Digital Camera & Photoshop tips

[Trippy]

Sony? Sale? Hahahaha. They wrote the book on price fixing.

[K9]

For anyone who is interested, BootsPhoto are doing 50 free prints when you register, you just have to pay P&P. A nice deal if you just want a bunch of 6x4 prints. [Might be UK-only, not sure]. I got mine, and they came out fine.

[Merusk]

Snapfish also offers 50 free shots when you register and they're linked to Flickr. Did 312 vacation photos for $30 after shipping

[apocrypha]

Girlfriend wants a Sony NEX-C3 since we're traveling so much this year.

Does this shit ever go on sale? Same price at Amazon, Fry's, and Sony Style.

Yeah, in about 2 years time.

[apocrypha]

Nikon D800/D7000/V1 batteries recalled due to overheating:

Nikon has issued a recall for the EN-EL15 Lithium Ion battery, an accessory for its D800, D800E, and D7000 digital-SLR cameras, and the Nikon 1 V1 advanced camera.

In a service advisory statement present on Nikon’s US, European and Australian websites, the company says the battery “may contain a sub-standard component” which “In extremely rare cases … may cause the battery to overheat and the exterior casing to become deformed.”

[Pennilenko]

Oh great and knowledgeable people of these forums. My wife and I are looking for a nice camera in the four to six hundred dollar range and I saw this on newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830120506

Is this a nice camera that will be reliable and take good shots of our son, we are both extremely novice camera users?

[Trippy]

Uh yeah it will though are you sure you want something so large? With a smaller camera you are more likely to carry it around with you.

[Pennilenko]

Uh yeah it will though are you sure you want something so large? With a smaller camera you are more likely to carry it around with you.

Yeah, I don't mind the size. Carrying around something bigger doesn't bother me.

[apocrypha]

How to help your house sell with decent photographs!

My other half's job is relocating so we're having to sell our house and move to Manchester. House market in the UK is in a bad state - we're still deep in recession (depression even) and house prices have dropped 20-30% in the last few years after becoming badly over-inflated before the economic crisis. In short, it's a buyers market atm.

So we decided to pull the stops out and try to present our fairly small house in the best way possible. We spent about £1500 doing some decorating and clearing up and dressing the house, got rid of a lot of stuff, de-cluttered it a lot and made it look really nice. And rather than relying on estate agents (realtors is the US translation I think) to photograph it I did the pics.

The aim was to make it look bright, clean and tidy, but also to make it look the way your eyes see it. Cameras have a much lower dynamic range than human eyes and interior photographs tend to exacerbate this problem. Many a time when we're looking at properties for sale we walk in and are surprised by what we see - it doesn't match the photos at all. So, all of the photos are lit by a mixture of ambient and flash - sometimes multiple flashes, either hidden in the frame or out of shot, in order to bring the dynamic range of the scene down. Also I didn't want to use the extreme wide angle lenses that estate agents often use. They may make things look bigger, but they distort and again it's very misleading. These are all shot at 24-35mm on a full-frame sensor. There's no editing other than some straightening, cropping and lens correction, and some minor touch-up and sharpening.

Main bedroom:

Living room:

Kitchen:

Dining room:

Hall:

Bathroom:

Garden:

There were 20 photos in total, showing all the rooms and more angles.

House sold in 3 weeks, for 98% of the asking price. House across the street from us, which is slightly larger and semi-detached, has been on the market since November last year for £10k less than ours.

 

[K9]

That's a really nice house there. If it were in London I'd go and view it.

[apocrypha]

Cheers :)

It's actually a fairly normal, ex-council terraced house, we've just done it up quite carefully!

[Merusk]

Presentation is everything.  It helps sell model homes, it will help sell yours, even realtors tell folks this but so few listen.

Awesome idea and great shots.  Thanks for letting us all know the set-up.  I've been thinking about selling and I'll keep them in mind when doing my own shots.

[Bunk]

Nice job on the perspective in a lot of those - makes it almost seem like you are intentionally just shooting the corner of a big room, while I know you really are standing at the far wall - it doesn't look like you are. If that makes any sense.

Love the magnetic knife rack, want it.

Is laundry in the Kitchen a typical British thing?

[apocrypha]

Thanks guys, it was actually a lot of fun doing it, I might look into the possibilities of doing it for other people too.

Is laundry in the Kitchen a typical British thing?

Yeah, very common. Often because British houses are so small that there's nowhere else to put it! Also because of only needing one drain for both kitchen sink and washing machine outflow.

[Mosesandstick]

Brilliant job Apoc! Now we need a derail on how small British houses are.

[K9]

Can we throw in a derail about the London housing market without nuking the thread to Politics? 

[K9]

Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for small DLSR tripods? Preferably something that could fit in a small bag. I was looking at gorillapods, but if there's a cheaper option that still works I'd go for that. It needn't be very large or fancy.

[apocrypha]

The Gorillapods are actually very good, I can recommend them heartily!

Another good option are beanbags - you get less flexibility of placement than with a small tripod but they're often give a much more stable platform, especially in situations where you want a tripod just for extra stability with long lenses or long exposures. They're less good if you're wanting to use a tripod for a timed release in order to photograph yourself.

The other thing you can do is just remove the ball socket head from a good tripod and attach it to a Manfrotto Super Clamp. You can then clamp your camera to all sorts of things but you only have to carry around a clamp and head instead of the whole tripod.

[Merusk]

Speaking of tripods: I'm torn between a tripod or a better bag as my next investment.  I've got a $20 tripod that's serviceable and a sling bag that's one of the old-school rectangular bags with velcro dividers.  I can't fit the camera and all my lenses in it, so I just carry the camera all the time.  Any recommendations from the crowd?

[apocrypha]

Nnnggggh, if I had to choose between a good tripod or a good camera bag I think I'd have an aneurysm!

For tripods my personal choice has always been Manfrottos. They're heavy and expensive but solid as fuck. I currently have an 055, which is a decent carry-around tripod, but I am planning on getting a 475B soon, which is much heavier and has a braced central column and is therefore a *lot* more stable.

I also much prefer pan & tilt heads to ball sockets. Again, they're bulkier and heavier, and fucking awkward to fit into bags, but I much prefer them in use.

For camera bags there's enormous choice. I love Billingham shoulder bags, but to carry gear any distance it has to be a backpack one, and Kata and Lowepro are the best I've used. I would definitely say you're better off with 2 smaller bags than one huge one though.

[Mosesandstick]

I'd go with tripod; save up and get a carbon fibre. Then bring it with you everywhere.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I'd try to figure out if I was missing out on more or better pictures due to inadequate tripod or my bag not enabling me to have what I needed with me when I needed it.  I'm gonna guess that if the bag is sufficiently lacking then you are either missing gear you could have had with you or didn't bring the camera at all because of it, so getting a bag that better meets your needs will help you get more and better pictures.  But if you take lots of long exposure or zoomed pictures that just aren't quite good enough due to a shaky tripod (or not having the tripod at all because it was too much hassle to bring it) then maybe a better tripod will help you more.

If neither of the above is true, what do you need a new one of either for?  Get another filter or memory card or something instead! 

[Merusk]

Hm.. given that list of items, the Tripod would probably serve me better.   I've definitely had enough telephotos that had a slight blur to them because of pulse movement.  I just dislike carrying the tripod I've got around because the family gives me a hard time when I set it up.  Perhaps a monopod or mini tripod instead.

The bag is bulky and the strap is pleather that feels like it's stretching and going to give out in the next two years, so I'd thought about replacing it.  It's certainly serviceable for the time being.

So really, I don't *need* either.  I could pick-up some filters or a card but those are cheap/ disposable enough they can be done without major budgeting.  I'm going for the next "investment" in equipment.


On another topic:  Anyone else use Flickr and is extremely disappointed with the "Your Stats" function?  The only list of referrers it gives are "Search engines" "Flickr" "Other Sites" and "Unknown" (wtf?) with no details on what brought any of them there.  I fail to see the point in tagging or continuing to use Flickr if I don't know which tags are getting me eyeballs.

[K9]

http://imgur.com/a/a4nGV#0

If anyone can help me replicate this effect I'd be really grateful, I think it looks really cool. From the reddit thread, the author says:

I photographed a silhouette that still had some detail on the model and wasn't pure black. Using curves or exposure in photoshop, bring up the exposure so that the entirety of the back is 255 (the values in the silhouette are entirely up to you). You then overlay an image onto the silhouette and change the blend mode to lighten (because everything around the silhouette is at 255 on all channels, it won't be affected by the overlay).

I am an abject novice with Photoshop, I don't even have it in fact, all I have is Gimp. If I have some photos shot against a white background, and a second image I want to overlay on the silhouette, can I do this in Gimp?

Cheers.

[Merusk]

FYI - as of version CE6 Photoshop has a $19.99 per month payment plan if you do a year, $29.95 if you go month-to-month.   I discovered this the other day and would be more tempted if we didn't have it at work.

K9 - check this out from Colossal.  From my quick review it looks like Relander gives tips on his blog for how he did each piece.
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/06/superb-multiple-exposure-portraits-by-christoffer-relander/

[Bunk]

K9 - I'm curious as to the image, based on the described technique, however imgur is being a bitch like usual.

[apocrypha]

I would be very surprised if you *couldn't* do that in Gimp, and probably using almost the exact method described in that paragraph.

Basically you want 3 layers. The bottom layer is your silhouette, then either a Curves or Levels layer on top of that, adjusted to make the white around the silhouette totally white. Then on top of that the image that will fill the black part of the silhouette, with the blend mode for that layer changed from "normal" to "lighten".

I would hope that Gimp is able to do all of those things very easily.

[murdoc]

So, I've finally taken the first steps into actual photography and purchased a Canon Rebel T3i which I will sit down and attempt to learn.

Any tips for someone that hasn't used anything other than a point and shoot? I have actually signed up for a DSLR photography course, which I hope will be a good introduction to it all. I'm a novice at photoshop as well, but at least have been using it a little with my tablet.

[Merusk]

Read the manual. Tons and tons and TONS of good stuff in there.  If your Rebel came with a DVD like my D60 did (but not the D7000) watch it.  Don't care that most of it won't make sense at first, you're a total novice.

It took me a week of reading books, websites and the manual before 'aperture' really snapped in to place mentally as to what it did and how it affects things.  i.e. "Why wouldn't I always want a wide-open one to let lots of light in?!"

If you pick-up any books I really liked Scott Kelby's books though they were a little expensive.  They were well laid-out and spoke to me as a beginner - check them out at a bookstore before buying.

There's also another one I really like but can't recall the name of. I'll look at it when I get home.

[Mosesandstick]

I think you should take photos and read the manual at the same time. Damn things are obtuse. Also try using manual/shutter-priority/aperture-priority/preset modes as much as possible. I think on a Canon they are Av/Sv/something like that. Shoot as much as possible and be willing to fail repeatedly.

[Merusk]

True.. I didn't mention taking pictures, did I.  Yes, lots.  Of everything.  Be annoying. When people complain.. take pictures of them doing so.

[apocrypha]

Yup, take lots of pictures. Look at them. Decide which ones you like and try to think what would make you like them more. Try to do that.

Also, I'm a great believer in the value of looking at other people's photographs too. Old and new - look at what other people do, are doing, have done. Try and imitate/take inspiration from stuff you like. Try reverse engineering awesome photos - ask yourself how the fuck did they do that?!

Most importantly though, have fun taking pictures :)

[K9]

What Apoc and the others said. Start out taking the pictures you want to take, not the pictures you think you should be taking, and take lots of them.

I'd toss in a recommendation for Lightroom too in due course, partly as a means to organise all your photos, and partly as a means to continue learning about what you're doing wrong.

[Merusk]

Yeah it's really affordable and powerful once you learn to use it.   Don't fall for the Picasa trap as Google says "anything you tag with our software is ours to use as we want."   If you're going for something free there's other options.

[murdoc]

Thanks guys, basically my start to this is RTFM, when I finish that I will RTFM again, but with the camera. I've been taking a TON of pictures already - everytime I change a setting I take a new picture of the same subject to see what it does differently.

Already loving this camera - I can see how this hobby could become expensive REALLY fast.