watmm photographers

  On 7/1/2012 at 6:03 PM, CJM said:

  On 7/1/2012 at 11:51 AM, jhonny said:

At the end of 2011 I bought myself a Panasonic GF3. I know nothing about cameras and stuff but have been taking pics every now and again. I took a few when on holiday in NYC. Really like how they turned out and have stuck some in frames around the house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I probably went a bit crazy with the effects in Picasa, but I like the first three in B&W and have put them up as a series of three frames.

 

what lens did you use?

 

it came with a 14-42mm and a 14mm lens.

looks that the lumix would fit me pretty well, too. wife can use the pancake lens and i'll play around with the other.

 

thanks for the suggestion. the sony nex looks good, too but i think it's a bit big on one side. (battery case?)

 

how is the flash-light on the lumix, jhonny?

 

could you post a sample pic you took with flash?

Edited July 1, 2012 by CJM

  On 7/1/2012 at 6:19 PM, CJM said:

looks that the lumix would fit me pretty well, too. wife can use the pancake lens and i'll play around with the other.

 

thanks for the suggestion. the sony nex looks good, too but i think it's a bit big on one side. (battery case?)

 

how is the flash-light on the lumix, jhonny?

 

could you post a sample pic you took with flash?

 

I've struggled a little with the flash to be honest, I think that's definitely user-error though. It doesn't have any swanky settings, and it's a pop-up one and it doesn't have a connector to attach a flash.

 

I can't find any pics where I've used the flash, I'll try and take a sample pic and post it.

after doing a bit of research i think the Sony NEX C3 is my current favourite because of the sensor.

 

are the sony lenses still made by zeiss?

 

i think the 16mm pancake will fulfill my needs until i've dived deeper into th prrinciples of photography.

The Sony Nex ones do look really nice. Well worth holding a few in the shop, I found that because their small they can feel a bit weird, especially if you put a big lens on it and don't have a viewfinder.

 

One lens is also probably a smart idea, with two and not a clue how to use it I don't feel like I've learned very much, just pressed a mash of buttons and swapped the lenses repeatedly and one or two seem to work. I need to invest some time into learning the basics I think.

I've heard RAW saves you an fstop or two, but then I barely even get around to uploading images to my computer. I usually shoot in RAW though because drive space is rather dispensable anyway.

 

 

A puppy-dog-eyes squirrel. Got nothing from me though ....

i know virtually nothing about cameras and photography, but have been wanting to upgrade from my old canon sure shot/iphone combination for some time now. i just got a nikon d5100 (and nikkor 35mm f/1.8g af-s dx lens). i can see how this could become a serious hobby. as of now i don't know what the hell i'm doing, but i'm having a great time just taking photos and more photos, and playing with the settings as i do it.

 

 

 

 

Some bugs knocking around my garden this afternoon, these are the ones that turned out half decent.

 

 

 

 

Ace macro work man! I'm still very much a beginner with my 100mm 2.8 lens and my hit to miss ratio for shots using it is a little poor - do you have any tips ?

 

Here's probably the best two photos I've got from it so far (I hope the host site allows hotlinking):

 

 

That bee one is pretty sweet! I was trying to take some bee ones today, they are too dam fast to capture sometimes.

 

Normally if i am doing flowers or anything that's not going to be moving for awhile its around about F8 iso 100/200

anything else i take the F stop to 2.8 (i have the 100mm macro as well) and bump the ISO to 400/800 for a faster shutter speed.

 

One thing i have picked up in the past few weeks is image stacking, the first image of the spider is done with about 4 photos at 2.8 focused on different parts. then brought into Photoshop and mixed together to give one sharp image instead of having say just its head infocus. (the one in my avy is stacked as well)

Ahh, image stacking - that's something I heard about but never properly investigated. Seems like it could be real useful, cheers man!

Great photos, gents. That pink flower / bee shot is stunning. Nice composition, nice edit.

as far as macro goes, can any of you provide information or recommendations on lenses? anyone use extension tubes?

I only brought my macro lens about 3 months ago so I don't have much to say about other types but the canon 100mm 2.8 l is worth every penny.

 

I thought I would need a fancy macro flash to take the pictures but I have only used natural light so far.

 

I also have a canon x25 extention tube. Which can get really close to objects. And with stacking should be amazing, but I've not yet tested because being that close increases camera shake so it would need a tripod setting up.

Pretty much what blackdust said.

 

I have a Nikon 105mm F2.8 old school manual lens and love the shit out of it.

 

I've used extension tubes, too.

 

However, as evidenced in this video and referenced by blackdust, using extension tubes requires sticks or you'll get rolling shutter in video mode.

 

 

All the macro shots in the above were shot with a 35mm F2 manual lens w/ M2 (27mm) extension tube.

hey all, i'm going to be purchasing a nikon d7000 and i'm not sure about what kind of sd card i need.

i just bought an sd card for a friend of mine for a christmas gift and found that there are different speeds that i wasn't aware of . like 150 for 16 gigs and such.

do i need these extreme speedy cards? i don't even know how large of a card i need (gb wise), the camera shoots 16.2 mp photos...

i'd like to save at least a couple hundred to a card.

 

so, 16 or 32 gigs? and how fast of a card do i need.

 

hook me up with some links? thanks

 

 

 

edit: i don't plan on shooting video

Edited December 6, 2012 by yek

  On 12/6/2012 at 9:18 PM, yek said:

hey all, i'm going to be purchasing a nikon d7000 and i'm not sure about what kind of sd card i need.

i just bought an sd card for a friend of mine for a christmas gift and found that there are different speeds that i wasn't aware of . like 150 for 16 gigs and such.

do i need these extreme speedy cards? i don't even know how large of a card i need (gb wise), the camera shoots 16.2 mp photos...

i'd like to save at least a couple hundred to a card.

 

so, 16 or 32 gigs? and how fast of a card do i need.

 

hook me up with some links? thanks

 

 

 

edit: i don't plan on shooting video

 

think you might be referring to 'classes' rather than speed

 

SD cards come in these 'classes' from 1- 10 i think. the higher the supposedly faster and better it deals with intake of information

 

You only need high class cards if you plan on shooting HD video

 

if not, any SD should do the trick for still photography

 

if you were just referring just to 'space' on SD cards - you could easily get by on an 8 gig if you wanted - personally i use a 2x 16 gig cards (i shoot both video and stills and 16gigs is more than enough)

  On 8/28/2012 at 8:34 PM, blackdust said:

 

 

love this

  On 12/7/2012 at 12:34 AM, TRiP said:

 

  On 12/6/2012 at 9:18 PM, yek said:

hey all, i'm going to be purchasing a nikon d7000 and i'm not sure about what kind of sd card i need.

i just bought an sd card for a friend of mine for a christmas gift and found that there are different speeds that i wasn't aware of . like 150 for 16 gigs and such.

do i need these extreme speedy cards? i don't even know how large of a card i need (gb wise), the camera shoots 16.2 mp photos...

i'd like to save at least a couple hundred to a card.

 

so, 16 or 32 gigs? and how fast of a card do i need.

 

hook me up with some links? thanks

 

 

 

edit: i don't plan on shooting video

 

think you might be referring to 'classes' rather than speed

 

SD cards come in these 'classes' from 1- 10 i think. the higher the supposedly faster and better it deals with intake of information

 

You only need high class cards if you plan on shooting HD video

 

if not, any SD should do the trick for still photography

 

if you were just referring just to 'space' on SD cards - you could easily get by on an 8 gig if you wanted - personally i use a 2x 16 gig cards (i shoot both video and stills and 16gigs is more than enough)

 

what class of sd card do you use and what camera?

 

edit: i hear if you shoot in burst mode you need a fast sd card

Edited December 7, 2012 by yek

  On 8/28/2012 at 8:53 PM, blackdust said:

 

One thing i have picked up in the past few weeks is image stacking, the first image of the spider is done with about 4 photos at 2.8 focused on different parts. then brought into Photoshop and mixed together to give one sharp image instead of having say just its head infocus. (the one in my avy is stacked as well)

 

how d'you do it? make each stacked image slightly transparent?

 

those last 2 pics of yours are amazing btw.

Edited December 7, 2012 by keltoi

  On 12/7/2012 at 12:34 AM, TRiP said:

You only need high class cards if you plan on shooting HD video

 

if not, any SD should do the trick for still photography

Agreed, though even only moderately speedy cards (I think mine is a Class 4) would happily write 1080p video without drop out. You'll be fine Yek !

  On 12/7/2012 at 10:03 AM, keltoi said:

 

  On 8/28/2012 at 8:53 PM, blackdust said:

 

One thing i have picked up in the past few weeks is image stacking, the first image of the spider is done with about 4 photos at 2.8 focused on different parts. then brought into Photoshop and mixed together to give one sharp image instead of having say just its head infocus. (the one in my avy is stacked as well)

 

how d'you do it? make each stacked image slightly transparent?

 

those last 2 pics of yours are amazing btw.

 

 

Thanks!

 

Basically in photoshop File > Automate > Photomerge and choose all your images you want to focus stack.

 

 

You end up with each layer being aligned on top of each other.

 

Then Select all your layers, Crop the image. Chose Edit > Auto Blend Layers and stack images in the pop up box

 

 

Photoshop then cuts out all the blurry bits with a quick mask to show the sharp image of the next photo, and so on until it gets to the last image. The more images you have with focused areas the better the final result will be..... IF your subject doesn't move!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also with SD cards the higher the class the better, i have a 6 class one and sometimes when i shoot RAW continually it will lag after the 7th picture because the card wont keep up. So if you're not shooting video or lots of RAW files anything under 6 class would be fine.

 

 

The only problem with Winter is not many bugs to take photos of, hopefully this year i can get some cool ones of snow and ice, as i didn't have a macro last year.

  On 12/7/2012 at 10:11 AM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 12/7/2012 at 12:34 AM, TRiP said:

You only need high class cards if you plan on shooting HD video

 

if not, any SD should do the trick for still photography

Agreed, though even only moderately speedy cards (I think mine is a Class 4) would happily write 1080p video without drop out. You'll be fine Yek !

 

 

agreed - i think the whole 'you must use high-speed SD cards' thing was just thought up by the expensive lads at SanDisk and others

 

a class 4 will be graaand

 

(i think i have a class 10(16giger), and shoot with a Canon 60D - think they only cost me 25 yo yos, so shop around and i'm sure you'll find something decent)

  On 11/4/2010 at 2:40 PM, The Overlook said:

ever tried hdr photography?

 

There's nothing wrong with tone mapping, but when I see "HDR" I typically puke. It's what happens when an aggressive nerd takes an otherwise ordinary photograph and ruins it. Of course, I have seen stuff that's done very well and emulates the dynamic range of the human eye (I guess). Still, I actually enjoy the way cameras interpret light, shadow, texture...its imperfections are why I love it. Basically, most HDR processing looks like a giant computer fucked a photo in the ass.

 

E.g.

 

Great job, dumbass! The fucking sky is darker than the foreground. Brilliant!

is this shit used in movies nowdays??? french movies are red and green, some movies are full on blue, shots at night are yellow, no contrast or too much, i don't know shit about film and photography but that kind of stuff just turns me off... maybe i'm confusing it with filtering i dunno, i just know that nothing beats old film with its own grain... how can one tell the difference between film and digital???

Edited December 10, 2012 by THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON