost anyone who actually worries about the level they occupy belong to the bottom. Many of these folks stalk the Internet, and spend hours getting off "contributing" to technical websites and photography chat rooms like Photo.net, www.dpreview.com and photocritique.net instead of making photos. The guys here aren't too bad, and most of the Leica people here are just equipment collectors.

[DesertEagle]

The D100 has a metal body and can take a vertical handgrip. The D70 uses plastic but has newer technology. Personally I find the D70 easier to operate. Controls like ISO use buttons on the back instead of a knob on top.

 

Anyone planning a 24-120 should seriously consider a wider lens. The 18-70 has the equivalent range of a 27-105 in 35mm terms. If you buy a 24-120, you don't get anything wider than a 36mm equivalent lens. The big downside to the smaller APS sensors is that it's tougher to creat wide angle lenses. Right now the 12-24 costs as much as the camera. Give it a little time and you'll see a 14-50 or something like that.

[Spiff]

Have you tried using a neutral density filter? If you knock a stop or two off the incoming light intensity, seems like you should get enough time on the CCD to get noise reduction.

 

As I understand it, the ISO setting adjusts the sensitivity (or gain) on the CCD, like a true ISO corresponds to film sensitivity. So even if I use a ND filter it doesn't change anything on the CCD itself. Now the D100 does have a built in noise-reduction algorithm which kicks in if the exposure time is over 2 sec or something (will have to check), is that what you were referring to? Still the ISO 200 setting works fine, and I may just be talking like the guy on Spinal Tap who has the amp that is better because it goes to "11."

 

I actually use a set of graduated ND filters but they are more for compressing the dynamic range of the shot (e.g. bringing down a bright sky to be able to catch a darker foreground) rather than lengthening exposure time.