Prime Lens, Benifits?

[Shadowman]

I use a 50mm lens on my full-frame camera and a 35mm lens on my crop-frame as walk-around lenses when I shoot downtown. They are both nice, fast and unobtrusive.

I agree with Bill, a 50mm lens on a crop frame camera is not a particularly useful focal length. With my D90 it is too short for good head shots and its FoV is too narrow for good general purpose shots; in fact it is a focal length that hardly ever gets used on my zoom lens.

Spending money on a lens you are not going to get a lot of use out of is not a good investment, regardless of how little you paid for it.

The 50mm f/1.8 works well for my purposes on the DSLR but for my mirrorless I went with a 20mm. I use the 20mm fixed lens on a daily basis, so for me it fits my needs, which is why I didn't advocate going strictly with a 50mm.

[Tri Danimal]

When John and Glenn mentioned 3:1 and 4:1 ratios, they are referring to the ratio of the longest focal length to the shortest focal length of a zoom lens. As an example, a classic 70-200mm zoom lens is a little shy of a 3:1 ratio (200:70 is almost 3:1).

Awesome, Thanks Mike.

[FrankMi]

I believe I have arrived at a decision that I need to look in to PP options rather than a new lens, for now ;-).

I don't think you can go wrong learning the Post Processing basics Daniel. There is a lot of benefit to judiciously applying global adjustments and when you are ready for it, having the ability to be 'image element' specific with the use of Masking and Layers.

[Tri Danimal]

I don't think you can go wrong learning the Post Processing basics Daniel. There is a lot of benefit to judiciously applying global adjustments and when you are ready for it, having the ability to be 'image element' specific with the use of Masking and Layers.

What program would you reccomend for someone to start out with, keeping in mind I have a fairly tight budget and I am using a PC.

[Glenn NK]

Please define "fairly tight budget" a bit more closely.

Glenn

[Manfred M]

The most powerful free image editor is GIMP, but the learning curve is pretty steep. It is the closest tool to Photoshop that you do not have pay for.

http://www.gimp.org/

If you want something pretty basic, look at Goggle Picassa:

http://picasa.google.com/

[FrankMi]

What program would you reccomend for someone to start out with, keeping in mind I have a fairly tight budget and I am using a PC.

Unfortunately there isn’t a one size fits all, particularly when you take the amount of time you are willing to invest in post processing and your budget. I consider post processing to be a good half of the effort needed to get a really good image. Others feel that you shouldn’t need to post process at all. The key is to compare the images you would like to emulate and find out what was done to accomplish that goal.

Almost any post processing software should be capable of making global adjustments and there are a number of free or inexpensive packages that should work well for a beginner.

Beyond the basics, however, the choices can get to be expensive and with all packages capable of Masking and Layers you can expect to find a learning curve. The best package out there right now is Photoshop CS6 but it is also the most expensive. The benefits of a package like Photoshop, or it’s less expensive brother, Photoshop Elements, is that there is, for all practical purposes, unlimited free tutorials and video training available on the web. Also, because of its wide use, it is the easiest application to get someone to help you with it. I got Photoshop CS5 as a ‘gift’ from my grandson as he could purchase it at the Student and Teacher rate of about 50% off. I like it very well as I know there will not be any unforeseen limitations on what I might want to do with it.

Down at about half the normal cost is Photoshop Elements and Lightroom, both of which many folks here at CiC use quite successfully. Elements is also a good choice if you get to the point where you want to upgrade to CS6 because you will have almost no frustrating relearning to deal with.
Perhaps the next most used software I see posted here at CiC by the successful photographers is Gimp, which is free.

If you don’t mind relearning, just about any software package out there is being used by somebody at CiC, so you could learn the basics from one of the free or low cost applications and if you decide you want to upgrade get something more capable you will, by that point, formed some fairly definite ideas of what you want the software to accomplish and which package does that best within your budget.

Although Photoshop can do everything I ask of it, I have other applications that are at times, more powerful or easier to use. For example, I use Photomatix for blending multiple images of high dynamic range and the Topaz Labs Bundle for easy masking tools, noise reduction, sharpening, and color tone adjustments. Other specialty software is available for Focus Stacking, Panoramas, Black and White processing and a number of specialty tasks. I also use Lightroom for cataloging and converting my RAW images to Digital Negatives. Some folks use Lightroom for all of their post processing because it is easier to learn than Elements and Photoshop.

Hope this helps point you in the right direction!

[ajohnw]

The most powerful free image editor is GIMP, but the learning curve is pretty steep. It is the closest tool to Photoshop that you do not have pay for.

http://www.gimp.org/

If you want something pretty basic, look at Goggle Picassa:

http://picasa.google.com/

There is a book called Gimp from Beginner to Professional that can help people get round the basics of The Gimp. It covers some photographic type processing info and general graphics. Out of date in respect to the version that was used to produce it but in real terms not much has changed. There are also tutorials on youtube about specific techniques. Many plugins as well including one that allows it to run photoshop plugins - never tried that one so pass.

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[Glenn NK]

I also use Lightroom for cataloging and converting my RAW images to Digital Negatives. Some folks use Lightroom for all of their post processing because it is easier to learn than Elements and Photoshop.

I use Lightroom for everything; I once used Photoshop Elements, but LR pretty does pretty well everything that PSE does, and LR is gaining on PSE. LR doesn't have layers, so can't comment on how valuable this is.

I had typed the following out earlier:

Lightroom - strengths

With the enhancements that are being incorporated with each new release, Lightroom is becoming evermore attractive. The reasons are far too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say, that having used it since its inception, I'm barely able to keep up with the improvements it adds. It just keeps getting better.

Example: Five years ago when I wanted a dramatic black background to isolate a flower, I would use a black piece of cloth behind it. This still required some considerable work to get the background completely black. This morning in five minutes using LR4, I rendered a background completely black using the "adjustment brush". This tool has been added in the past few years, and I suspect that others will follow (and that the adjustment brush will get better soon).

Example: I used to shoot multiple exposures of one image and merge them to increase the dynamic range; the new Shadows slider in LR enables me to pull out shadows I never could before. I now take single images of sunsets. This image was one shot - no merging multiple files.



One of it's strengths is that it does not edit the original digital file (this applies to all file types: RAW, JPEG, TIFF, DNG, etc). It is not a pixel editor. Consequently, a file with extensive edits can be returned to its original state by simply pressing RESET. With many other softwares, one must make a backup before editing because the program actually changes the file. LR can work on a JPEG file countless times and the file will never degrade as will happen with a pixel editor with each save.

Lightroom was designed by, and to be used by photographers, not graphics artists as some other software was. It's sole purpose is for developing digital images. It has even been suggested that Adobe will eventually replace CS with LR - that will surely bring out some strong reactions.


Glenn

[William W]

Lightroom was designed by, and to be used by photographers

+1

That is one of LR's great strengths as an "all in one package" and for use as "a stand alone package"

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Aside:

What Lens did you use for that Sunset Shot?


WW

[Glenn NK]

Bill:

I used a 24TSEII plus a 2.0 Extender. Very little tilt was required, and no shift. I don't use charts for Tilt - I use the iterative process; focus at infinity, live view zoom into the near foreground and adjust tilt to achieve focus, then repeat as necessary.

In the previous version of LR (version 3), I don't think I could have salvaged this image. Oh the body is a 5DII.

Glenn

[William W]

Thanks.
Beautiful: Aperture Blade Star Flare - and shooting head on to the Sun.

I thought it was Rounded Blades - but no way could I guess what was the Lens – almost zero Coma – at least in this small image.

Nice bit of glass.

The x2.0 Tele extender hold up well too, it appears.

WW

[ajohnw]

I don't know of any image editor that alters the original image unless it's instructed to. There are a number of open source free applications that can be used to generate shots each having it's own advantage or disadvantage. All can be run on Linux, Widoze or Mac.

The Gimp - stands for The Graphical Image Manipulation Program. This is very Photoshop like and similarly isn't too easy to use and has rather a lot of plugins available. It has one limitation. It works in 8bit colour space. This isn't really a limitation and it will go 16bit at some point anyway. There are several applications that are intended to work on raw files to get round this aspect and then export to the gimp. The "simple" one is Ufraw. This has a curve to set shadow and highlight detail rather than a slider. The curve can be any shape that's required. The curves control in the gimp also does the same thing and it's surprising what can be drawn out of camera's jpg's with it. There is also the levels control - does the same thing - some can get on with it - I can't.. There is often a need to find a plugin when using the Gimp.Google will generally bring something up. Eg tone mapping, many, this one for instance http://osp.wikidot.com/tone-mapping and many more including the long hand layers method. Same with high dynamic range manipulations. There are even tutorials on how to make it look like photoshop. There are masses of filters and plugins available for it and a like all good image processing software operations can be restricted to selections

Photivo. Raw or jpg processing with many specialised filters and can export to the gimp. As with Ufraw it comes with a lot of camera ICC files. It also uses icc files for display as does the Gimp etc but has it's own local set.

Rawtherapee. Fairly simple to use. Raw or jpg. Also has it's own forum. It's widely used.

Darktable. Full featured raw and jpg and when changing various curves shows the available range of adjustment.

ShowFoto/Digicam - A rather interesting one I have only just started playing with. Want to even out a jpg for tonal range for instance - One filter with a number of stages. This is balancing out high and low lights in one go complete with a number of sliders. Best to try the defaults first. This one may be a bit unstable on windows.

Colour depth I understand on all of these is 32bit floating point which is where I suspect the Gimp will also finish up. Makes sense as further changes in colour depth are unlikely to matter. That's 3 32bit floating point channels.

If some one happens to be running Linux they really must take a look at Fotoxx. It's set up to do 90% of what people are likely to want to do with photo's quickly and easily. I'm finding it more like 100%. This too has plugins - any of the above applications or any other program that may be of use such as Hugin for perspective and lens corrections. It does include simple perspective correction. It will also demosaic raw files to it's internal 32bit floating point colour space I assume via 16bit tiff at the moment. HDR and focal depth stacking are included as well. This package isn't colour managed to the screen so the icc profile has to be installed system wide. This doesn't prevent other packages with their own colour management from working correctly.

Apart from the Gimp all of these also maintain albums. Personally I wish that aspect could be turned off. I feel it would be handled more sensibly with a single specialised application.

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