Photography Thread

[Tyler]

With my summer job I'll be working at my university it'll give me enough to snag a 16-35 f/4 so needless to say Im pretty excited about that.

I've also been looking at either a 50mm 1.4 or 1.2 but Im still deciding.

 

[Philligan]

With my summer job I'll be working at my university it'll give me enough to snag a 16-35 f/4 so needless to say Im pretty excited about that.

I've also been looking at either a 50mm 1.4 or 1.2 but Im still deciding.

Check out the Sigma 50 1.4 Art. I haven't used it, but I've shot with the 35 Art, and it's amazing. I'd take it over the Canon primes personally.

I haven't been shooting much lately (been really busy planning the wedding), but Affinity Photo just got released for public beta, so I downloaded and played around with it. I have no desire to quit using Lightroom, but from what I understand so far, Affinity is supposed to be an alternative to Photoshop, not Lightroom. I'd like Photoshop for stacking/layers and the like for landscapes, and it would be cool to use it for a bit of retouching, but I don't want to pay Photoshop prices. So I downloaded the Affinity beta to see if it'll do the trick instead - if so, it's only gonna be $49 when it launches.

So far the workflow seems pretty sensible, but super foreign to me. I'm a creature of habit and basically learn what I have to to get by, and I've only used Lightroom, so this may or may not feel more familiar to someone who's already used Lightroom. I don't have anything to work with for multiple exposures of landscapes or starscapes yet, so I just edited an existing photo of Dawn. It can't seem to handle the Fuji RAWs yet, so I exported a straight JPG in Lightroom and worked with that. I didn't get too deep into the masking or anything yet (that still confuses the hell out of me ) but the cloning and healing works great.

Dawn by philbabbey, on Flickr

 

[Tyler]

Check out the Sigma 50 1.4 Art. I haven't used it, but I've shot with the 35 Art, and it's amazing. I'd take it over the Canon primes personally.

I definitely looked into that but from what Ive seen, its been that Sigmas are hit or miss

 

[Philligan]

I definitely looked into that but from what Ive seen, its been that Sigmas are hit or miss

From what I've read the Art stuff is a huge step up, and the 35 and 50 both were in most sites' lists for top lenses the year each of those was released. I know a few guys who shoot for a living who all swear by the 35.

 

[Tyler]

From what I've read the Art stuff is a huge step up, and the 35 and 50 both were in most sites' lists for top lenses the year each of those was released. I know a few guys who shoot for a living who all swear by the 35.

Thats great news! I'll definite look into those. I wouldn't be opposed to renting both the 35 and 50 to see what suites me better. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[Joe Harvatt]

Been playing around with the menus on my camera in work. How do you guys have your High ISO noise reduction set usually?

 

[Tyler]

Been playing around with the menus on my camera in work. How do you guys have your High ISO noise reduction set usually?

I usually alternate between normal and high but havent noticed any extravagant differences, but in the long run I do believe it helps

 

[ThePhilosopher]

Dawn by philbabbey, on Flickr

She looks very red, masking is nothing to be afraid of - it's just a way to apply adjustments locally.
I put a curves adjustment layer on top of a black to white gradient to change the colors. The mask for the curves adjustment is below the image. Where the mask is lighter the curves adjustment is more prominent and where it is darker it is not having as strong an effect. Black is no effect, white is full effect - masks are simple

 

[MrYakob]

Thats great news! I'll definite look into those. I wouldn't be opposed to renting both the 35 and 50 to see what suites me better. Thanks for the recommendation!

Another +1 for the Art series, the 50mm pretty much never leaves my 6D and now that they've announce the 24 1.4 art I'll be picking that up too!

 

[Tang]

I'm back!

 

[Philligan]

Been playing around with the menus on my camera in work. How do you guys have your High ISO noise reduction set usually?

I pretty much keep it turned off. AFAIK it only affects jpgs, and I pretty much always shoot raw, but I always thought that if the noise was bad enough that it was distracting/overly noticeable, the photo would be better off in B&W anyway. Either that or I'd add some grain to try and hide it, but I rarely used NR in Lightroom.

I honestly don't think I ever had the 70D set to shoot jpgs (something I regretted after taking it on a family vacation and realizing I didn't want to process several hundred snapshots from raw ), but with the Fuji, I find their noise reduction a bit too heavy-handed, and I like how the noise is grainy as opposed to colour noise, so even with JPGs I keep it turned off.

She looks very red, masking is nothing to be afraid of - it's just a way to apply adjustments locally.
I put a curves adjustment layer on top of a black to white gradient to change the colors. The mask for the curves adjustment is below the image. Where the mask is lighter the curves adjustment is more prominent and where it is darker it is not having as strong an effect. Black is no effect, white is full effect - masks are simple

Awesome, thanks man. I'm gonna play around with that some more. That still confuses me but I'm gonna look into it more to try and get a feel for it. I think I by far struggle with accurate skin tones the most, and I feel like this would really help me get better with them.

So I found out today that my work is donating $10k to an elementary school's robotics program next week, and they want me to shoot the release. This will just be for the company, not any news outlets, but it'll still be fun. I miss working - as much as it can get repetitive sometimes, I like it because it forces me to shoot and puts me outside of my comfort zone a lot. Especially during winter, where it's a lot more of a hassle to just wander around with my camera.

I'm not expecting anything crazy. They wouldn't have hired a photographer normally, and I'm pretty sure I'm just shooting this in lieu of someone taking a snapshot with a cell phone, so it's probably gonna be fairly quick and dirty and I won't have much time to set stuff up and try and make it look really good. I'm pretty sure the boss just asked me because he knows I like shooting, but I'm down with that. It's still cool that I'll be able to shoot the odd event for the company and have it published internally, and maybe it'll get me in touch with the marketing department. This was just a part time retail job that I got while I was still in school, and I don't want to make a career in retail, but I'd definitely consider moving up in the company if I could get involved higher up and do something with my degree. I'm hoping too that I'll maybe be able to network a bit with some of the local news teams that are there in case the chance to work for a paper ever pops up.

 

[aciek_l]

Just a quick photo from little A3-Club spot yesterday. Horrible light.

 

[Joe Harvatt]

I pretty much keep it turned off. AFAIK it only affects jpgs, and I pretty much always shoot raw, but I always thought that if the noise was bad enough that it was distracting/overly noticeable, the photo would be better off in B&W anyway. Either that or I'd add some grain to try and hide it, but I rarely used NR in Lightroom.

I honestly don't think I ever had the 70D set to shoot jpgs (something I regretted after taking it on a family vacation and realizing I didn't want to process several hundred snapshots from raw ), but with the Fuji, I find their noise reduction a bit too heavy-handed, and I like how the noise is grainy as opposed to colour noise, so even with JPGs I keep it turned off.

Ah, that makes sense. I'll have to look into it, to see if it's the same jpeg only thing with Nikon. I do the same thing sometimes with high ISO noise, B&W and we've got nice grain instead of purple and green dots.

 

[flint757]

It should be the same. The idea of raw is that you have all of the original data as the picture is being taken. This way you can add NR after the fact. Whereas with jpeg it all happens in-camera making in-camera NR an absolute necessity.

 

[Tang]

back to my old ways with stationary objects. and a whole new processing style!

sky #4 by nrrfed, on Flickr

sky #2 by nrrfed, on Flickr

IMGP3708 by nrrfed, on Flickr

IMGP3651 by nrrfed, on Flickr

sky #11 by nrrfed, on Flickr

sky #3 by nrrfed, on Flickr

 

[feilong29]

Didn't get as many shots as I wanted when I visited the Byodo Temple here in Hawaii :/ but these two stuck out:

 

[ThePhilosopher]

A composite from yesterday; I took a few shots of her posing and then moved the light off the stand to illuminate the tree in different sections using the built-in intervalometer.

Nikon D3 with Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8D@135mm: ISO 100 1/200s f/6.3

 

[Philligan]

That's pretty surreal looking, man.

So it's a holiday today (gotta love Family Day ) but it's been hitting -40 with the windchill, and I haven't been out shooting in a while. I saw the light hitting my coffee mug and figured I'd try something. I got a small (15" or so) reflector from work for a few dollars a while back, but it's too small to really be useful and I haven't really tried it out. I thought I'd try it on my mug, and I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make. I'm currently hunting for a larger one on eBay.

There's nothing special about these photos, and other than pulling the highlights a bit and just barely upping the sharpness and clarity, I didn't touch them. I thought I'd see what the reflector really does.

This first one is no reflector, just the light coming in from the window.

No reflector by philbabbey, on Flickr

For this one, I held the reflector a foot or two away, and managed to angle it and hit the mug.

Far reflector by philbabbey, on Flickr

And for this one, the reflector is a lot closer, probably 6"-8".

Close reflector by philbabbey, on Flickr

I'm really looking forward to trying this on a person now. Speed lights are fun, but I've been trying to find ways to work with natural light more, so I'm finding and creating photos, instead of just making them (if that makes any sense). I've been trying to look for nice photos, even if I don't have a camera on me, because I think I struggle with creativity the most. And a reflector really seems to be able to add that extra pop and add a bit more texture and depth to a photo without totally lighting it artificially.

 

[ThePhilosopher]

That's pretty surreal looking, man.

It's all in the masking.

 

[Tyler]

We started getting slammed with snow here at my University, so I went to the arboretum while it was still fresh powder