Digital Camera & Photoshop tips

[Samwise]

The refurbished D50 is sounding pretty appealing.  I've put myself on a large purchase freeze until after I do my taxes, so this may give me added incentive to get that done sooner.

[Samwise]

Ordered!   

[nurtsi]

I have an opportunity to photograph my now very pregnant friend.  It would be an indoor shoot in her house. I'd like to use natural light (weather allowing). I have some ideas for poses, like looking out through a window, with hands on exposed belly etc.

Any tips or ideas how to approach the situation? If you have ever shot pregnant women or been photographed pregnant? how did it go? Anything I should definitely avoid?

[apocrypha]

Ordered!   

Woohoo 

I have an opportunity to photograph my now very pregnant friend.  It would be an indoor shoot in her house. I'd like to use natural light (weather allowing). I have some ideas for poses, like looking out through a window, with hands on exposed belly etc.

Any tips or ideas how to approach the situation? If you have ever shot pregnant women or been photographed pregnant? how did it go? Anything I should definitely avoid?

Find a couple of shots of pregnant women that you like and would like to aim for, and take them along to show her and say "how about we try this kind of look?".

Other than that, you want big, soft light. And black and white is very popular for pregnant shoots.

[Bunk]

As Apoc says - big soft light, so using a large window as the primary light source is a good option.

Generally from what've seen of pregnancy photos, the key is focusing on the mood and emotion. Typically you'll see shots with the mother's eyes averted down, or looking off in the distance. No big cheezy smiles - go for serenity.

[Righ]

an indoor shoot in her house. I'd like to use natural light

Way to set yourself up with a difficult task - available light portrait in a domestic building. You'll need a keen eye for light, and the house and time of day will dictate where you stage the shots, so you'll need to be prepared to move things around. You won't necessarily be able to use furniture where it is placed, and depending on the owners you may not be able to move it. Where direct and reflected light (and shadows) work for you may not give you an ideal background - nobody wants laundry or the husband's Barry Manilow shrine as a background. It'll be a challenge, but the longer you stay the more options you'll have as the sun moves round the house.

Think about stools and seats that can be moved, as well as nice objects that can be moved as part of the background. If there's some large mirrors in the house don't be afraid to 'cheat' and move some light around yourself. Even working with natural light you might still want a diffusing sheet. However if the light and staging can be worked to your advantage, you'll probably get some really great shots. Good luck!

[Furiously]

I remember watching a frontline or something about a large format photographer who took all these amazing portraits in NY.  The amazing part is she would spend 2 hours with each couple or person just talking the first hour and 45 minutes. Then take one photo once the person was at ease. I've done two weddings and I wish I had had the 105 soft focus lens on the second.

[NowhereMan]

Ok so I've been playing about with photoshop in some of my sub-aqua shots and had some pleasant results. The original version of this is pretty much shades of green, though some of the other shots really were just green (playing with colour balance resulted in bits just getting brighter or darker). I also tried Noise ninja to filter out some of the noise, which worked pretty well but the licence fee seems a bit much to me and having a grid overlaid on my pictures is less than ideal.

[01101010]

Anyone see this or am I just behind the times again?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI

[Trippy]

Yeah I've seen it. They've been spamming that after they announced their announcement for CS5.

[Samwise]

Apparently GIMP has been doing this for years.

[Trippy]

The paper Adobe presented on the technique they are using doesn't mention Harrison's papers (the person who did the GIMP plug-in) so I can't tell at a glance what the differences might be.

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/pubs/Barnes_2009_PAR/index.php (Adobe's SIGGRAPH paper)

http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer (GIMP plug-in info)

[Mosesandstick]

I get the feeling we'll learn more when it actually comes out and gets tested. And anyways how hard can this've been. PS has been doing interpolative techniques for yonks, now they just had to extrapolate instead 

[Mandrel]

I just got my first real "big boy" camera after really wanting one for a while.  $599 for a refurb T1i from Adorama.  I haven't had much time to play around with it yet, but man the LCD on this thing is gorgeous.

Anyone know of a backpack that can be primarily used as a usual school- type (needs to be able to carry a shitton of heavy books/ papers) but also has a padded area for a DSLR and maybe an extra lens?  I may look into the Kata backpack/ waistbelt combos if I can get one to try on.

[Mosesandstick]

I bought a Lowepro Rover II a couple weeks back. It was the most suited bag for my needs, it can't fit that much, though the camera department is surprisingly big and can fit a professional zoom lens.

However it can't even fit a netbook (outside of the camera department). I'm pretty sure if you want a backpack that can fit stuff, just get a normal backpack and put your camera in and be careful (they are pretty tough though).

What you can do though, is that if you don't need to carry books and camera stuff at the same time, remove the padded dividers, and it'll be a good, sturdy backpack.

[Samwise]

So apparently the camera I ordered from Adorama is on backorder.  After a month I'm starting to get antsy, and I haven't heard anything from them other than "we'll get it to you as soon as we can," so I sent them an email today, only to get an autoreply telling me they're closed for Passover and I can try emailing them again in two weeks.  WTF?

[Merusk]

So by "Backorder" I assumethey mean "Nobody's sold us the camera you wanted yet, please hold."  They haven't charged you yet have they?

[Samwise]

No, they won't charge me until they actually have the thing I want.  Still, I'd like to have some vague idea of how often they get these things in.  If it's going to be a year I'll pick something else out. 

[apocrypha]

Well, after a looooooooong hiatus I finally managed a photoshoot yesterday. Extremely skinny 16 year old model, accompanied by her mum, who was really nice. I no longer have access to a free studio so had to shoot in my house, which is less than ideal, but you make do with what you've got sometimes!

Didn't get anything exactly amazing, but good to be shooting again at least.





Oh yeah, lighting info: First one is 2 speedlights with grids, up high, one each side, second one is just 1 gridded light top right plus a bit of fill from a ringflash, and about 2 stops under ambient fill on both.

[Bunk]

I love the light on her face in the second one. If I were to critique at all, the strong shadow over her arm just doesn't quite work. The intentionally strong shadows on the top pic are kiind of cool though.

[apocrypha]

Cheers. I know what you mean about the shadows. Problem was I wanted to crosslight with 2 hard lights to get that nice sculpted effect, and cos we were actually shooting in my bedroom there just wasn't enough space to get any more distance from the wall behind her. As it was I had to grid the flashes to keep them from bouncing off of the ceiling too much!

Curse these tiny British council houses!

[Merusk]

So as I'm approaching 10k pictures I'm discovering my method of Folder>Subfolder>Day-Place is getting cumbersome.  I'd like something to index pics, and cross reference some of them as well, since the Architectural pics tend to show the same elements on different buildings. "Cornice Detail," "Soffit Detail"

What's everyone using to keep their stuff sorted? I saw some mentions of iPhoto earlier in the thread. Any experience with FastStone, Picasa or other freewares.. or some affordable purchased software? (~$40-$60)

[Samwise]

First day (evening, rather) with my new camera, seeing how it does in poor light with no flash.  So far I'm pleased.

[Bunk]

What ISO were those at? The noise is evident in a couple places, but not that bad overall.

[Samwise]

Camera says "ISO auto" right now.  So... that?

This is my first "nice" camera and I haven't gotten past the "getting started" section of the manual yet.  

[Bunk]

You will soon love the fine balance work of ISO, appeture, shutterspeed, etc...

Once you grasp the basics, that AUTO feature will never be seen again. Even if it would be a hell of a lot easier to go back to it.

[Samwise]

Another shot of the sundew on my windowsill, this time taken in the full light of day.  Looking forward to taking this thing to the park.

[Mosesandstick]

Welcome to the wonderful world of DSLRS. Just wait till you need a new portrait lens, a new macro lens, a flash, a tripod, spare batteries, a grip, gps, lighting stands, umbrellas, and so on!

[Righ]

What ISO were those at? The noise is evident in a couple places, but not that bad overall.

   Camera Model:   NIKON D50
   Lens Type:   Nikon D Series
   Lens Range:   28.0 - 80.0 mm; f/3.3 - f/5.6

Picture 1:
   EXIF Summary:   1/160s f/6.3 ISO200 40mm (35mm eq:60mm)
Picture 2:
   EXIF Summary:   1/100s f/9.0 ISO400 48mm (35mm eq:72mm)
Picture 3:
   EXIF Summary:   1/25s f/7.1 ISO800 48mm (35mm eq:72mm)
Picture 4:
   EXIF Summary:   1/5s f/3.3 ISO800 28mm (35mm eq:42mm)

[Samwise]

 

Burn the witch!

[Righ]

I used a tool called EXIF Viewer on my Mac and just dragged your pictures to it. There are plenty of similar tools on Windows too. If you don't want to share your camera settings with the world (why not?) you can strip part or all of the EXIF data from the image - a lot of workflow software can do this when it creates output files, Adobe Bridge & Photoshop included and there are lots of little utilities that specifically address stripping the EXIF data too.

[Mosesandstick]

You can also check how many actuations you've put your shutter through!

[Famine]

I just recently bought a D40 myself and have been hooked on taking pictures wherever I go. The Nikon's seem worth the investment for me and this is basically the entry model to the entire line. However, I also recently discovered HDR photography and some handy HDR tools. It basically takes multiple exposures of the same shot and mends them together to create some very eye-popping photographs. Here are some I made with the D40 by manually adjusting the exposures with Photoshop and combining them toghether using some trial software of various sorts.


Downtown in Oslo, Norway (5 exposures)


Bee on a flower in North Carolina (3 exposures)


My niece in the dark looking up at me (5 exposures)

[Mosesandstick]

I'm not a fan of heavily tone-mapped photos, but I think you've done a good job of capturing the style in the first one. I don't know how you managed to get your niece to stay still for 5 exposures, but if you shoot a RAW photo that covers all the light you need (i.e. all the dark and bright areas), you can 'pseudo-HDR' using one photo, though this depends on the software you use, photomatix definitely does it.

One of the more annoying things with the D40 is if you like taking HDRs, you have to set the controls manually, when all the higher level cameras can do it automatically 

[Famine]

I'm not a fan of heavily tone-mapped photos, but I think you've done a good job of capturing the style in the first one. I don't know how you managed to get your niece to stay still for 5 exposures, but if you shoot a RAW photo that covers all the light you need (i.e. all the dark and bright areas), you can 'pseudo-HDR' using one photo, though this depends on the software you use, photomatix definitely does it.

One of the more annoying things with the D40 is if you like taking HDRs, you have to set the controls manually, when all the higher level cameras can do it automatically  

I manually edited the exposures using a tool from just one exposure. I don't think you can set it manually, unless you just mean the shutter speed. ;)