Digital Camera & Photoshop tips

[Mosesandstick]

Just started taking photos in RAW. Wow you can do funky stuff to your photos.

Any advice on post-processing (or whatever they call it) work?

[apocrypha]

Don't overdo it. Yeah you can do some mad stuff but you do too much and it starts to look obvious and cliched. You also want to avoid degrading the image too much - keep an eye on your histogram during post, if you start to see big gaps in it then you're losing data which degrades image quality.

If you do have an image that you need/want to do a lot of pp on then you can always try opening it from RAW as a 16-bit file. This can help reduce image degradation caused by too much processing but it also greatly increases the file size and can slow down processing considerably.

Of course, having said all this, remember that your RAW file is your effective negative. Whatever you do to an image after converting it from RAW doesn't affect the RAW file, so you can experiment to your hearts content safe in the knowledge that you've always got the original RAW file available to try something different on :)

[bhodikhan]

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is amazing. I was able to use one for a day last week.  You can shoot indoors without a flash at very high ISO numbers and there is no (nada) grain. I was shooting with my 85mm F1.2L and  the camera was incredible. I don't care what it's going to cost. Most of my professional work is corporate and usually indoors and not having to use strobe lighting except for certain 'looks' will be fantastic.

 

[apocrypha]

What kind of ISO you talking about using for pro work bhodikhan? I mean, would you print 12x18" ISO 3200 or we talking about 800 for headshots for a corporate webpage?

[eldaec]

You might want to apply software noise reduction, but no reason you can't make a 3200 iso shot usable even larger than 12x8.

[Ookii]

I am hoping one of you knows of a good 300mm lense for a Nikon d40x before I have to go do research.

[apocrypha]

Not a huge choice of 300mm primes, either of the current Nikon AF ones look great, fantastic quality, the VR is a lot more expensive ofc. Nikon 300mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Nikkor and Nikon 300mm f/2.8D ED-IF II AF-S Nikkor. There's an f4 too but dunno if that'll be easy to get hold of or not.

The cheaper option is the Sigma f2.8 but I'd look at prices and compare weights etc, don't think there's a vast amount to choose between them all in terms of image quality.

Since I got a VR 70-200mm though I've become a convert to VR, it rocks, but it ain't cheap, £3500ish for the 300mm VR 

[JWIV]

Sigma can be hit or miss.  Definetely read up on them as sometimes they'll cheap out on the glass ot construction quality. 

[apocrypha]

While that is true for their older primes and a lot of their zooms their newer primes are generally superb. That 300mm gets some very good reviews and from all accounts is very sharp, even wide open, and not read anything bad about the build quality.

[stray]

In my quest for a nice low light compact, I bought a Canon 880. Seems to be well liked on dpreview. This guy even says it's better than a G10.. and has some pics to justify it.

Still waiting on that Sigma DP2 to come out though.

[stray]

By the way, what the hell do some of you use anyways.. for impromptu shots? Surely you don't like carrying all of that kit around.

[JWIV]

By the way, what the hell do some of you use anyways.. for impromptu shots? Surely you don't like carrying all of that kit around.

It's my camera phone or I'm lugging the kit around. 

[stray]

See to me, the holy grail is trying to get a little both in one. Fuck camera phones and fuck dslrs (no offense to you, just saying :P ). I want quality shots coming out of something in my pocket.. and I want to do it in an unobstrusive, less nerdy kind of way.

It seems to me that there is a helluva lot more technical possibility for this too, but not exactly marketable possibility. Either they're catering to auto-moded phone cam shit or pro dslr stuff. The cameras I'm liking - these premium compacts - they seem like they could be better (although, I'm not complaining much on this new one.. it's pretty nice).

[JWIV]

See to me, the holy grail is trying to get a little both in one. Fuck camera phones and fuck dslrs (no offense to you, just saying :P ). I want quality shots coming out of something in my pocket.. and I want to do it in an unobstrusive, less nerdy kind of way.

It seems to me that there is a helluva lot more technical possibility for this too, but not exactly marketable possibility. Either they're catering to auto-moded phone cam shit or pro dslr stuff. The cameras I'm liking - these premium compacts - they seem like they could be better (although, I'm not complaining much on this new one.. it's pretty nice).

There's nothing wrong with a good P&S and quite honestly, most people lugging around DSLRs have no fucking need for them.  If you can get what you want out of a P&S, then go for it.   

[bhodikhan]

What kind of ISO you talking about using for pro work bhodikhan? I mean, would you print 12x18" ISO 3200 or we talking about 800 for headshots for a corporate webpage?

Just got my production camera. The 5DMK2 can shoot corporate stuff at ISO 3200 with very little grain. A quick noise removal if needed and you've got a nice 20 megapixel image to work with. Just playing with the video feature has really blown me away. You have to manual focus and setup each shot but the footage is great. It should be. The detector is huge compared to almost every video camera I've worked with.

[stray]

BTW, how much into post processing are you guys? To me, that's a fun part. Not photoshopping per se.. just colorizing. Do you still bother with your dslr photos?

[JWIV]

BTW, how much into post processing are you guys? To me, that's a fun part. Not photoshopping per se.. just colorizing. Do you still bother with your dslr photos?

To an extent.  My personal preference is a minimum of cropping and post processing.   Maybe a bit of saturation and exposure, but I prefer to try and keep it somewhat natural and get it right when I take the shot. 

[apocrypha]

By the way, what the hell do some of you use anyways.. for impromptu shots? Surely you don't like carrying all of that kit around.

Canon G6. Pretty much always with me. Bit large, would love a G9, but awesome small camera.

BTW, how much into post processing are you guys? To me, that's a fun part. Not photoshopping per se.. just colorizing. Do you still bother with your dslr photos?

Really varies a lot. I always shoot RAW so there's a minimum of RAW conversion (and usually dust spot cleaning, heh, must get round to cleaning the sensors) and I always do some work on people shots - getting rid of zits, some wrinkle smoothing, etc. Some shots I can spend hours in PP, some 5 mins. It just depends on what I'm aiming for really. Minimising PP is always a good idea because you always get some image degradation with too much manipulation.

[stray]

This is actually my first Canon btw. I like the way it's designed. Maybe I will just settle for a cheaper dslr down the road/next few months. I like the quality and convenience in this compact already, but could do with more control and speed. There doesn't seem to be any Digital Rebel models with the Digic 4 like this though. Weird.

[edit] BTW, this had one of those color swapping features built in. Just did this on a cig break. Pretty nice shot.

[Bunk]

The Digic 4 is quite new, and as far as I know none of the current Rebels has it.

The camera I hope on getting this coming year, the 50D does:  http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos50d/

I'd love the 5d MarkII mentioned above, but it's two to three times the price.

[stray]

Hmm.. I guess they'll probably roll something out soon enough.

That 50D is out of my budget unfortunately. Like the MarkII is for you. ;)

[Ookii]

This is kind of cool, has anyone tried it out before?

http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh

[apocrypha]

Haha cool idea. I can't think of any use for it that wouldn't look gimmicky but sometimes gimmicky is just what you need 

[Righ]

DAM software. Yes, put an N on the end once you have to spend the cash on it. What do you use?

Right now I'm using the freebie version of Nikon's software to import, getting rid of the shit using the OS's image viewing capabilities, and then importing into Aperture. I like what Aperture does for project management and cataloging and its file conversion is good, but I hate its speed at transfer and I hate the way it stores everything in a fucking huge database instead of under the filesystem where it is trivial to manage archiving. However, I never upgraded, so now that I have a D90, it just plain doesn't work. The freebie Nikon software is quick(ish) at importing but worthless in previewing and almost everything else. Native slideshows under the Finder are fairly quick (quicker than the freebie Nikon Capture by a country mile, and more convenient than Aperture for pre-project destruction of junk images), and keystrokes let me bin stuff I don't want to archive very quickly.

So, I'm going to start evaluating some tools before I throw some money at this - I'll look at the the Aperture 2, Lightroom, Capture NX, Bibble and Capture One trials. But I'm not going to limit myself to a one-size-fits-all program if there are multiple tools that will make the process faster or more convenient for me - especially if the all-in-one tools use a stupid proprietary database. What else should I look at? What tools do you use for transfer, previewing, archiving, cataloging, conversion, etc?

[apocrypha]

On Macs, Capture One. On PC's, Photoshop suite - Bridge, ACR, PS.

I don't like Lightroom or Aperture, they're both cumbersome IMO. I'm a believer in keeping things simple and I also always store files on network drives - only Capture One and Bridge (CS3 Bridge an upwards anyway) cope with this properly. One thing I'll say though, if you do end up using Bridge on multiple computers all accessing the same network directories then you have to give Bridge time to refresh it's previews properly, which can take several minutes on startup. Capture One is much better at this and in a proper multi-workstation environment I really don't think there's an alternative to Capture One on Macs.

[Bunk]

Picked up the 50D I've been wanting. The camera store I deal with didn't have any body only in stock (their price was $1319 CDN), so we stopped at Future Shop on the way home. They told me they had them for $1399. My buddy asks them to check the website, and low and behold, it says $1299 on the website.

They run it through, and the bill comes up at $1249.00.

I didn't complain.

Put my 2GB memory card in, went from ~ 200 shots on my old camera to ~ 80 - yeah, I'm going to go buy an 8GB card now.

[Sky]

Going off Stewie's stuff in the "daily" pic thread, can I do HDR with my p&s canon? I do have an old tripod, but the camera still moves when I press the button.

[Righ]

If it moves when you press the release, the tripod isn't your friend. You may do better bracing yourself and sighting something at the border of the frame to line up the shots. Assuming your P&S offers sufficient manual control over exposure, you can do HDR on a P&S just fine however.

[Sky]

I guess I should learn how to use the manual controls properly! 

[Ookii]

If your camera moves when you press the button just set the self timer on, it's annoying but you'll get a movement free shot.

It's also more of a squeeze and not a push if you want to keep the camera steady.

[Stewie]

Hey Sky, You can indeed use your point and shoot to do some HDRs, as long as they have raw.

The last image I uploaded was actually a 1 shot HDR
What I did was take the shot in raw and then in Photoshop Raw I set it to 2 stops underexposed and saved it, then reopened it up in PS raw and set it to 2 stops over exposed saved it again and did this a 3rd time with it correctly exposed. then I took all 3 images and generated a hdr in photomatix.
That being said if you really wanted to you could just make 3 copies of the exact same jpg and use that but you will not get the balanced exposure that HDR gives you but this will give you the ability to apply some tone mapping which is what many people want to do.

[Righ]

Here are what I came up with for workflow software on the Mac:

Bibble Labs Bibble Lite         $90
LaserSoft SilverFast DC VLT         $99
Phase One Capture One         $129
ISL Silkypix               $149
Bibble Labs Bibble Pro            $160
Nikon Capture NX2            $180
Apple Aperture 2            $199
Microsoft Expression Media         $199
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom      $299
LaserSoft SilverFast DC Pro         $299
Phase One Capture One Pro         $469
Adobe Photoshop CS4            $699

After a lot of nonsense registrations, I was able to download trial versions of everything. So I thought I'd start at the cheapest end and work upwards. Ran into the first problem - Bibble (in any form) doesn't support the Nikon D90 NEF format and will not until version 5 is released. I'll put it to the end of the queue for now, but I'll take a look using images from my old D50 later since Bibble 5 is supposed to be imminent.

So, on the Capture One, which version do you use Apoc?

[Stewie]

hey Righ,

I just thought I'd trow in my 2 cents. I user Adobe bridge and PS CS3
I tried the demo of CS4 and the adobe bridge in it seemed to just have a better flow. I really liked it but can't afford it and can't find the *cheaper* alternative option for 64 bit vista.

I tried light room but really did not like it at all. Ultimately PS is what you want on mac or PC and everything else is either just a pale imitation or an add on to your PS workflow.

[apocrypha]

So, on the Capture One, which version do you use Apoc?

I think we were using Pro 4.something at the studio. I've tried 3.something on the PC and it was much harder to use. For personal use you'd probably be ok with just Capture One, although we absolutely used a lot of the Pro-only features for studio work. Particularly lacking from non-Pro version is tethered shooting and customisable workspaces.

End of the day though, you're gonna need Photoshop anyway right? So why not just start with that and see if Bridge works for you. Unless you're writing this all off as business costs anyway... 

[Righ]

End of the day though, you're gonna need Photoshop anyway right?

I hope not. That seems like a complete toolshed to crack a nut. As much as I might like to dick around in Photoshop for fun, I don't need to be layering stuff, compositing, titling or applying effects. I'm mostly interested in event photography, particularly concerts. Its challenging from a photography standpoint, particularly on a budget with less than optimal equipment, but the 'darkroom' side of things is fairly straightforward. I need to shoot RAW and have control over tuning the exposure and colour balance. As far as I'm concerned, I think the following are what I need:

1. Image transfer to computer
2. Archival of images
3. Import of images into a package than can provide sufficient non-destructive editing of light, cropping, etc
4. Cataloguing images by project/quality
5. Selection of images in a project by quality
6. Group export/conversion
7. Archival of processed images

Fairly simple needs at this point, but more than your average iPhoto hobby package. I like Aperture apart from its idiotic database.