IS this camera okay for me.

[honey]

Thanks for the link wjh31

[honey]

Dave are you about lol, can you give me any advice on my pics please

[Dave Humphries]

Originally Posted by Honey

Dave are you about

Hi Honey,

I am now for a bit, but it's late and it looks like you've gone to bed!

Will seems to be doing OK

Of this morning's batch, as you both agree, the rose missed focus , but the 3 others I can see are ok and would respond to some PP as Will (wjh31) suggests.

The fifth picture seems to have gone missing at photobucket, whatever it was.

Here's what a little PP can achieve with what you are taking now - quite a difference, eh?


and the original for comparison;


That's why Will and I are suggesting you do a little PP on them now, to really get the best out of them.

Gnight, sweet dreams

[honey]

Hi Dave Gosh what a difference with pp, i will have to try it out, thanks for showing me what can be done
I took a couple of train ones with your advice from before, here they are.





love hunny x

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Hunny,

Definitely looking better, but with practice, they will get even better. Not that trains are likely to be of high interest to you I suspect, but they make a good subject to practice panning skills on. Although I suspect they are probably an hour apart down your way

Oh, and I spotted that the first picture is actually the rear end of the same train in the second picture.
Ya can't fool me that easily! (well not often )

Try taking say 3 shots as it goes past, all of the front
- one while it is a bit further away,
- one at the same angle as the top picture above (which is just right btw)
- and a third as it gets to the same angle as the lower picture.

Keep the pan going in one smooth continuous movement, don't take the camera from your eye (obviously, there won't be time) and don't 'hesitate' as you focus or click, smoothness of all motions, including pressing the shutter is key to success.
Sorta start pan, focus, click, focus, click, focus, click, keep panning, then end pan.

Hope that helps,

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Hunny,

Now you have fixed the missing pic lnk from yesterday, I thought this one was a good shot and worth 5 mins PP too.



What I did; Local Contrast Enhancement, dodged a few dark areas, fixed a few blemishes on the petals, sharpen, blurred a few sharp green leaves, fix a couple more blemishes at edges.

Did you notice how much you have improved in just two/three days?
Well done
Just got to teach you PP and you can do it all by yourself

Cheers,

[ScoutR]

Did you notice how much you have improved in just two/three days?
Well done
Just got to teach you PP and you can do it all by yourself

Hello Honey and Dave:

As a novice myself, I've been following this thread and I hope you don't mind my saying this Honey but It's like watching "My Fair Lady" photography version. You really have come along in 3 days.

Yogi looks like quite a character and your pics of him are great.

I'm looking forward to the Photoshop lessons, I have a lot of shots that could use whatever effects you did with the Berries, and as you know from my previous posts, I'm struggling with the post processing business.

I hope you don't mind me coming along for the ride Honey, I'm learning along with you.

Wishing you both a great weekend.

Scout

[wjh31]

If there was a single thing you can do to enhance an image easily, it would probably be the levels. For a quick guide try http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/levels.htm from the main CiC site. In Gimp you can find the levels in the colours menu (either along the top of the main image window, or by right clicking on the image.

Sharpening can also help a fair bit, though is a little more subtle. Try Filters->Unsharp mask, and just play with the sliders till you get something you like. Try radius 0.5, amount 50, threshold 0 for ball-park settings.

[honey]

Hi Dave, yes the train was the same one lol, no way was i waiting an hour for the next one
I was actually trying to do the panning thing, i got the front then i couldn,t get the shutter to go again at the middle bit so then sort of caught the end, hope that makes sense.
Should my shutter be fast enough to have caught the middle bit do you think ,it all happened so fast then the train was gone!!

Thankyou for your nice comments on my pics, you are so sweet Dave and i am trying really hard
Btw great pp on my flower thanks xxx

Hello ScoutR, pleased to meet you, glad this thread is helping you too hun x

[honey]

Maybe this is a strange question, but do all photograpgers use editing tools like gimp, i only ask because i just wondered is it possible to take a 'perfect picture' without any editing
I looked at the gimp programme and somehow , i don,t know why , but can,t bring myself to use it, it almost feels like i,m cheating, does this make sense to you, i want to take as good a pic as i can but i want it to be my own.
love hunny xxx

[Colin Southern]

Originally Posted by honey

Do all photograpgers use editing tools like gimp, i only ask because i just wondered is it possible to take a 'perfect picture' without any editing
I looked at the gimp programme and somehow , i don,t know why , but can,t bring myself to use it, it almost feels like i,m cheating, does this make sense to you, i want to take as good a pic as i can but i want it to be my own.

Hi Honey,

Whether or not a photographer chooses to use post-processing software is really an individual choice, but the "bottom line" is that cameras don't capture a scene the same way as our eyes see it - post-processing can help to restore an image so that it's closer to the way it really was - or even make it closer to the scene we remember (you might be surprised to learn that how we SEE a scene and how we REMEMBER a scene are two very different things - we typically remember a scene as having more contrast - more saturation - more sharpness - less distracting elements etc).

I've had lot's of "is it cheating" type discussions with people, however personally, I take the position that it's only ever a bad thing when people are dishonest about it - the best example that comes to mind was the photographer in Iraq who cloned in a lot more smoke to make the results of a bombing run look more impressive.

Interestingly, nearly all modern cameras have different "picture styles" for different types of scene; these picture styles apply various adjustments to each image at the time of capture, thus "manipulating" the scene before it even makes it's way to a computer.

My suggestion is to simply use whatever tools you need to to get the image looking as good as you want; if that means only correcting things like under-exposure and colour casts then that's fine. If you want to add contrast and sharpening to make it look nicer then (in my opinion) it's fine too. If you want to clone out some rubbish because it would have been unsafe for you to have removed it at the time then (in my opinion) that's also fine.

The only rule is: "there are no rules" - it's really up to the individual and whatever they're comfortable doing. Digital photography involves many "parts" to produce a result - the camera is one part - the photographer is another - the computer is yet another; the final result is a product of how all of these things work together

[honey]

Thankyou Colin for your reply, how i understand it is that, the camera, phographer and computor are all linked, but the final image is then not maybe what we saw in our lens, then to make it more our own we 'tweak' a bit to recapture the image we first saw ? i can understand that as a photo i saw in my eyes, does not look like i envisioned it when i took it, and with the 'tools availiable' i can make it my own again, hope that makes sense lol.
There iseems so much involved in capturing that 'perfect shot' i want to beable to get in time.

Thankyou for your reply x

[Colin Southern]

Originally Posted by honey

Thankyou Colin for your reply, how i understand it is that, the camera, phographer and computor are all linked, but the final image is then not maybe what we saw in our lens, then to make it more our own we 'tweak' a bit to recapture the image we first saw ? i can understand that as a photo i saw in my eyes, does not look like i envisioned it when i took it, and with the 'tools availiable' i can make it my own again, hope that makes sense lol.
There iseems so much involved in capturing that 'perfect shot' i want to beable to get in time.

Thankyou for your reply x

Someone here recently described (or quoted) "photography being a combination of "technology and art" - on the technology side there are many many techniques and settings that have a big effect on the outcome (shutter-speed, aperture, ISO, filters, lenses etc), and then on the "art" side there's the decisions of how the photographer chooses to compose the scene - when they choose to shoot it - and how they choose to express all of that in post processing - and (to me anyway) that's one of the things about photography that I enjoy the most - the "freedom of expression".

Often there's a big overlap between what we see and what we try to produce with the shot, but often also there's no one-to-one correlation because of the differences in the way our eyes work -v- a camera; case-in-point, my "Lone Tree Vista" shot - it was a full 12 minute (not seconds) exposure, shot about 1 1/2 hours after sunset - what you see in the photo is pretty much how the camera saw it, but at the time all I could see was the remnants of a bit of colour on the horizon because it was pretty close to pitch black (I even tripped over a tripod leg on a previous shot because it was so dark). In a shot like "Little Kaiteriteri Sunrise", the colours are pretty much what I saw, but because the light levels were so low, I had to use a fairly long exposure, and that had the effect of smoothing out the water which was actually quite "ripply"; My eyes could see the ripples, the the camera wasn't able to capture them because there wasn't enough light - again, differences between digital and human "technologies"

[Dave Humphries]

Originally Posted by honey

~
Should my shutter be fast enough to have caught the middle bit do you think, it all happened so fast then the train was gone!!
~

Ah, yes, that does depend on the speed the train is going at, I really don't know why*, but I was assuming it was passing at about 25 mph or less, if it is doing 50 or 60, you won't get more than two shots in, even if you zoom in and grab a distant shot, then zoom out and get a closer one, and even that will depend how quick your camera's zoom is. Not my best advice, eh?

* These days I most often see trains while I'm sitting at level crossing by a station; when they crawl past at 10mph either slowing or accelerating for the platform stop. (or when I use one)

I'll join the subsequent discussion later, bye for now,

[honey]

Originally Posted by Colin Southern

Someone here recently described (or quoted) "photography being a combination of "technology and art" - on the technology side there are many many techniques and settings that have a big effect on the outcome (shutter-speed, aperture, ISO, filters, lenses etc), and then on the "art" side there's the decisions of how the photographer chooses to compose the scene - when they choose to shoot it - and how they choose to express all of that in post processing - and (to me anyway) that's one of the things about photography that I enjoy the most - the "freedom of expression".

Often there's a big overlap between what we see and what we try to produce with the shot, but often also there's no one-to-one correlation because of the differences in the way our eyes work -v- a camera; case-in-point, my "Lone Tree Vista" shot - it was a full 12 minute (not seconds) exposure, shot about 1 1/2 hours after sunset - what you see in the photo is pretty much how the camera saw it, but at the time all I could see was the remnants of a bit of colour on the horizon because it was pretty close to pitch black (I even tripped over a tripod leg on a previous shot because it was so dark). In a shot like "Little Kaiteriteri Sunrise", the colours are pretty much what I saw, but because the light levels were so low, I had to use a fairly long exposure, and that had the effect of smoothing out the water which was actually quite "ripply"; My eyes could see the ripples, the the camera wasn't able to capture them because there wasn't enough light - again, differences between digital and human "technologies"

Thanks for that Colin
I didn,t really understand the tech stuff lol , but your photographs are faboulous x

[honey]

Originally Posted by Dave Humphries

Ah, yes, that does depend on the speed the train is going at, I really don't know why*, but I was assuming it was passing at about 25 mph or less, if it is doing 50 or 60, you won't get more than two shots in, even if you zoom in and grab a distant shot, then zoom out and get a closer one, and even that will depend how quick your camera's zoom is. Not my best advice, eh?

* These days I most often see trains while I'm sitting at level crossing by a station; when they crawl past at 10mph either slowing or accelerating for the platform stop. (or when I use one)

I'll join the subsequent discussion later, bye for now,

Hi Dave, thanks for your reply, yes the train was going real fast along the track lol, so i think i did well really to get the front and back in
love hunny x

[honey]

Nite nite Dave see you in the morning love hunny xx

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Hunny,

Missed you again tonight

Earlier I promised some thoughts on the topic of whether we should PP.

Picking up on one of your replies; I do consider photographer AND camera AND computer as all part of one chain between the image I see and the one I present for consumption.

It starts with light illuminating a scene and ends in a jpg picture being viewed on your computer.

Your camera makes your jpg and you can view it straight away, but if you want maximum quality, shooting RAW and making your own optimised jpg has to be better. One step back from that, especially where the camera doesn't save RAW pictures, is to PP the jpg and make another.

Now, think back to when you took the pictures of the berries, or rose and, given the choice of the 'straight from camera' shots, or my PP'd ones, which is more as you remember it?

Probably the PP'd ones (I hope), for the reasons Colin stated.

I definitely like to make the most of a shot and will go to some lengths to get the best of the capture and then usually, enhance it a little more; like I did when I removed a few spots and blemishes from the rose.

That's my view, gnight,

[honey]

Morning Dave hope you slept well, i was really tired so had a early night, need my beauty sleep lol.

Thanks for your reply, i can see what you are saying, i understand it all more now my berries and rose were much improved with pp and did look more like how how i saw them when i took the pitures, thanks for explaining it.
I have been trying some running water pictures and finding it really hard, any advice please , here are two i tried to take yesterday even with pp don,t think it will much improve lol, is there something different i should be doing for moving or still water shots





Sorry i know they are pretty dismal
Love hunny xx

[wjh31]

water can be tricky, usually i think people go one of two ways, to freeze it or to blur it.

With alot of light, especially with a flash, you can 'freeze' the water, i.e catch it with a fast enough shutter that the moving water doesnt blur, like: http://lifeinmegapixels.com/locmini.php?location=MC25 (1/1000s, forced flash) or http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl...-8&sa=N&tab=wi

With less light, you can try and get a long exposure on the water so that it all blurs into a kind of mist like : http://lifeinmegapixels.com/location.php?location=wier (16s) or http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl...=f&oq=&start=0

Of course that doesnt mean to say you cant get a good picture by going in the middle, photography is an art as much as it is a science, and so is open to interpretation by whoever is behind the shutter.