dSLR thread

[udaman]

http://www.bogenimaging.us/TripodWebinar/

FREE Webinar Course: Selecting the Right Tripod & Head

Webinar
Online
Begins: 06-27-2008
Ends: 06-27-2008

Bogen Imaging's speakers will discuss
How to Select the Right Tripod and Head
Where: Online (Internet Connection & Phone Required)
Date: June 27, 2008
Time: 2pm - 3pm EDT

To Register Click Here

 

[LunarMist]

I'm amazed how lazy - to think 220 is not enough! What are you doing continuously all that time that you cannot take a few seconds to change cards? Ever change a film back with a dark slide? Quality is more important than quantity. In the old days a dozen 4x5s seemed like plenty for one morning set.

 

[LunarMist]

I got to shoot with a friend's Nikon D300 today. All I could think was that it is damn heavy.

The D300 is less heavy without the grip. Have you used the 1Ds or 1Ds MK II? Try holding one with the 500/4 for a while and compare that with the D300 sans grip + 200-400. The MK III bodies have lithium ion battey packs and are therefore somewhat lighter than older 1D series.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm amazed how lazy - to think 220 is not enough! What are you doing continuously all that time that you cannot take a few seconds to change cards? Ever change a film back with a dark slide? Quality is more important than quantity. In the old days a dozen 4x5s seemed like plenty for one morning set.

The breaking point is whether I am carrying more memory cards or not. With 8GB cards, I don't bother to bring more, and with that I also don't carry the little case that I keep all my cards in. It's not the effort of changing a card, it is the additional accessories I'm trying to cut down on.

Edit: And I intentionally avoided photography before it was digital with an LCD preview. There is no need for additional work and less reward

Lazy? Yup.

 

[ddrueding]

The D300 is less heavy without the grip. Have you used the 1Ds or 1Ds MK II? Try holding one with the 500/4 for a while and compare that with the D300 sans grip + 200-400. The MK III bodies have lithium ion battey packs and are therefore somewhat lighter than older 1D series.

I understand the need for long, fast glass to be heavy. It has a job to do. But the D300 with a basic lens on it was double the 450D.

The quick spec list:

14bit RAW
12MP
3" LCD
LiveView
Dust Reduction

Of course, the longer spec list (and the price) show the D300 to be a much higher end camera. But the guy who bought it hadn't done his homework, and wanted to trade

 

[LunarMist]

14-bit RAW is often rather useless because it kills the framing rate. LCD display, live view and dust reduction are not important either.

 

[Stereodude]

I guess it's time to come out of the closet so to speak.





My 5 year old EOS 10D now has a friend.

 

[ddrueding]

Congrats on the new purchase. I hope you are as happy with yours as I am with mine.

 

[Handruin]

For those who may have ever sent in camera gear to Canon (or other manufacturers) for service, how did you pack it for shipping? For example, if I want to send in a camera body for cleaning, would the original box suffice, or is there a better practice?

 

[ddrueding]

I haven't, and I plan on going through a local camera store specifically so they can deal with it.

 

[Stereodude]

For those who may have ever sent in camera gear to Canon (or other manufacturers) for service, how did you pack it for shipping? For example, if I want to send in a camera body for cleaning, would the original box suffice, or is there a better practice?

Many years ago a local camera store handled shipping my Elan IIe back to Canon after the local repair shop screwed it up after several repair attempts.

Personally, I wouldn't want to use the original box. I would want to wrap the camera in bubble wrap (the kind with the 1" bubbles) and then put that in a box that's not too much larger then the bundle and fill it with packing peanuts. Basically how Newegg ships bulk / OEM items.

 

[Stereodude]

I hope you are as happy with yours as I am with mine.

Me too. I hope I get my $489 worth out of it.

 

[ddrueding]

Me too. I hope I get my $489 worth out of it.

That is quite a deal, how did you score that?

 

[Stereodude]

That is quite a deal, how did you score that?

The M$ Live.com / Ebay cashback promotion. They were offering a 35% rebate on eBay "Buy it Now" purchases paid through Paypal for a day or two last week that was capped at $250 per transaction (with a 60 day wait to get your money). So, I will get $250 back in 54 days for my $739.99 shipped Digital Rebel XSi taking it down to $489.

They keep messing with the percentage. It dropped to 10%, then went to 15%, then 20%, then 25% then 10% again and it's been climbing again and is currently at 20% I think.

I also got a barely used 70-200m F/4L IS for $799 also through the same promotion, but when the deal was at 20% off from a local seller. Not quite a good of a deal as a $489 XSi, but still cheaper than I've seen any other used one go for.

 

[Stereodude]

I was a little surprised to see that my 10D has less noise in the RAW files at ISO400 than the XSi when converted using Canon's Digital Photo Professional. The XSi however is noticeably sharper at 100% zoom though, so that's probably why.

 

[ddrueding]

I was a little surprised to see that my 10D has less noise in the RAW files at ISO400 than the XSi when converted using Canon's Digital Photo Professional. The XSi however is noticeably sharper at 100% zoom though, so that's probably why.

Both are probably because you've doubled your MP. How do they compare at ISO100?

 

[Stereodude]

Both are probably because you've doubled your MP. How do they compare at ISO100?

I realize there are more pixels, but even zooming into 100% on both (sorta taking the extra pixels out of the equation) the XSi looks noticeably sharper on a pixel level.

The 10D seemed cleaner in large flat areas at ISO100 too, but I haven't done a lot of comparing. Just a few shots.

I honestly was expecting it to be better than the 10D since it's 5 years newer. Though I guess if I had bothered to examine the reviews on dpreview closer I would have seen that isn't the case.

 

[ddrueding]

When I get my 20D back from repairs (which won't likely happen before I send it in for repairs), I'll do some comparisons myself.

 

[Stereodude]

When I get my 20D back from repairs (which won't likely happen before I send it in for repairs), I'll do some comparisons myself.

Per the graphs on dpreview the 20D and 30D are slightly better than the XSi in terms of luminance noise. Chroma they are equal unless you turn off C.Fn II-4 on the XSi.

Of course all the graphs are derived from JPEG files, not RAW. The review of the Rebel XTi has graphs comparing the JPEG noise with RAW noise using ACR and DPP. link.

 

[udaman]

anyone seen it yet, boring, yawn, or helpful?

http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1214319836.html

You can start enjoying and learning from "101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes" now at digitalmedia.oreilly.com/dekePod. And it's available for immediate download, sharing and also reposting on O'Reilly, iTunes, lynda.com and YouTube.

For those excited by computer graphics, eager to learn, but weary of tediously dull training videos, dekePod delivers precisely the opposite. "Some folks will love it, some will hate it, but hopefully no one will yawn," says Deke. "If we get people watching this who don't know Photoshop from a hole in the ground, then I'll know we succeeded."

 

[udaman]

14-bit RAW is often rather useless because it kills the framing rate. LCD display, live view and dust reduction are not important either.

Framing rate is often, irrelevant and moot, to many types of photography. You and Tannin crack me up sometimes with your innate objectivity (snarky subjectivity), lol.



"LCD display, live view and dust reduction are not important either...(to me)."

Speak for yourself LM, there are 1,000's out there who would disagree.

 

[udaman]

Does this image look over sharpened to you?

http://www.dailydigitalphoto.com/cgi-bin/potd/potd.pl

 

[Stereodude]

Does this image look over sharpened to you?

http://www.dailydigitalphoto.com/cgi-bin/potd/potd.pl

Yes, absolutely. It's terrible.

 

[Handruin]

Yes that photo does look way over-sharpened.

I ended up calling Canon support tonight to inquire about the 1D Mark III sub-mirror warranty fix and the guy on the phone was one of the nicest support people I've talked to in a while. Even so much that I asked to give some good feedback to his supervisor. Sure, it sucks to have to send in a camera for an issue like this, but he wasn't a drove support tech to make it worse.

 

[ddrueding]

Does this image look over sharpened to you?

http://www.dailydigitalphoto.com/cgi-bin/potd/potd.pl

Yup. And I like mine much sharper than most. The part that is jarring for me is the ring around the back of the head caused by the noise being sharpened.

 

[ddrueding]

I just flipped back through the last weeks worth of POTDs, and they all were massively over-sharpened.

 

[LunarMist]

Sharpening for the web is generally done at 0.3 after resizing. Some images that look appropriately sharpened on CRTs look oversharpened on LCDs. It can help to sharpen asymmetrically to emphasize the dark side, or use a reasonable adaptive sharpening technique instead.

 

[Stereodude]

Sharpening for the web is generally done at 0.3 after resizing. Some images that look appropriately sharpened on CRTs look oversharpened on LCDs. It can help to sharpen asymmetrically to emphasize the dark side, or use a reasonable adaptive sharpening technique instead.

I create a duplicate layer, then do a high pass at 1.0 and then overlay in PS at 50% usually.

 

[ddrueding]

I shot the same flower at 16mm and 140mm. I thought that...how do I phrase this...that if the depth of the flower from front to back was a larger percentage of the distance from the sensor to the flower that it would seem more 3-dimensional. It doesn't seem to be the case. Does anyone know what I mean?

 

[Gilbo]

If you mean perspective distortion, the effect you'll get with a wider lens is larger separation between foreground and background. The closest parts of the flower will seem closer, and the farthest parts will seem farther. Using a telephoto lens, in contrast, compresses the foreground and background. I.e. the farthest part of the flower seems very close to the closest part.


Perspective effects like this will not affect a viewer's perception of 3-dimensionality. 3-dimensionality in a photography is produced entirely through the shadows produced by the light sources lighting the object being photographed.

If you light a face or a flower with the flash on the the camera, it will produce a flat look, because from the cameras point of view the shadows and shading are minimized. If you light a flower or face from the side, the shadows are plain to see and the viewer's brain locks onto those shadows and creates a 3-dimensional image out of a 2-dimensional one. That's why in this photo I lit the flowers with lights from the sides (I shot from the right side of the table for the shot I linked), hitting the flower in a kind of cross-fire.

I note in the notes for that photo that one flash failed to fire there. Even if it had fired, the cross-fire wouldn't be even. You want a dominant light source, and a fill (so the shadows aren't black). In retrospect, I'm pretty sure the 2nd flash did fire, just not at the proper power setting because I didn't let it charge enough. There is still some fill in that image, just not as much as there should have been.

It's also possible that the 2nd flash didn't fire, but enough light bounced off the white umbrella to provide the level of fill you see in the photograph. Either way, it ended up being a happy accident.


So, to make a 2-dimensional image look 3d, you need to make sure the incident light creates shadows and tone variation that is visible from the camera. A flash on-camera or sunlight behind you will not do that, but if you put the sun to the side of the subject, you'll get a more 3d look. Of course, you can't move the sun if the angle doesn't allow the composition you want... that's why flashes are useful for macro photography!

 

[ddrueding]

Excellent description with samples, awesome. Thanks for taking the time.

 

[e_dawg]

Hmm... I was going to say wide angle lenses emphasize perspective, but I like your reference to lighting balance across multiple dimensions. I hadn't thought about that until you mentioned it.

 

[e_dawg]

Here is a shot of some tulips that used the crossfire lighting technique Gilbo described:

 

[udaman]

If you mean perspective distortion, the effect you'll get with a wider lens is larger separation between foreground and background. The closest parts of the flower will seem closer, and the farthest parts will seem farther. Using a telephoto lens, in contrast, compresses the foreground and background. I.e. the farthest part of the flower seems very close to the closest part.


Perspective effects like this will not affect a viewer's perception of 3-dimensionality. 3-dimensionality in a photography is produced entirely through the shadows produced by the light sources lighting the object being photographed.

If you light a face or a flower with the flash on the the camera, it will produce a flat look, because from the cameras point of view the shadows and shading are minimized. If you light a flower or face from the side, the shadows are plain to see and the viewer's brain locks onto those shadows and creates a 3-dimensional image out of a 2-dimensional one. That's why in this photo I lit the flowers with lights from the sides (I shot from the right side of the table for the shot I linked), hitting the flower in a kind of cross-fire.

I note in the notes for that photo that one flash failed to fire there. Even if it had fired, the cross-fire wouldn't be even. You want a dominant light source, and a fill (so the shadows aren't black). In retrospect, I'm pretty sure the 2nd flash did fire, just not at the proper power setting because I didn't let it charge enough. There is still some fill in that image, just not as much as there should have been.

It's also possible that the 2nd flash didn't fire, but enough light bounced off the white umbrella to provide the level of fill you see in the photograph. Either way, it ended up being a happy accident.


So, to make a 2-dimensional image look 3d, you need to make sure the incident light creates shadows and tone variation that is visible from the camera. A flash on-camera or sunlight behind you will not do that, but if you put the sun to the side of the subject, you'll get a more 3d look. Of course, you can't move the sun if the angle doesn't allow the composition you want... that's why flashes are useful for macro photography!

Well I hate flash photography in general, as it's abused much like over-sharpening and HDR bracketing technique, both in some circumstances producing surreal, or visually unpleasant images to my eye.

For situations where you have lots of setup time, and want to go through the trouble of using such flashes (would prefer full 90deg. 2-axis pivoting on camera flash and any white surface for a quick fix that doesn't require much added carry bulk/weight when traveling) I can see their value.

I shot the same flower at 16mm and 140mm. I thought that...how do I phrase this...that if the depth of the flower from front to back was a larger percentage of the distance from the sensor to the flower that it would seem more 3-dimensional. It doesn't seem to be the case. Does anyone know what I mean?

Umm, wasn't part of that DOF equation discussed in my T/S flower lens thread?

Here is a shot of some tulips that used the crossfire lighting technique Gilbo described:

I kind of disagree on the shadows as being everything, all important (contrast distinctions) in 3D imaging. Simply moving to higher definition (ie. higher resolution...real resolution, not just MP sensors ) TV's definitely gives a much greater perception of 3D, even on newer movies shot with 35mm digital camcorders where the DP has the option of very narrow DOF lens. Moving to 4k res projection, gets you even more realistic 3D perception, without the need for special 'stereoscopic' glasses viewer need to use for the IMAX movie done by James Cameron, "Into the Deep" using the old Sony CineAlta's modified to capture the 3D scenes.

In the above example by e_dawg, while it's unlikely you'd want to show the 'clutter' in the background; greater DOF here would give some 3D 'realism' to that image, would be more like you were actually looking at it through your eyes---notice how out of focus the leaves are in the foreground. But photography as the medium it is now, can't reproduce human eye stereoscopic 3D vision, not intended to.

Using a tilt/shift lens would certainly help here.

You have to ask yourself though, for your own human eye perception looking at the flower, not the photographed imaged, does lighting make for a greater 3D impression? Perhaps, but with flat lighting, your stereoscopic vision still perceives a 3D view. For me, I'd rather use more DOF, and less crossfire and other lighting 'gimics', as they throw bright areas into the scene, parts of the flower, the vase it's in, where I'd prefer that not to be, prefer softer, more uniform lighting...with some contrast, just not harsher contrast. While I'll admit there are countless situations where using flash fill, permits a shot that would look pretty bad in a high contrast situation that even a Fuji S5 Pro can't accommodate, but it still will many times give an unnatural look to an image. If only we had sensors that could capture double the DR they do now. Greater dynamic range could lead to better 3D perception without the need for a flash in some instances.

I pretty much hate macro shots with too much intensity lighting from those macro flashes, really artificial looking to me. Turn the output levels down to minimum, throw in a much higher DR sensor and the macro capable Nikon (see dd, you're better off going with that new D700 FF body what with clean ISO6400, even if only 12MP) PC-E 90mm lens set on max tilt @F11 or so; and you'll get some very nice macro shots that put other vary narrow DOF shots to shame .

 

[Gilbo]

Well, when you're viewing a 2D image (like a photograph or a TV screen), the only cues that allow your brain to perceive the image as 3-dimensional are those provided by the tonal variation and shadows caused by directional lighting. As I pointed out, on-camera light or light from the direction of the camera (i.e. the sun behind you) won't provide such cues - the shadows are hidden by the object you're photographing when the light comes from the direction of your camera. Flat lighting, as you pointed out, will also not produce the strong visual cues your brain needs to perceive depth, which is why things look flat on an overcast day.

This effect is also why landscape photographers shoot at sunrise and sunset. It's not just for the colours, but also for the way the horizontal light separates and defines the features of the landscape.

As for resolution being a factor, I just don't see that mattering quite frankly. I think you might be confusing other image quality improvements with 3-dimensionality. More resolution can certainly improve some aspects of some photos, but as for improving the perception of depth? I don't think so.


With respect to flash being somehow bad... a lot of the best photography I've seen has been done using strobe of some kind. Every photo needs light. Yes, if you leave it on the camera, the effect generally looks bad, but that's as far as I'll concede. I have just about the opposite feeling to you udaman; I think the vast majority of photos scattered all over the internet, could have been better given the knowledgeable use of additional artificial light. The problem is that not enough people use flash to improve their photographs because they find it intimidating. It's actually quite easy once you have the basics down.

 

[Stereodude]

Did I miss something? When did a Tilt & Shift lens become the ultimate photographers tool?

 

[ddrueding]

I was looking for someone who would print and mount canvas panoramas and I found these guys. They seem very competitively priced, and their website is easy enough. Anyone here have any experience with them?

 

[udaman]

I was looking for someone who would print and mount canvas panoramas and I found these guys. They seem very competitively priced, and their website is easy enough. Anyone here have any experience with them?

Sorry no^^^, did you see the May issue of National Geographic devoted to China...talk about panoramas!

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/table-of-contents

And where are your pix from your China trip dd?





Just think, 10 yrs from now, if I'm still alive and not an old homeless man, we will have 4k or 8k projection movies @home or in the diminishing theatre experience...IMAX will be history, IMHO.

I'm dd's father's age, but I'm more of a techno dweeb than anyone on SR or most storage forums...ahead of my time

And yet all the problems that face the world, China & India, the global economy, global environmental concerns, global political instability and changing shifts of the worlds power player economies. Frightening times ahead.

 

[ddrueding]

And where are your pix from your China trip dd?

That is a great question, and I'm not really sure, but all I had with me was a 6MP PnS. I did however just find the prints from my first trip to Asia, all I have are prints, and all I used were disposables. I do want all the pictures digitized, but there are quite a few. I don't know if I want to do it myself or get someone to do it.

 

[ddrueding]

Has anyone else been playing with Helicon Focus? I just downloaded the demo and took some pictures. Still playing, but here is my first attempt to get 2 different focal planes. I did play with having more, but dealing with artifacts (it's windy today) gets tricky.