zoomzoom02
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- Protege ES
I need a new camera, but saw this spot and had to take a pic. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good newbie camera? I want to get into this more, but in the meantime romp around with my Sony DSC-T33
Any photographers in here?
- Thread starter ChopstickHero
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zoomzoom02
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- Protege ES
Less than a grand...Digital
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- 2003 Subaru WRX Wagon, 2000 Miata
Canon Rebel XTi/400D ... it just came out. or go for the the Rebel XT/350D to save a few bucks and get 90% of what the XTi has. the XTi has 10MP vs 8MP and a 9pt AF vs 7pt AF. Has a bigger lcd screen on the back too.zoomzoom02 said:
Some people on the Canon digital forums already have done comparisons. It's not really an upgrade to most XT users. it's more a of a "sidegrade". Probably the best thing would be the better 9pt AF. it is the same on in the 30D and is apparently a lot more accurate. A true upgrade from the XT would be a 20D or 30D.
civicexracer
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- Honda, Civic EX...
AKYellow said:
my camera has a program on it that allows me to choose what color i want in the frame, yellow for that case, and it automaticlly makes everything else B&W. its called "color accent" on the camera.
zoomzoom02 said:
with dark, low light areas i like to play around with the white balance setting, usually brigtens things up, allows for more sharp pics, and accents colors really well.
heres a sorta artsy one i got yesterday when getting some new engine bay pics..
bit grainy but w/e..
BradC said:
Wow, that's quite a kit for a newbie. D-SLRs are very powerful photographic tools, but like anything, learn the basics first. Be rock-solid on the fundamentals of photography--film and digital, its all the same--before you worry too much about the equipment. Think of the D200+18-200 as the Porsche 911 Turbo of the camera world. It is not the most expensive nor the flashiest, but you will rarely, if ever, find a situation it can't handle in a world-class manor.
As for your pictures, I will take a WAG and say you are shooting JPEG straight out of the camera. I'd switch to NEF (RAW) file format before too long. The difference between a well 'developed' NEF file and a JPEG is night and day.
Good luck
ChopstickHero said:
Don't let Chop and those Canon fanboys fool you; Nikon is the way to go!
I keed, I keed...
In all seriousness, the 400D is one hell of a camera. You get a ton for your money. In fact, on the face of it making the decision between the 400D and something like the D50 may not seem like a tough call (400D all the way), but there are some less obvious considerations you need to include in your decision process. I chose the D50 because of the layout of the controls and displays. It very much similar to how both Canon and Nikon design their interfaces on professional cameras. Nikon chose to bring many of those design queues to the D50 where Canon choose to design a camera for the prosumer digital market from scratch. Certainly, they have the new to moderate user in mind, so from that persective, you really can't loose.
Just be sure to try out both (or more) cameras before you buy. And check out www.dpreview.com
Alright...last post, I promise.
Here are some shots from earlier in the summer. They are, in fact, the first set of pitures I took as NEF and converted using RawShooter: Essentials. I resized, applied unsharpen mask, and saved at 81 quality JPEG in PhotoShop. All pictures were shot using Nikon D50 w/ 18-70mm D70 "kit lens".
Here are some shots from earlier in the summer. They are, in fact, the first set of pitures I took as NEF and converted using RawShooter: Essentials. I resized, applied unsharpen mask, and saved at 81 quality JPEG in PhotoShop. All pictures were shot using Nikon D50 w/ 18-70mm D70 "kit lens".
civicexracer
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NVP5White said:
really nice(2thumbs)
Thanks for the tips man. I also have a 50mm lens to f-around with, all Nikkor VR lenses. I love this stuff, its all so interesting. I have shot in RAW since those, just haven't found anything cool to shoot lately!NVP5White said:
What makes RAW better?
Also, I am learning CS2 at the same time. When loading a RAW image, should I change the "colorspace" or leave it as is, and what the hell is "colorspace"??
Protege5Gurly
Member
Cant wait till this weekend ... my new XTi is ready and waiting 
BradC said:
Ah, so much information, so little time. CS2 does support NEF files but not officially, I believe. In fact, Nikon encrypts some of the picture data so while CS2 may be able to convert the picture it does so with limited white-balance, exposure, and other information. CS2 can compensate but the process is more dependant on you using the controls to make the picture look like what it did to you when you took it.
To answer your specific question, unless you are publishing your work you generally can shoot in any color space you like. You can avoid the message when you open a picture by setting the camera color space and the CS2 color space to the same setting.
Now on to the bigger question of RAW files and how they are beneficial. a RAW file (NEF) contains relatively unfiltered and unmanipulated data straight from the sensor. That is contrasted with JPEG which looks at the picture in 8x8 pixel squares and determines what information it can throw away. Thats how it ends up a smaller file size. RAW does slight compression but it save ALL luminance and chrominance data as it is right out of the sensor.
Once you pull a RAW image into PhotoShop (or other RAW converter), you have the ability to adjust things like exposure, color balance, saturation, white balance, and make curves adjustments. Since 100% of the sensor data is present, its as if you are making the changes at the time of exposure. There are no negative side effects to pushing and pulling on a picture. Once its converted it will be like it came straight out of the camera perfect.
I choose to convert my RAW files into 8-bit TIFFs for serious editing work. I typically don't make color, major brightness, or contrast adjustments after the file has been converted. The first step in editing is to decide what parts of the image needs fixing. Are there power lines running across your perfect sunset? Is there a bugger hanging from your nephew's nose? Fix stuff that needs to copied, smudged, layered, etc first.
Once that is complete, you can do a final curves or levels adjustment. For this step I choose select Layer ->Add Adjustment Layer ->Levels. Levels adjustment is good for making sure you brightest spot is white and your darkest spot is black. Adjusting the middle slider will adjust the balance toward lighter or darker for everything in between.
The final touch-up step is the Unsharpen Mask. This is the most powerful and controllable way to sharpen images. You should select a large sharpen % (~150%) and a very small diameter (0.3 - 0.8). This will result in the greatest enhancement while avoiding the dreaded halos around areas of high contrast.
Once you finish adusting you image you want to re-evaluate the image's composition by cropping. I like to use the rule of thirds and the crop tool to draw the viewer's eye to the most interesting part of the image.
Now when saving you images you should consider the end use. Generally, image viewing applications use sloppy algorithms to resize images. I prefer to output images at the size they will be viewed at. Backgrounds are always 1280x720 (16x9 ratio is pleasing and I like the bars on the top and bottom. Kind of like you picture is hi-def). Once I have resized I will run unsharpen mask again and always set the diameter at 0.3 pixels.
File -> save as for simple JPEGs. File ->Save for Web for images that need a smaller file size.
Follow the link to the DPReview Forum for Retouching images: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1006
Lurk around and do some searching. You can spend weeks reading and learing and still feel liek you've just scratched the surface.
Good luck
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Protege5Gurly
Member
Most places are selling the 400D/XTi for $899 and the 350D/XT for $799 ... Circuit City has a 10% off coupon right now so if you can find a CC that has it in stock your golden. Its an online only coupon, but CC offers that "buy online, pick up in store" thing. I got my 400D from Best Buy and convinced them to honor the CC online coupon since both locations allow you to purchase online and pickup in store
Whao, awesome pictures! Try to use Adobe Bridge when view RAW or DNG. Much more powerful tool to add metadata. Also, download (free) Adobe RAW to DNG converter. RAW is a special format only canon uses and DNG (digital negative) is a universal format I believe.
Peace
Peace
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- 2003 Subaru WRX Wagon, 2000 Miata
^^^
great pics! i love the rich green color.
here are a few i took at Lake Arrowhead a few weekends ago for a photo scavenger hunt i was participating in:
down low category
flower category
movement category (merry go round)
great pics! i love the rich green color.
here are a few i took at Lake Arrowhead a few weekends ago for a photo scavenger hunt i was participating in:
down low category
flower category
movement category (merry go round)
Chopstickhero, you could shoot with a larger f/stop so more of that rope would be infocus if thats another thing you could go for.
Oh and word of advice dont save your pics as JPEG in photoshop, every time you save it will take a bit of quality away from the pic each and everytime you open and resave it as JPEG, Save it as the psd.
Oh and word of advice dont save your pics as JPEG in photoshop, every time you save it will take a bit of quality away from the pic each and everytime you open and resave it as JPEG, Save it as the psd.
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- 2003 Subaru WRX Wagon, 2000 Miata
LOL .... the effect was to get some very narrow depth of field ....winty87 said:
What's so good about everything being in focus? 
Those were shot in RAW format, processed in Photoshop and saved as PSD. I only export to JPG when i post things up on the web. Even then, I export them at 100% quality (although i know JPG is a lossy format). But you get the picture.
winty87 said:
I agree that every time you convert an image from one format to another you loose something in the translation. This is especially true if you are also compressing the image when converting, such as when you save as a JPEG. However, 100% quality JPEGs, saved/converted just one time, are equivilent in viewing and printing quality to TIFF which is a lossless format.
For those using CS2 to process RAW into something else, I would agree that PSD files are your best choice. However, since I use RawShooter: Essentials for my RAW processing I convert to the onyl common format, TIFF. This has the secondary advantage of being viewable on nearly any computer without further conversion. The downside, of course, is the poor handling of layers and the large file size.
