dSLR thread

[Tannin]

What an extraordinarily beautiful creature! Those neat little spots just set it off.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. Really beautiful. Shame I was in a 2-stop exposure bracketing mode when it began to take off; trying to get the individual shots to match was a pain. Also on that trip I got some pictures of Night Herons in Palm Trees.

Another guy who was out let me try shooting with his 1Ds-III and EF 500/4L IS. Damn that is a heavy rig to hand-shoot, but he didn't even have a tripod with him. Sitting on the shore by the wetlands, with the camera resting on his lap. I wish I had had that gear when that hawk took off.

 

[e_dawg]

That is a big, heavy lens. It might be nice in the first 5-10 minutes, but then you realize that you can't hold the darn thing anymore and then you wish you had a lighter lens

BTW, nice pics Dave. It's not easy getting bird pictures, especially when they're in flight.

 

[udaman]

Yup. Really beautiful. Shame I was in a 2-stop exposure bracketing mode when it began to take off; trying to get the individual shots to match was a pain. Also on that trip I got some pictures of Night Herons in Palm Trees.

Another guy who was out let me try shooting with his 1Ds-III and EF 500/4L IS. Damn that is a heavy rig to hand-shoot, but he didn't even have a tripod with him. Sitting on the shore by the wetlands, with the camera resting on his lap. I wish I had had that gear when that hawk took off.

Pro gear are heavy tanks, got to be the Govenator to wield those regularly. Thats why all us plebians wait for the lighter, slimmer, smaller plastic bodied <$2k FF Canon or Nikon's bodies to come out, or maybe Oly with more compact 35mm lens history, since Sony/Minolta line of lenses are too limiting.

Still, when you need reach so you don't have to crop as much, go with that Zeiss digiscope & clean ISO 6400 of the Nikon D3, then you don't require 24MP like tannin does

Though you might be happy with the DC4 pkg.

http://www.eagleopticsblog.com/2007/09/20/zeiss-digiscoping-package-a-perfect-present/

 

[Tannin]

That is a big, heavy lens. It might be nice in the first 5-10 minutes, but then you realize that you can't hold the darn thing anymore and then you wish you had a lighter lens

Nonsense.

 

[ddrueding]

Any suggestions for applications that can edit images in excess of 20000x10000 pixels? Recommended file formats?

 

[Stereodude]

Have you tried Photoshop or Gimp?

 

[ddrueding]

Photoshop won't install on my machine because I can't get SP2 installed for some strange reason, GIMP won't deal with 16-bit TIFF images, and PAINT.NET just pukes on images this large.

GIMP has it open, which is nice.

 

[e_dawg]

I recently created a 21235 x 6884 panorama from autopano pro, saved to 16-bit TIFF. The only program I have that could open it was Photoshop. I didn't have a problem opening it in other programs because it was 16-bit TIFF, but for other reasons:

IrfanView returned an error saying it "couldn't allocate memory for result images. Out of memory". Capture NX wouldn't open it because it has the alpha channel in there. If I remove the alpha channel in photoshop and save it as TIFF, Capture NX can now open it.

As for file format, you want to use PSD while editing your photo in Photoshop, but 16-bit TIFF for exporting to other programs, printing, or archiving. Use JPEG if you're putting it online for presentation purposes or sharing. If you get much bigger than 20000 x 10000, you will have to use PSB instead, as it is one of the few formats that supports such a large size.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks e_dawg. Some of these panoramas are bigger than that.

I found access to a 64" wide by 100' long color printer, and am getting ready to try it out.

 

[udaman]

Samsung FF dSLR in the works? Will the sensor be used in an upcoming Pentax FF dSLR? Will this be the added competition needed to finally get 1/2way affordable, smaller/slimmer (as opposed to reduced width in entry level dSLR's) & lighter weight FF dSLR's to the masses? Darn, I can't wait until next year.

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.u...fessional_digital_slr_camera_news_227234.html

The news emerged during an informal discussion with a high-ranking Samsung official at an industry event in Seoul, Korea, attended by Amateur Photographer (AP) technical writer Barney Britton.

Kyong-Kook Shin, assistant manager for Samsung's digital camera marketing planning group, suggested that the firm is actively pursuing development of a full-frame CMOS sensor intended for use in a professional camera.

Reporting on the 2 April meeting, Barney writes: 'Although there is no indication yet as to when it might arrive, it seems now that photographers can look forward to a professional full-frame DSLR with a Pentax lens mount at some point in the future.'

 

[e_dawg]

Thanks e_dawg. Some of these panoramas are bigger than that.

I found access to a 64" wide by 100' long color printer, and am getting ready to try it out.

100 foot? Wow. Isn't it ridiculously expensive, though? It's usually several hundred dollars per print for anything that wide. I can't even find one locally. Then there is the issue of mounting. How are you going to mount and frame the print? That's going to double the cost of your print job. We're probably talking something like a thousand bucks for a 64 x 192" 3:1 pano.

I am struggling to find a low cost yet high quality solution to print, mount, and frame a 26 x 78" pano. I can do the printing myself, but the Epson print driver likes to cut off 1 mm from each side in borderless mode, and it's twice as much work cutting every side without borderless mode. And then there's the whole aligning and mounting of multiple "panels" to create a seamless pano / mural.

 

[ddrueding]

I doubt I'll use the whole width, it's just that I client got a new wide-format printer for plotting, and it turns out to have 6 color cartridges and a "photo" mode. Photo paper of those sizes is insanely expensive, mounting is impossible, and where the hell are you going to hang it? I want to do it as a technical exercise, meaning taking a huge pano of something important to them and doing it for them on their dime. Their office is large enough to hang a 40' wide picture.

 

[udaman]

1Ds III...killer coming soon?

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1021&thread=27581087

Could a D3x be ready for the Bejing Olympics, probably not. But soon enough a Canon killer will be released. Just wonder if they will undercut the price of the 1Ds III at all, and drop the D3 a thousand?

 

[e_dawg]

Good catch. I doubt they would drop the price that much. I think they'll position the D3 as the ultimate low-light, high-speed action camera, and the D3x as the ultimate resolution camera. So the D3x may not be thought of as a higher class of camera.

 

[ddrueding]

Good catch. I doubt they would drop the price that much. I think they'll position the D3 as the ultimate low-light, high-speed action camera, and the D3x as the ultimate resolution camera. So the D3x may not be thought of as a higher class of camera.

That would be a great sales trick? "Want the best camera? You actually need to buy two!"

 

[Tannin]

Same thing Canon has been doing for many years, David, with the 1D and 1Ss lines. No reason why Nikon shouldn't do it too.

 

[udaman]

So I was looking at the resolution charts for the new XSi/450D Rebel. Using F2.8 on the 200mm L lenses as a comparison with the same on the 5D, it's not looking all the great...seeing how they are both same MP, roughly. So that's the difference btw FF and 1.6x crop, and a generation or two in sensor fine tuning with IP engines? Still, you'd probably not notice the difference except in demanding conditions (tannin ). Then I compared with 1.2x & FF of the 1D series, again not much difference other than much greater resolution of the 1Ds MkIII.

Resolution chart: 450D vs 5D w/EF 200mm @f2.8 L II USM Lens

But res. charts only tell you part of the picture, I think. All other factors, including metering, AF capabilities, lens capabilities (and probably situation & skillz of photographer) that come into play.

I see this image @ISO 1600, and I'm sure Ken Rockwell would approve. Looks kind of bad to me. It's got KR style over-saturated color, especially in the red channel, actually red channel is clipping, but what the heh, look at that wonderfully exaggerated 'wow' factor of the red boxing ring, woohoo!

So I d/l the image, pulled up the histogram in PS, I see RGB all are hitting overexposure, but red is clipping the most. Tried taking the red channel saturation down -20 and it looked better, less 'vibrant' as far as the boxing ring color. However, it certainly improved, but did not fix all the excessive red in other parts. Namely the guys cheeks and nose still have too much red in them even after dropping saturation to -20 (he's not some fine looking mocha skinned hottie like Jessica Alba where there is a hint of red/brown in her skin...so it sucks here ). Then I still see way too much red on his skin on his underside forearm which is a darker area of the image in low light conditions where you see that limitation of DR. Maybe I'm too picky, would look worse in other examples, like if you were taking a picture of a orchid flower (like you see on the net, with black background and higher contrast lighting) and you got red stuff in the shadow areas.

Question is, is there this inherent chroma noise in the sensor in wide DR situations, even if the exposure was dialed in correctly such that the red channel wasn't clipping? Would the Fuji S5 Pro have done better in this situation (correct exposure, or overexposure?). If you would have manually (or bracket exposure which KR poo-poos as not being necessary if you are a pro like him, lol) exposed -1 here, you'd end up with his eyeball completely gone in the shadows, difficult to pull back from PP even if the image was taken in RAW format.

http://dpreview-img.fotki.com/gallery/canoneos450d_preview/img_0191.jpg

So what do you do in this situation, are you stuck with excessive red noise in the shadows at what is not really that high as far as ISO. I'm wondering if the Nikon D3 @ISO6400 would be much better than this capture by the 450D? I'll assume the D300 would fair not much better @ISO6400, or likewise the 1D MkIII? But for ISO1600, this low-light image is kind of disappointing, don't you think?

 

[ddrueding]

It looks to be a straight DR issue to me, I would have certainly taken it to -1 at least.

 

[e_dawg]

Question is, is there this inherent chroma noise in the sensor in wide DR situations, even if the exposure was dialed in correctly such that the red channel wasn't clipping?

When you run 1600 ISO with lots of your scene crushed to black or in the shadows, what do you expect? Canon can't circumvent the laws of physics.

Would the Fuji S5 Pro have done better in this situation (correct exposure, or overexposure?).

Yes, but it's dog slow when the buffer fills, so if you had to do continuous shooting to get this shot, you'd better hope that you nail it within the first 5-6 shot burst.

If you would have manually (or bracket exposure which KR poo-poos as not being necessary if you are a pro like him, lol) exposed -1 here, you'd end up with his eyeball completely gone in the shadows, difficult to pull back from PP even if the image was taken in RAW format.

I feel it's a bit underexposed as it is. Forget about the lights.

So what do you do in this situation, are you stuck with excessive red noise in the shadows at what is not really that high as far as ISO.

Obviously, you've never had to use a 4/3 camera or something that is generally noisier than the typical APS-C camera. This isn't that bad. Try shooting with an Olympus at 1600 ISO with the same exposure.

I would change the angle of the shot so that i didn't have those f*cking lights in the background, shoot RAW, skip the NR, and convert to B&W to turn the noise into a positive attribute. B&W is your friend when you're swamped in chroma noise at high ISO or when the colour balance / WB is all messed up.

An amateur (not that there is anything wrong with that -- most of us are amateurs) settles for shots like this and wishes for better equipment. A pro would probably control the lighting and work for a better angle / composition.

 

[ddrueding]

IMHO, The better details are usually in the shadows.

 

[Tea]

1: the cheapest Canon bodies are optimised for resolution, not high-ISO noise. A 20D/30D or 40D is noticably cleaner at ISO 1600.

2: the shot is quite badly under-exposed. Correct exposure for this scene would not be -1, it needs to be getting close to +1. Always expose for the main subject, not the unimportant stuff in the background.

3: shooting at ISO 1600 (with any camera), you need to use noise reduction in PP. This is a basic. Rule-of-thumb: use PP NR (Neat Image or whichever other one you prefer) from ISO 400 up. On a noisy camera (4/3rd models, some of the older Nikons for eg), start using NR at around 200 ISO. Don't use the in-camera NR - it's never as good as the real thing, running on a real computer.

4: the image proper is not clipping, it just has some clipped areas where the lights are. These should, and indeed must, clip if you wish to have a correctly exposed, natural looking image. (Exactly the same as a landscape with the sun in the picture: if that ain't clipping, your exposure is way too low.) The "clipping" has nothing to do with the large red areas of background, which are only at around 2/3rds of the max red value, it is purely becaiuse of the lights. If stuck with this image and trying to PP it as best you can, apply some heavy curves/levels to bring the face up to a sensible value; let the background do whatever it wants to do. Use a little shadow/highlight as well, if desired.

5: the "over-richness" of the red has litte or nothing to do with over-saturation, it is caused by under-exposure and/or faulty PP (removing brightness when what the picture needs is more brightness) - under-exposing in PP like this will always make colours look richer (less washed-out) but once you correctly set the exposure in PP the saturation "problem" disappears.

6: there is no 6.

 

[LunarMist]

Out of curiosity I tried some jpegs for the first time in several years. How can one remove all the EXIT info from a 1Ds MK III .jpg file without reprocessing the image? I want to keep the files confidential. Thanks.

 

[ddrueding]

No idea. (pui)

 

[e_dawg]

Out of curiosity I tried some jpegs for the first time in several years. How can one remove all the EXIT info from a 1Ds MK III .jpg file without reprocessing the image? I want to keep the files confidential. Thanks.

Can't you do Save for Web in PS? I thought it's known for stripping the EXIF unceremoniously without asking the user, which actually bugs most people since you would WANT to show the EXIF for most images you post to the web (except for special situations where you're trying to maintain confidentiality). It was a relic from the days when stripping the EXIF saved you a few KB here and there. But it's rather ridiculous these days when bytes are dirt cheap and everybody's got gigs to spare.

You can also save to 16-bit TIFF and save to JPEG again, which usually strips the EXIF.

I think EXIF editors like Opanda Power EXIF also have commands that will batch strip EXIF for you. There's gotta be a dozen ways to do it, no?

 

[ddrueding]

Great Picture

I'm trying to decide between the Sigma 10-20 and the Canon 10-22. I know the Canon has a larger range and is faster, but it costs 30% more.

 

[LunarMist]

Buy the manufacturer brand whenever possible.

 

[LunarMist]

Can't you do Save for Web in PS? I thought it's known for stripping the EXIF unceremoniously without asking the user, which actually bugs most people since you would WANT to show the EXIF for most images you post to the web (except for special situations where you're trying to maintain confidentiality). It was a relic from the days when stripping the EXIF saved you a few KB here and there. But it's rather ridiculous these days when bytes are dirt cheap and everybody's got gigs to spare.

Save for web seems to reprocess the image for compression. I thought there was a simple way to strip the EXIF data only. I don't understand why anyone would want the EXIF data in files, other than for instructional or specific technical purposes.

 

[ddrueding]

I don't understand why anyone would want the EXIF data in files, other than for instructional or specific technical purposes.

Because I can search by the data in Flickr and on my local machine? I would actually also like the camera to embed gps data as well.

Of course, I understand the need/desire to not share this information with everyone all the time, but for many of my images (wildlife, landscapes, etc) it would be quite helpful.

 

[ddrueding]

Buy the manufacturer brand whenever possible.

That is my first instinct, but I'm trying to be financially responsible. I do want it before we go to Moscow in a month.

Besides the speed and length, are there other quantifiable/tangible differences?

 

[e_dawg]

The corner performance of the Canon is better in both sharpness and CA. The Sigma has interesting distortion characteristics. By interesting, I mean that average distortion is actually pretty low for an ultra wide, but its characteristics are complex. Basically, each quadrant of the image is barrel distorted within the quadrant in a self-contained fashion. But across the frame, it doesn't look like or measure as much, which is a bit deceptive, as you essentially have 4 copies of barrel distortion across the frame -- one in each corner. Problem is that it is difficult to correct in PP unless you use PT Lens or other lens distortion correction software that is capable of correcting for complex or higher-order distortion.

 

[e_dawg]

Save for web seems to reprocess the image for compression. I thought there was a simple way to strip the EXIF data only. I don't understand why anyone would want the EXIF data in files, other than for instructional or specific technical purposes.

If you save at maximum quality, doesn't it more or less leave your image alone?

 

[e_dawg]

udaman, I fixed the boxer shot from the XSi for you:

 

[LunarMist]

If you save at maximum quality, doesn't it more or less leave your image alone?

Perhaps. My plan for shooting an informal occasion is to send RAW to the CF slot and JPG to the SD slot, then do some sort of batch stripping of the EXIFs on the jpegs. It's not practical to process numerous RAW files on a notebook in a reasonable time.

 

[e_dawg]

LM, I forgot about EXIF Tool, a command line program that you can use to easily strip EXIF and all such metadata from any given file or directory by issuing a command like:

exiftool -all= *.jpg

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

 

[LunarMist]

Thanks. It is clunky but seems to work. (I forget most of that DOS command line stuff from the 1980s.)

 

[LunarMist]

How can I photograph all of my Canon gear without using one of the camera bodies that should be photographed? It seems like a riddle, but someone requested that I do this. Maybe I could do a composite of some kind.

 

[ddrueding]

How can I photograph all of my Canon gear without using one of the camera bodies that should be photographed? It seems like a riddle, but someone requested that I do this. Maybe I could do a composite of some kind.

Composite. Or a mirror.

Edit: I would be interested in seeing that picture, too.

 

[LunarMist]

It's nearly impossible with all my gear. I never have the right equipment.

 

[ddrueding]

So you are saying you have too much gear, but not the right gear? If anything gets too "not right", you can just pass it over here ;-)