Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: ChickenHawk on May 25, 2006, 12:41:03 PM
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Recently I purchased a Canon EOS 20D and some extra glass. The decision to go with a DSLR was in no small part helped along by the excellent pictures I saw on this board from the likes of Bug, Nills, Nuke, Sandy, Rip and others. Thank you guys for sharing and being an inspiration.
It's been a while since we've had a good photography thread so I'd like to share some of my snapshots and invite others to post some of your recent pictures and show everyone what you've been up to.
Macro:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_0028.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_1977.jpg)
Action:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_0843.jpg)
Airport:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_0177.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_2387.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_2393.jpg)
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More.
Landscape:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_0600.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_0675.jpg)
Critters:
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_2656.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_2670.jpg)
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f93/hawk_fw/Canon%20Pics/IMG_2792.jpg)
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Nice! I think everyone's first picture with a new SLR is a close up of something. :)
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That kid is holding gun wrong....
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20D is a nice camera, even though I'm Nikonist. Keep on practicing, it'll take a while before you get familiar the camera!
I'll recommend getting an external flash flash for it. I didn't know how much fun a flash was until I got one last monday. Bouncing and fill flashing gives very nice results :cool:
I feel like I'm beginning to want MORE flashes, for remote units. Scary thought, very expensive one.
Originally posted by Ripsnort
Nice! I think everyone's first picture with a new SLR is a close up of something. :)
Mine was out of a window, to see if it actually works ;)
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Originally posted by Russian
That kid is holding gun wrong....
Yes he is. That's my 10 year old son firing a handgun for the first time. He'll get better.
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Originally posted by Fishu
20D is a nice camera, even though I'm Nikonist. Keep on practicing, it'll take a while before you get familiar the camera!
I'll recommend getting an external flash flash for it. I didn't know how much fun a flash was until I got one last monday. Bouncing and fill flashing gives very nice results :cool:
I feel like I'm beginning to want MORE flashes, for remote units. Scary thought, very expensive one.
It is a nice camera, I'm very happy with it. But your right, it will take a lot of practice to get comfortable with it. I have around 1500 shots with it so far and still feel like a complete amateur.
External flashes are very nice. I'd like to get one now but unfortunately it will have to wait. But it is on the list. :)
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Nice pics! What kind of lenses are you using?
I quite recently (~3 weeks ago or so) bought me a 30D, pretty much the same camera as 20D.. 2100 shots taken now, 1700 of them during last week. :)
I had 350D for about a year before (actually, I still have it), got about 7000 shots and I started getting good shots somewhere after first 2k shots... I still manage to ruin some fine shots with doing something like shooting in ISO 1600 outdoors when I have been indoors before...
Here's one from last weekend:
(http://static.flickr.com/56/152078288_d171cfe16f.jpg) (http://flickr.com/photos/wasq/152078288/in/set-72057594143419801/)
This kind of shots are the hardest for me so far, it's from a museum with large windows, fluorecent lights on top but still quite dark mostly. Hard to get the exposure and white balance worked out.
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Originally posted by ChickenHawk
Yes he is. That's my 10 year old son firing a handgun for the first time. He'll get better.
If it is your gun, he should be doing it properly. My friend once tried to hold my weapon like that......he was bleeding after....and never again he made same mistake.
Nice pics though, very colorful.
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so I'd like to share some of my snapshots and invite others to post some of your recent pictures and show everyone what you've been up to.
Just had to add my favorite pic of over 500 pics I took in Walt Disney World (Which is a GREAT place to shoot, especially with everything blooming) Its very difficult to distinguish what are leaves in the water on the bottom and which are fish.
(http://pic4.picturetrail.com/VOL767/2726312/10206819/146360382.jpg)
More here:
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=10206819&uid=2726312&members=1
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I still manage to ruin some fine shots with doing something like shooting in ISO 1600 outdoors when I have been indoors before...
Hehe sounds like me.
Hi chickenhawk
Wtg good camera. Canon ,olympus ,pentax the cameraman is all it matters :)
I like the landscape pictures and the reddish airport.
Btw i didnt do real macros yet something u dont do it as easily with a pocket camera.
I try to catch all kinds of subjects.
So i was in amsterdam lately with my zoom on it and made some street shots.
:)
I tell u its a desease u feel u have to travel and u look with a camera eye to the world.
I love it.
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60775620/large.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60775624.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006 "commuting"
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60775623.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006 ok woman
More here:
Didnt notice Rip looks like a nice park
I like the last pic the most :)
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(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60775621/large.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006 "harekrishna"
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60776136/large.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006
and keep practising on them girls :)
(for u chick graving guys)
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wasq,
That's a GREAT job with the indoor plane pic... What kind of post processing did you do?
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Originally posted by wasq
Nice pics! What kind of lenses are you using?
I quite recently (~3 weeks ago or so) bought me a 30D, pretty much the same camera as 20D.. 2100 shots taken now, 1700 of them during last week. :)
So far I have the Canon 10-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4.0, and my telephoto is a Sigma 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6. Not great glass but it's a start. I'm really craving a good Canon anti-shake telephoto but I'll have to save up for that one.
I almost got a 30D but found a good deal on the 20 and didn't want to wait. But from what I've read, its a real gem.
I love you picture. It looks like you got the white balance perfect and I love the soft lighting on the fuselage.
I find air museums one of the biggest challenges because of the poor lighting. I've taken to bringing a tripod in with me to try to get decent shots. I'm going again this weekend to see what I can come up with.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Just had to add my favorite pic of over 500 pics I took in Walt Disney World (Which is a GREAT place to shoot, especially with everything blooming) Its very difficult to distinguish what are leaves in the water on the bottom and which are fish.
Cool pic. I checked out your gallery and you have some good ones in there. Looks like you had a lot of fun with the camera.
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Originally posted by BUG_EAF322
So i was in amsterdam lately with my zoom on it and made some street shots.
:)
I tell u its a desease u feel u have to travel and u look with a camera eye to the world.
I love it.
Love you shots. People pictures are the most interesting and are often times the hardest to capture. It's something that I don't have much experience with but plan to work on.
I know how you feel about the camera eye disease. Wherever I am I'm always looking for that perfect shot. Haven't found it yet but I know she's out there.:D
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A buildings
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60780555/large.jpg)
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60783187/large.jpg)
(http://www.pbase.com/bug322/image/60780559/large.jpg)
BUG322(C)2006
a very addictive thing :)
regards
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Very nice pics Chickenhawk and congrats on the camera.
I like that landscape picture a lot.
Some nice pics here from everyone, thanks for posting them. Yeah, a photography section on the BBS would be great.
I'm going to take a week off pretty soon and just travel around Arizona taking pics and hiking. DSLR Photography is very adicting.
SabaruS is a very good photographer. He has some great airshow pics that he'd posted from time to time. Believe he has the 20d as well.
When I first got my 20d, I only had the VERY cheap 18- 55mm lens that came with it. Now I have 4 nice lenses and a flash to play with.
I don't really know how to use the flash very effectively yet. Any tips would be great. The flash I have is camera mounted, but it is also a controler for remote units.
Anway, I love seeing the photos from everyone. Keep 'em coming.
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Nice shots ChickenHawk :aok I like the landscape and the Peacock. landscape is my thing - where was that taken?
I'll put up a few of my recent attempts in a bit.
I like my 350D but after trying my freinds 5D I know what I am having soon :t - I just can't resist new gear - my main weakness and I know it.
BTW I just this week got a 24-105 EF L IS so my 28-135 IS USM (NOT an L series) is available if you may be interested ?
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Ok three efforts:-
Crystal Cove South of Newport Beach at sunset
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/43_1148609729_sunsetshore.jpg)
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/43_1148609609_shorelinesunset.jpg)
Lower Yosemite Falls Vertical Pano (8 shots stitched)
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/43_1148609684_vertpanaoramayosemitefalls.jpg)
Hope they aren't tooooo big
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Very nice Sparks.
What was shutter speed on those?
That verticle pic is great. How'd you take the 8 shots and not have the waterfall get out of alignment, since it's in motion?
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Very nice pics Spark - chickenhawk. The canon is a great camera, I just bought a nikon d-50 dslr for my wife on christmas it too takes some top shelf photos. My wife is learning how to get good shots right now & is already pestering me for some new glass for it.
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The top shot was 2 secs, I had a 0.9 solid Neutral density filter in to stop down 3 stops and a grad to bring the sky in.
The middle one 1/2 sec. using only a 3 stop ND grad.
The waterfall was done at 1/10th so that the water blurred and it didn't matter how it lined up. I was surprised how well it went togther. I have a big 8 X 27 print of that on the wall :)
I have sooooo much to learn though. Hit percentage is tiny.
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Originally posted by Sparks
The top shot was 2 secs, I had a 0.9 solid Neutral density filter in to stop down 3 stops and a grad to bring the sky in.
The middle one 1/2 sec. using only a 3 stop ND grad.
The waterfall was done at 1/10th so that the water blurred and it didn't matter how it lined up. I was surprised how well it went togther. I have a big 8 X 27 print of that on the wall :)
I have sooooo much to learn though. Hit percentage is tiny.
Interesting. I'd like to know more about how to chose filters for shots like that. Great exposures under that lighting on the top two.
I knew the shutter speed was low, but wouldn't have guessed a full 2 secs.
Nice work.
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Originally posted by Sparks
Nice shots ChickenHawk :aok I like the landscape and the Peacock. landscape is my thing - where was that taken?
I'll put up a few of my recent attempts in a bit.
I like my 350D but after trying my freinds 5D I know what I am having soon :t - I just can't resist new gear - my main weakness and I know it.
BTW I just this week got a 24-105 EF L IS so my 28-135 IS USM (NOT an L series) is available if you may be interested ?
Thank you guys for the feeback. That's high praise coming from photographers of your caliber.
The landscape was taken on the top of Upper Table Rock near Medford, Oregon. If you've never been there, the two table rocks are mesa's sticking up out of the valley floor and are great places to go hiking, climbing and picture taking. The pools of water have ghost shrimp in them that are found no where else in the world as far as I know.
Your pictures are outstanding! After seeing these three and the air show one's earlier, I can see that you are quite a good photographer. Those are photo's you can be proud of. I'd love to see more.
Don't even get me started on the 5D. I can't imagine having a full sized sensor to work with. :eek:
Congrats on the new glass. The wife ack has shot down any new lenses for a while seeing as I already spent a good chunk on my setup, including software, backpack, external drive for storage......etc :cool:
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Nice pictures in this thread!
Originally posted by eagl
That's a GREAT job with the indoor plane pic... What kind of post processing did you do?
Thanks. Actually, not much processing with this one. I shot it with RAW, then processed with RawShooter (adjust levels, pick color balance with the dropper, crop and resize).
Originally posted by ChickenHawk
So far I have the Canon 10-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8-4.0, and my telephoto is a Sigma 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6. Not great glass but it's a start. I'm really craving a good Canon anti-shake telephoto but I'll have to save up for that one.
That's a good start. I have focused mainly on the wide end, I have Sigma 14/2.8, 30/1.4, 24-70/2.8. I got mainly Sigmas as they are cheap when bought second-hand. For teles, I usually borrow Canon 70-200/2.8 IS from work, it's a good lens but a bit too expensive to own...
I love you picture. It looks like you got the white balance perfect and I love the soft lighting on the fuselage.
I find air museums one of the biggest challenges because of the poor lighting. I've taken to bringing a tripod in with me to try to get decent shots. I'm going again this weekend to see what I can come up with.
Thanks. A tripod will definately help. I didn't have a tripod, I just bumped the ISO to 800. Shooting RAW will help if you know how to process the images afterwards. RAW allows tweaking WB and exposure settings afterwards.
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I shot a dozen pics with my D50 in jpg mode, and after that switched to raw mode even though I have almost no experience in post processing and am currently limited to using nikon view for processing. The in-camera jpg images on auto just sucked and I was getting better pics from my crappy little rotating prismatic lense point-n-shoot compact, so it's all raw images from here out.
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just a few pics I shot while fishing in Tel-Aviv.
Hercules landing over the beach
(http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/5409/06042700994zi.jpg)
Jumbo jet over the Shalom tower
(http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/51/06042701126vl.jpg)
Orthodox dude fishing in the sunset
(http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/3179/06042701179mx.jpg)
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Originally posted by eagl
I shot a dozen pics with my D50 in jpg mode, and after that switched to raw mode even though I have almost no experience in post processing and am currently limited to using nikon view for processing. The in-camera jpg images on auto just sucked and I was getting better pics from my crappy little rotating prismatic lense point-n-shoot compact, so it's all raw images from here out.
Try out a program called "GIMP" it will process Nikon images.
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I downloaded the trial version of photoshop elements and the trial of nikon capture, and I expect I'll buy one or the other. I also have the latest gimp for windows but as amazing as it sounds, it doesn't seem as easy to use as the others.
Not that I'm an expert, but with photoshop elements making some truly terrible shots look nice took maybe 60 seconds, so it's not too hard to use. $90 is more than "free", which is why I'm still trying them all out.
The only thing I don't like about photoshop elements so far is that just opening up the trial version brings my computer to it's knees, and I have an A64 3700 and 2 gig of memory... That's not encouraging. Of course, once it was open and I was actually using it to manipulate full size RAW (NEF) files, it was smooth so maybe it just sucks loading up at the beginning.
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LOL, ok if you can navigate photoshop, gimp shouldn't be a problem. But oh well, you know about gimp, you know it's free so I'll leave it at that. I am surprised that your D-50 puts out crappy images, our D-50- is on par with the Canon DSLR's in the same price range.
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It's not that the images were really "crappy" exactly, but with the default camera settings and the output image set to highest quality jpeg, the images were no better than my 4 mp dimageXT which has notoriously mediocre performance for a compact point and click. The D50 really shines when I shoot in RAW though, because then all the image data is there and I can make it look really nice with just a few minutes of manipulation.
The big example is the huge amount of brown haze here in south korea. It's like LA smog most of the time, and it makes shooting outdoors fairly challenging. Colors just get this brownish hazy cast and everything looks muted. It's like shooting through a dirty window all the time, and that's what the auto settings with jpg output looked like. Worse, the camera's automatic adjustments to compensate made the colors look really off and added artifacts I could see.
I also had trouble shooting really basic scenes inside my dorm room. Contrast was all over the place, shadows jumping out, blooming, totally whacked color balance, etc. But simply shooting in RAW and then telling the software to apply an "auto" white balance adjustment resulted in much much higher quality images. Plus when working with raw images it's easier to adjust sharpness filters and other settings.
When I saw that, I ditched jpg output entirely and now I only shoot in RAW+jpg (raw image plus low quality jpg for each shot) because that lets me do the max image manipulation, plus I get to compare it to the camera's jpg output to see if I'm deviating too far from how the camera thought it ought to look. I must say that so far, I have beaten the camera's default processing every single time after less than 5 min fiddling with the settings, even when using nikon view which only has very basic processing filters.
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I'm a firm believer that today's point and click cameras are "good enough" for 99% of the people out there. If you're not going to really dig into the DSLR settings and do a little post processing on the computer, you might as well save some money and time and get one of those little cameras. There just isn't much of a quality diff at "auto" settings, and I've found that even in extreme situations like fast action or low light, the little compacts are pretty well tweaked to produce nice images regardless of the conditions or situation. Even an entry-level DSLR like the D50 can get blown away at "auto" settings by a little compact.
I saw an 8mp 6x optical zoom compact for under $300 on woot.com today... Under most normal conditions, that little piece of junk probably takes better pics than my D50 (on auto settings) because it's designed to give great results for people who know nothing about photography in a wide range of conditions. The DSLRs just don't have that level of automatic processing, so to get good pics you really need to shoot raw and post-process.
IMHO.
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Examples - The first picture is what the camera thinks the world ought to look like. The second picture is what it looked like after I spent a few minutes processing the raw file. The real world looked a lot more like the second pic and although I know the greens are a touch overbright, the rest of the image really does match the real world a lot better.
I'm not any good at this yet, but I'm already better than the camera's auto mode output.
(http://www.mindspring.com/~seanlong/images/Osan camera processed.jpg)
(http://www.mindspring.com/~seanlong/images/Osan from dorm top floor.jpg)
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Maybe you have a faulty camera. Our cameras auto-settings look good. I would post some pics, but the website my wife has her pictures posted on has copyright protection & none of her pictures are on my PC...I don't let her mess with my PC, she has her own.
If I had to doctor pics to get them to look right I wouldn't like it either, but fortunately our camera works perfectly. The auto-settings on our D-50 smoke the best pictures my dads Kodak was able to do with any settings. I am not a big photographer, but as a point & click camera in my hands it replicated the image exactly as my eye saw it & my wifes growing knowledge is showing through in her pics.
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Originally posted by eagl
Examples - The first picture is what the camera thinks the world ought to look like. The second picture is what it looked like after I spent a few minutes processing the raw file. The real world looked a lot more like the second pic and although I know the greens are a touch overbright, the rest of the image really does match the real world a lot better.
My verdict: You're using a cheap Nikkor lens, in the range of 150-200 bucks.
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The lense is the 18-70 kit from the D70, an upgrade from the stock 18-55 that usually comes with the D50.
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Many digital camera auto settings produce remarkably accurate exposures, better than many photographers can get with manual controls. Likewise, editing pics for whatever reasons can be very challenging. It's easy to tweak this or that and trigger something that actually is not realistic, the main example being colors that are more vivid than they really are.
Of course the good thing is that sometimes we like the unrealistic result better than the way the scene actually looked. Beauty in the eye of the beholder. Artistic license.
It's also interesting to experiment with different people's perceptions, especially of color. In a class I once I brought five pieces of felt in what I saw as chartreuse, cinnamon, teal, blue violet, and hot pink. I asked the students to write down the colors they saw.
The results varied more than expected. While some people have varying degrees of color blindness, even the basically "normal" color vision majority often described notably different perceptions of the five colors.
Lens selection adds another huge variable. "Normal" human eyes supposedly see about the same field as 35mm cameras' 50mm lens, so many pictures are inherently more dramatic the farther the lens go from this midrange, e.g., 20 mm wide angles or 300 mm telephotos.
Faces look dramatically different photographed with the different perspectives of, say, 28mm, 50mm, 80mm, and 135mm.
The U.S. Navy used to be known for encouraging its photojournalists to NOT use the standard 50mm lens to get more striking pictures. Likewise some of the most famous black and white photos from WWII and before were achieved by using filters, especially red.
Which brings another interesting question: How does the sky really look -- is it the glare of a noon squint or the puffy clouds through sun glasses? Is the action of a runner the blur of 24 frames per second or whatever speed we "see" at or the frozen motion of a 1/1000 shutter?
A major effect of digital photos and the easy alteration by us masses is now more than ever we can never be sure how "accurate" any photo is. Life is all about perception anyway, so in digitalization we have gotten the control we have always wished for, the fusion of digital dots and digit fingers.
Sorry for rambling, but photography is sooooooo fascinating, and it's wonderful that more people than ever can now enjoy it through digital democratization.