Head towards guilottine

[crisscross]

Having been away from the site for a couple of weeks, I can't help noticing the sort of gravitational tendency for it to become a <Canon camera - CS4 PP - on a PC> site. Colin's expertise in that area is invaluable to guys using that combo.

However I would like to see some acknowledgement by thread division or similar that some us just don't want to know about the complexities of CS and can get, say, 95% as good results much more simply and ENJOY the process. I often process a few shots in NX2 as a method of relaxation. Anyone, hand on heart, say they find using CS or even PSE relaxing???

Likewise some of us have chosen Nikon or other cameras, other software and/or Mac computers as thinking adults preferring an intuitive approach to a text-book one. Just as some historical novels no doubt make a history don cringe but convey to us a feel of a period in a way he never could because we would have gone to sleep after 5 minutes or 5 pages.

[JK6065]

I think this case is a bit like supply and demand. If there's a lot of knowledge available about Canon camera's and PP CS4, than that is what people are going to look for over here. If there are a lot of people asking things about Canon and PP CS4 than that's what is interesting to learn more about, because of you wondering for a possible reason fot the popularity of it and you try to help solving the problems.

It might be a good thing to have this forum as a knowledge supply for Canon camera's and PP CS4 (and other more popular and common used stuff) because that is what seems to be wanted. Maybe (also) for the purpose you pointed out (relaxing or anything) else it's good to have this forum for more than just Canon and PP. Maybe, if found necessairy, there could be created some new topics for deviding the problems into categories. But i think it's a good thing for the forum to be supply mainly for which will most frequently be asked for.

[kevinbythebeach]

well judging by the number of canon entries into the contests versus the nikon and others entries...I'd have to say there are probably more canon owners that visit this site .

I have found this site and its members advice and pictures pricless in advice and expertise..
most of the images posted here by other members are amazingly inspirational and are great examples of what can be done with these new fangled devices.

Criss.. I can undertsand your frustration at seeing all theses techinical posts about cs3 and 4 and ps ..I ve tried for awhile to resist using photoshop and its dense unintuitive menus. But alas there a just some things you cant do in other programs...And since it seems to be an industry standard across many aspects of photgrapghy its simply a join em or get left behind thing for me...
If yah lived in the US i'd send u a free copy of cs3...

Likewise some of us have chosen Nikon or other cameras, other software and/or Mac computers as thinking adults preferring an intuitive approach to a text-book one.

I am not sure there is much intuitiveness left in digital photgraphy...maybe for composition. But after that its all techinical..and yah got to have the basics understood for that intuitiveness to look good in an image.

Maybe there should be a thread where we post un procedssed images with absolutly no editing at all,,,not even cropping...or sharpening or brightening...

call it the pure thread or something.. really..

[Dave Humphries]

Maybe there should be a thread where we post un-processed images with absolutly no editing at all; not even cropping... or sharpening or brightening...

call it the pure thread or something.. really..

Not a bad idea, only thing I'd say beware of though is that they may need to be re-sized, or they could be HUGE and after 3 or 4 posts, the thread would take so long to load, we'd all just give up.

If people have external hosting, like PBase, it isn't a problem, because they automatically create 3 smaller size images everytime I post one big one, "here's one I made earlier";



What I did there was display the 800 pixel one in line, but hyperlink the image to the fullsize capture (4288 x 2848). I believe it matches your criteria, a jpg fine straight from the new camera a few weeks ago when I'd been using it for just 8 days.

It is a Mandarin male ('duck'); Aix galericulata
Nikon D5000 + Sigma 18-250 at 250mm, 1/750s @ f6.3, ISO400.

If the idea takes off, we'll split this into a new thread as you suggest Kevin, (unless you've already started one)

[kevinbythebeach]

nice Picture Yah so maybe cropping ought to be allowed..

I was thinking not justa new htread but a new section header...too make it more official like...
some threads kinda die off into obscurity...like my sports thread..lol...if its a header it might help prod people to post....

[Dave Humphries]

Yeah, That is the problem, using the central focus point, or spot/centre weighted metering, is going to lead to less than ideal compositions.

However, I COULD have got it more right; if I'd known I was going to put it in a "Pure" thread, I could have used one of the side focus points and AE locked and recomposed. If you want to find the most skilled photographers, then that's the way to do it. Digital does make one lazy at the taking stage with regard to composition, etc.

Of course there will be many things where it simply isn't possible to get a half decent shot without say sharpening, etc. (OK I'm ignoring what the camera did when it created the jpg).

Any further thoughts anyone?

Chris,

Not sure this is what you had in mind for this thread, but at least we haven't said PS, CS, PC or Mac for almost an hour!

[crisscross]

Thanks Kevin and others for considered replies.

well judging by the number of canon entries into the contests versus the nikon and others entries...I'd have to say there are probably more canon owners that visit this site

I may be wrong, but I think it may have something to do with Nikon and others being a bit daunted by the quantity of Canon entries that come up early on and thinking that the shots posted therein are the 'genre' required

I am not sure there is much intuitiveness left in digital photgraphy...maybe for composition. But after that its all techinical..and yah got to have the basics understood for that intuitiveness to look good in an image.

My whole point is that with a different approach this is not quite the case; the basics as typified by the Tutorial section, but not beyond that level

Maybe there should be a thread where we post un procedssed images with absolutly no editing at all,,,not even cropping...or sharpening or brightening...

call it the pure thread or something.. really..

I doubt that would work, some types of shot are fine ex-camera, most, especially in foul light we have most of time in UK, need correction.

I am not against PP, just I think I get perfectly adequate results by, say, just dragging in of the unused ends of the tone curve and mauling it a bit; no idea about the numbers, just do it until the magic point comes when the saturation of a section of the image livens up (without touching the saturation slide). Sometimes I do more, even go to PSE, usually for FocusMagic movement correction or masked copy and paste.

Not sure this is what you had in mind for this thread, but at least we haven't said PS, CS, PC or Mac for almost an hour!

Thanks Dave, just keep it up for a week or so. How about splitting the "Image post-processing and Printing" thread into "Image post-processing - CS & PSE" and "Image post-processing - other programmes".

I think we could do with more divisions of "Nature & Architecture" and "People & pets" too. VBulletin software can be set with a dozen or so 'recent pics' followed by a longer category list, see eg
http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/pictures/ .... but I know we have extra problems not having 'in-house' galleries that might make that difficult

PS maybe as you do most of the welcomes you could encourage everyone to use a signature as you and I do already giving Camera, (lenses) and PP used

[Colin Southern]

I think we could do with more divisions of "Nature & Architecture" and "People & pets" too.

Hi Chris,

It's up to Sean, but to be honest, if anything, I think we need less categories, not more (case in point; we already have sperate forums for compacts and SLR cameras - and yet there hasn't been a post in the entire compact forum for 4 days now). More categories require more effort to keep in touch with what's happening in all areas and I suspect that people are more likely to select just one or two areas that interest them, and turn a blind eye to what's happening in other forums ...

... and so the userbase essentially gets fragmented, with less interaction between members, which - with member participation hovering around the "critical mass" point would probably turn out to be quite detrimental.

[McQ]

Having been away from the site for a couple of weeks, I can't help noticing the sort of gravitational tendency for it to become a <Canon camera - CS4 PP - on a PC> site. Colin's expertise in that area is invaluable to guys using that combo.

However I would like to see some acknowledgement by thread division or similar that some us just don't want to know about the complexities of CS and can get, say, 95% as good results much more simply and ENJOY the process. I often process a few shots in NX2 as a method of relaxation. Anyone, hand on heart, say they find using CS or even PSE relaxing???

Likewise some of us have chosen Nikon or other cameras, other software and/or Mac computers as thinking adults preferring an intuitive approach to a text-book one. Just as some historical novels no doubt make a history don cringe but convey to us a feel of a period in a way he never could because we would have gone to sleep after 5 minutes or 5 pages.

Hi Chris,

I really appreciate the feedback. You make some good points about a need for hearing more from people using other camera and software companies. I agree, there is certainly a clear majority of people posting replies to and questions on Canon cameras and/or Photoshop.

It's a bit of a circular issue, as you point out: you would like to hear more from Nikon/Sony/etc, but feel that this portion of visitors potentially isn't posting/replying as much because they don't see many other similarly "allied" members participating. The first thing that comes to mind for me here is voting: the minority view can easily get disillusioned and therefore participate even less than they would otherwise. You and many others are doing a great job though in making sure this minority view is heard.

Now...to the Nikon vs Canon issue... I think there are many technically minded people in both camps. I'd be careful to generalize about what has become millions of people with each camera brand, from all over the globe. Some prefer a more methodical and even quantitative approach to setting up their photograph, while others prefer to "go with the flow" and let their emotions guide them, worrying about the more technical bits (if at all) when deciding which photos are keepers, or in post-processing. Some get their enjoyment out of being on-site, some out of getting *the* shot, some out of pushing the technical limits of noise/detail/DoF, and for others it's strictly business and what matters most is the bottom line. Regardless, we're all in it for different reasons. I think the biggest predictors of our methodology include what types of subject matter we like, what our background is in and what our profession is in -- our choice of camera model or software brand is likely much less of an indicator.

So what can we do about it? The problem is, the preponderance of Canon people on the internet is not something specific to www.cambridgeincolour.com -- it generally also holds true for many other photography-oriented forums as well. In fact, it's an internet-wide phenomenon, which to my knowledge isn't proportional to camera sales by each company. Here's some revealing statistics:

Google monthly searches for "nikon camera" in May 2009 - 2,740,000
Google monthly searches for "canon camera" in May 2009 - 6,120,000

A similar ratio holds true for other camera or lens-related terms as well.

One option would be to give Nikon users a separate place in the forums, as you suggest. This would effectively split both the Digital SLR and Compact Camera categories, adding two new forums as a result. This is a track that most other major forums have taken, which I can completely understand. However, with some implementations, it's also quite a shame really. People often align within their respective camps and result in much less cross communication...at least that's been my experience. As a Canon user, I frankly wouldn't have as frequent a dialogue with the many talented Nikon users that I stand a lot to learn from. What I think is most important is to foster an environment where photographers can talk about photography, without having equipment-specific topics getting in the way of this goal. There's a lot of common ground to talk about.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not totally against splitting up forums and creating more equipment (or other) categories. They certainly have their place and purpose. I also think there's ways to implement this in a way that encourages mixing. I just think that timing is critical. If it's done too soon, it might adversely affect participation site-wide. Too late and the existing forums would feel overly crowded and less organized. The idea thus far has been to grow the number of categories along with the site. At the beginning there were far fewer categories; if I had started with too many, then forums participation might not have taken off when it did. The forums would have appeared as though there was little activity since the members would be spread much more thinly at any given time. On the other hand, one could make the argument that having more categories would actually *increase* participation, aside from having better organization, because new members would see that they had a "place" which was was more specific to their needs.

Please understand that this is really just a stream of thought. I just want to make it clear that I've read this thread closely and have given it all some serious thought. I think we can all agree on the fact that there will need to be more categories -- it just comes down to when each of us thinks this should happen.

[Davey]

I am for nont specialising and dividing up myself. I am a fuji compact user but find a lot of canon slr stuff translates easy enough and if not then I just ignore it (or make a note for others who are). I need to use ps for work and nothing else does what it does for me. Sure photography wise there are others that do the same but they don't seemlessly integrate into illustrator and indesign and have streamlined workflows between and a smooth transition when switching between as part of the workflow hence ps is my choice as it's the only thing that does that. I think it's familiarity as I enjoy using cs and find it's relaxing, especially compared with wrestling between several editing and publishing packages that do things very different from each other. For photo editing though I also own gimp on a linux (I'm a zenwalk and slackware user) and notice quite a few other gimp users on here including the odd unix based distro users which is rare for such a small forum.

As for ps I think part of it's strength is it's technical abilities and part is it's wide adoption making support very good. Out of 2 technically equal apps people will go for the one with best community support and how to guides, resources etc that's just the way things work and not just in photography. Perfect balance isn't possible and trying to skew things against the most popular trend often harms balance more than helps find one.

I think there is a good formula here to reach an equilibrium in future as user base grows precisely because it isn't divided up into little boxes.

[Steaphany]

I'm not a member here because of the brand of dSLR that I have, specifically a Sigma SD14. For SD14 specifics, I'm in a couple Sigma only forums whose technical discussions have nearly no relevance to fans/owners of other camera brands.

What brought me here was a community of members consisting of a range of brands, photographic methods, and subject matter from which I can gain both inspiration and to learn brand independent techniques.

Put simply - I see cambridgeincolour is about photography not brand.

Photo experience wise, I've been in a cave since the 1970's where I shot medium and 35mm format doing both B&W and color darkroom processing. Career in electronic & software engineering and other obligations got in the way and when digital photo technology emerged, I waited until the technology advanced sufficiently, from my personal perspective, to get back into it. Last year I purchased my SD14 and been working to catch up. I found the tutorial section and from that wonderful collection of articles, felt that the forums would be comparably valuable.

Regardless of any brand popularity, I feel separating out the community by brand would bias the forum away from photography to focus on technology and manufacturers.

[crisscross]

The camera make should not be that relevent compared to quality of outcome; just it is sometimes a slight pity that an assumption is often made that what applies to one, must apply to all. After a year with a 350D follwed by now 2 with D80 I know this is not the case.

Sean's statistics and the use of 'industry standard' do worry me following my experience when I was working with 3D computer aided design progs. The approach to monopoly that Autocad was getting drove several IMO better progs to the wall, though Microstation fortunately fended off the threat but at the cost of more aggressive commercialism. It had in common with PS a seemingly deliberate user unfriendliness whereas Microstation in co-operation with Apple (before going tooth & claw) developed tutorials and tool tracking to the point you didn't need books and courses. There is no excuse for £x00 progs not to have similar.

Davey may have a point on compatibility, but again this is unforgivable sloppiness of programming for which there is little excuse.

Thank you very much for your very thorough reply Sean. After seeing Cat's pic of Norwich cathedral taken with a 30D (and I suspect ppd with CS) I am also sending an urgent email to my son for the 350D back....er, or perhaps not quite, but with this weekend's pics am becoming much happier about the forum again.

[kevinbythebeach]

CRISS,,,,i think the nikon d80 is a much better camera than the Canon 350D aka rebel XT.

I use the 400d aka rebel xti in the USA and a good friend of mine has the Nikon D80 and we shoot together often , a few times a week maybe..

Ive used her camera a little bit...I think the body of the nikon is much better constructed and more durable , geared towards the semi pro shooter than the plasticky rebel is.

In all modesty i must say my pics are better than hers...1. I have better lenses....2. I know how to work my camera..shes still trying to figure out how to change the ISO and what it is...and I keep tellign her...lol (shes been shooting on full auto since she got the camera) Ive recently convinced her to try raw and to get familiar with all the extra settings.

Criss youve got a very good Camera...If i didnt have money invested in lenses Id trade my rebelxti for a Nikon D80 any day.....

Just get photoshop... it works with Nikon...

[Colin Southern]

CRISS,,,,i think the nikon d80 is a much better camera than the Canon 350D aka rebel XT.

As much as I love my Canon 1Ds3, at the end of the day (as I see it) the camera is just a box at the end of the lens that lets the light in ... I'm sure that 1/30th sec @ F11 on a Canon or a Nikon or a Sony or a Sigma produces much the same shot.

Admittedly, there are features on the 1Ds3 that make life easier (the ability to automatically shoot a 7 shot bracket or the full weather sealing to name a couple off the top of my head), but at the end of the day these are features that pertain more to where the camera sits in the manufacturers lineup rather than the absolute brand (ie I'm sure that a Nikon D3x being Nikon's top-of-the-line DSLR would have pretty much the same features and functions as a Canon 1Ds3).

I like to think that the advice I give here applies pretty much to all cameras and post-processing software, although of course the actual terminology may change depending on what it's called in other hardware/software (so translations may be required!).