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eBay Embryos posted:So far I am convinced on http://www.lenspen.com/?resultType=category¶ms=14&tpid=0&tpid=323 (if I can find a store with a decent shipping price). If you're in the US, B&H. Several LensPen products ship free, and the rest ship inexpensively unless you want it tomorrow.
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Jan 9, 2012 22:44
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Or just go to a store and buy one? I have a lens pen and love it.
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Jan 9, 2012 23:20
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eBay Embryos posted:I have a question about cleaning lenses, what product would you recommend? In photography, there are some things that quickly pay for themselves, a lens pen is one of those items. That doesn't mean you should pay crazy prices for it, but don't worry if you spend a little more than normal. Besides, even 30 dollars for that set(which I don't think you need all of) is basically 0 dollars in photography dollars.
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Jan 10, 2012 00:15
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I have one of those Nikon lens pens, like the one you posted, and it works great! Obviously you want to get anything off first with a microfiber cloth, but then clean it up after with one of those.
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Jan 10, 2012 03:30
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Medpak posted:I have one of those Nikon lens pens, like the one you posted, and it works great! Obviously you want to get anything off first with a microfiber cloth, but then clean it up after with one of those. The lens pen I have comes with a soft brush thinger on one end to get the big stuff off the lens first, it's nice not having to carry a cloth separate.
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Jan 10, 2012 04:07
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I've loved my lens pen on all my lenses, for some reason on the B+W ND filter I just used it on, however, the smudge removing end of it only amplifies smudges which I can not seem to remove.
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Jan 10, 2012 04:55
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HookShot posted:Or just go to a store and buy one? I wish it was this simple.
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Jan 10, 2012 14:41
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eBay Embryos posted:I wish it was this simple. I don't know where you are at, but they would have them at birding stores (Wild Birds Unlimited type of places that sell field guides and bird feeders and such), also likely at hunting stores if they carry binoculars or scopes. Possibly at general outdoors stores like REI but if you have one of those you probably have a Best Buy.
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Jan 10, 2012 19:15
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Lenspens can also be used to brush dust and clean smudges off of scanner glass!
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Jan 11, 2012 00:21
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I'm looking for an interesting old 35mm to pick up on eBay for like $20-30. Preferably something weird and foreign. As an example, I'm looking at the Smena lineup, but if anyone has any ideas of something that would be more interesting or unique for around the same price please let me know! 
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Jan 12, 2012 03:35
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I posted here awhile back when I was in search of Fashion / Portrait websites for inspirations. Someone mentionned Calikartel ( http://calikartel.com/ ) and Boys By Girls ( http://www.boysbygirls.co.uk/ ) which are both awesome. While I still browse these websites I was wondering if people would share their sources as I'm trying to find even more places to go to
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Jan 12, 2012 05:10
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I'm sure you already know it, but Touch Puppet is great.
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Jan 12, 2012 14:49
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I'm working my way through understanding exposure and I'm really kicking myself in the rear end for not getting it earlier. What other books should every photographer have on their bookshelf?
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Jan 12, 2012 15:41
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drat it, I thought I had read Understanding Exposure and was really not seeing what all the fuss was about. I went over to my book shelf just now and what I have is Perfect Exposure...  Looks like I need to head to the book store!
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Jan 12, 2012 15:46
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Bioshuffle posted:I'm working my way through understanding exposure and I'm really kicking myself in the rear end for not getting it earlier. What other books should every photographer have on their bookshelf? I enjoyed the Speedlighters Handbook and Learning to See Creatively.
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Jan 12, 2012 16:39
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QPZIL posted:drat it, I thought I had read Understanding Exposure and was really not seeing what all the fuss was about. I went over to my book shelf just now and what I have is Perfect Exposure... e-book version is $15 and you can read it in your browser instantly even if you dont have a kindle or something.
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Jan 12, 2012 21:02
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Bioshuffle posted:I'm working my way through understanding exposure and I'm really kicking myself in the rear end for not getting it earlier. What other books should every photographer have on their bookshelf? Light: Science and Magic is great for a very technical manual on how light behaves on different surfaces and with different modifiers. I find myself re-reading Joe McNally's books, Hot Shoe Diaries and The Moment It Clicks, once or twice a year. He provides great commentary on his thought process while he shoots and a bit of how-to with how he gels and positions his lights. David duChemin's Within the Frame is a good meta discussion on finding your style, voice and passion as a photographer. I like to shoot scantily-clad women  so Rolando Gomez's Garage Glamour books are a solid introduction.
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Jan 12, 2012 21:26
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I'm shooting in a club tonight - which normally hasn't been a problem at this club, until recently. They decided it would be SUPER AWESOME to get a smoke machine and have it on constantly. Besides smelling like complete rear end in there, I've always found it difficult to shoot with or without a flash (I have the 530ex II). Is there anything I can do to limit the refraction / flash bouncing back in close shots? I know wide shots I'm pretty much screwed because of the amount of smog that will be permeating through the club. Sevn posted:I enjoyed the Speedlighters Handbook and Learning to See Creatively. red19fire posted:Light: Science and Magic is great for a very technical manual on how light behaves on different surfaces and with different modifiers. Speedlighter's Handbook is great. Also will second Light: Science and Magic. My brother gave me the book for Christmas and I've been enjoying that as a complement to Speedlighter's
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Jan 13, 2012 15:25
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geeves posted:Besides smelling like complete rear end in there, I've always found it difficult to shoot with or without a flash (I have the 530ex II). Is there anything I can do to limit the refraction / flash bouncing back in close shots? I know wide shots I'm pretty much screwed because of the amount of smog that will be permeating through the club. You've got to move the flash off the camera. Photos with flash and lots of fog look awful because the fog reflects the flash right back at the flash, but if you can get the light to reflect back at the flash when the flash is elsewhere, it'll look much better, more like concert lighting. The best thing to do would be to have a helper with a flash with a radio trigger on a monopod. They could follow you around and aim the flash at the subjects while you take photos. Either that or get a more powerful flash and mount it somewhere up high and pointed down at the crowd. Chances are no one will even notice the flash what with all the strobes and other lights going on. Keep in mind that you will need something for focus assist since you won't have the flash AF assist to help you, so something like a ST-E2 or the Yongnuo equivalent would help.
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Jan 13, 2012 16:24
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HPL posted:You've got to move the flash off the camera. Photos with flash and lots of fog look awful because the fog reflects the flash right back at the flash, but if you can get the light to reflect back at the flash when the flash is elsewhere, it'll look much better, more like concert lighting. The best thing to do would be to have a helper with a flash with a radio trigger on a monopod. They could follow you around and aim the flash at the subjects while you take photos. Either that or get a more powerful flash and mount it somewhere up high and pointed down at the crowd. Chances are no one will even notice the flash what with all the strobes and other lights going on. Thanks - That's what I was afraid of. I doubt my local camera shop has an ST-E2 in stock. If they do I can probably find a place to mount my flash. The 7d comes with a built in transmitter doesn't it? Maybe they'd have one to rent. Worst case I know the manager and the DJ at the club, but not the lighting guy. I think I'll get there early and just ask to keep the smoke to a minimum - hopefully the smog will clear enough to get a handful of shots here and there throughout the night.
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Jan 13, 2012 17:02
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If your radio trigger has a TTL hot shoe pass through like the Cactus V5, you might be able to put your flash on it on your camera and use it just for AF assist. Another option would be to use a smaller aperture like f/4 or f/8 and manual focus. Basically the bottom line is that your camera is not going to be a happy camper trying to focus on subjects in the dark with fog without an assist of some sort. What you want is something, anything that'll do that thing where it flashes a red light with grid lines onto the subjects so that the AF sensor can use that for focusing. Your 530EX probably already does that but you weren't very aware of it.
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Jan 13, 2012 17:10
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HPL posted:If your radio trigger has a TTL hot shoe pass through like the Cactus V5, you might be able to put your flash on it on your camera and use it just for AF assist. Another option would be to use a smaller aperture like f/4 or f/8 and manual focus. Basically the bottom line is that your camera is not going to be a happy camper trying to focus on subjects in the dark with fog without an assist of some sort. Yeah, the 580 (mistyped earlier) has the grid. So I could use that without firing it with either my 50 1.4 or 24-70. And of course: local shop doesn't have that in stock. I swear all they have there are tripods, bags and filters.
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Jan 13, 2012 17:19
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geeves posted:Yeah, the 580 (mistyped earlier) has the grid. So I could use that without firing it with either my 50 1.4 or 24-70. And of course: local shop doesn't have that in stock. I swear all they have there are tripods, bags and filters. Not many places carry the ST-E2. What you can also do is find an old cheap EOS flash like a 200E and set it to not fire in the flash setup menu of your camera.
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Jan 13, 2012 18:52
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HPL posted:Not many places carry the ST-E2. What you can also do is find an old cheap EOS flash like a 200E and set it to not fire in the flash setup menu of your camera. They have listed on their website  Someone local just today on CL listed a used 430 ex ii (few months old apparently). Not that I need another flash at this stage, but I knew if I wanted to do studio type work, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a slave flash.
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Jan 13, 2012 18:56
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I have another beginner's question and this time it has to do with metering modes on my T2i. Earlier today, I spotted a squirrel sitting high up on a branch. I set the appropriate F-stop and shutter speed using the in-camera light meter and proceeded to take some pictures, expecting to come home with some awesome squirrel shots. However, when I looked at the pictures, the picture were extremely overexposed. What did I do wrong? Was this because my camera was set on evaluative metering, causing the brightness of the background to throw everything off? Would I have gotten a more accurate reading if I had selected spot metering and set the AE lock on the squirrel? I am trying to make sure I understand the basics and the metering modes is still a bit confusing to me. Do I have the right idea? If the background was super bright however, shouldn't the picture have been underexposed if anything? I made a little mock up in MS Paint of how the squirrel was positioned, because I can't really come up with a good way to describe the situation. 
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Jan 14, 2012 09:22
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So you took a meter reading of the squirrel? You should meter the sky around it and then recompose the image.
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Jan 14, 2012 09:32
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Medpak posted:So you took a meter reading of the squirrel? You should meter the sky around it and then recompose the image. I took the meter reading off of the squirrel, working under the assumption that by doing that the camera would properly expose the squirrel. Sounds like that's where I made the mistake. I'll have to re-read the manual and experiment around some more. Thank you!
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Jan 14, 2012 09:42
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Bioshuffle posted:I took the meter reading off of the squirrel, working under the assumption that by doing that the camera would properly expose the squirrel. Sounds like that's where I made the mistake. I'll have to re-read the manual and experiment around some more. Thank you! If the dynamic range is that great, it'll look rubbish no matter how you meter. You'll either get something totally blown out by metering on the squirrel, or a picture of a black blob on a black branch by metering on the sky. The most sophisticated light sensor by far is still the MkI eyeball. Digital cameras observe a variation of 2^7 or 2^8 (128-256) times between darkest and lightest (that is, "bright" saturation is 256*"dark" threshold), b&w film is ~2^13 (8000) and the human eye is a whopping ~2^20 (1,000,000). What that means is your camera isn't able to see the scene as you see it (because eyes are awesome), so you'll never get the shot you want. You need to put a flash on the squirrel to make it nearly as bright as the sky, or reframe the shot entirely to avoid the sky. The moral is, you've started to learn the limitations of the medium. Captain Postal fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Jan 14, 2012 |
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Jan 14, 2012 11:07
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I need help with digitizing/preserving photos. I have old wedding portraits (up to 8x10) of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents that would like to get digitized. The goal is to have something preserved for the future and in a format I can edit and re-size to use in my wedding reception decor. What would be the best way to do this? My office's Xerox does a decent job creating TIFF files at up to 600dpi (I've used 300dpi for genealogy with good results). Unfortunately, my parents (in a different state) have some photos I don't have and I'm not sure trying to give them instructions and use their multifunction printer will give me the best quality pictures. I'm also a bit concerned about the light hurting the photos.
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Jan 15, 2012 18:55
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Ship the pictures.
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Jan 15, 2012 19:17
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General photography question. Why are 35mm nad medium format sensors so expensive? You would have thought by now someone would have cracked this and got us a cheap prosumer MF digital camera.
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Jan 16, 2012 18:22
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AceClown posted:General photography question. 1, They are still difficult to manufacture 2, APS-C sensors are selling so well there is no incentive to push manufacture 35mm sensors. 3, The profit margin on APS-C sensors are higher than FF sensors.
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Jan 16, 2012 18:26
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Paragon8 posted:1, They are still difficult to manufacture To elaborate on 1 & 3, the way I understand it is that sensors are manufactured as large discs, and then whatever number of sensors of a given size are cut out from that disc. So on top of the price scaling with area*, you also get fewer sensors for each time you run the manufacturing process, plus with a larger sensor there's more chance of defective pixels in any given sensor. *don't forget a full frame sensor has more than twice the area of an APS-C sensor
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Jan 16, 2012 18:52
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AceClown posted:General photography question. I think FF encourage people use their old MF lenses. That's the true reason the Japanese are not offering cheap FF body. Really, a 5D body was selling 1500 at close out 4 years ago. There is no reason somebody can't make a FF body for under 1k. I think within 3 years we will see a mirrorless FF body.
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Jan 16, 2012 18:58
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whatever7 posted:I think within 3 years we will see a mirrorless FF body. If by within 3 years you mean within 3 years ago, there's the Leica M9.
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Jan 16, 2012 19:44
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whatever7 posted:I think within 5 years we will see an "affordable" mirrorless FF body. fixed
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Jan 16, 2012 19:58
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HPL posted:If by within 3 years you mean within 3 years ago, there's the Leica M9. I just figured out why Leicas don't count as mirrorless, the mirror in the rangefinder!
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Jan 16, 2012 20:15
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Beastruction posted:To elaborate on 1 & 3, the way I understand it is that sensors are manufactured as large discs, and then whatever number of sensors of a given size are cut out from that disc. So on top of the price scaling with area*, you also get fewer sensors for each time you run the manufacturing process, plus with a larger sensor there's more chance of defective pixels in any given sensor. If I remember correctly, they call it a wafer, and on each wafer they can only cut so many sensors. Given the rate of problems in each wafer, it is easier to cut X number of smaller sensors, compared to Y number of larger sensors. Proof would be nice and I will search for it now. Sevn fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jan 16, 2012 |
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Jan 16, 2012 20:18
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Sevn posted:If I remember correctly, they call it a wafer, and on each wafer they can only cut so many sensors. Given the rate of problems in each wafer, it is easier to cut X number of smaller sensors, compared to Y number of larger sensors. Proof would be nice and I will search for it now. this is basically correct. A wafer at the moment is normally 12 inches in diameter, which means you can only create so many sensors. Add in the fact that the yield is normally between 96 and 99 percent means you can potentially lose a few more depending on where the failures are. This creates a predicament for camera manufacturers since they can only get out a few sensors for each wafer. The wafer itself is usually a lot of money (from a little research about $500 for a 12 inch wafer) but the real cost is making the chips themselves which usually goes for at least a few thousand per wafer. This is only for the sensor, that doesn't include controllers, processors, and anything else that requires integrated circuits. Hence the more expensive full frame cameras are. If the semiconductor fabrication labs soon move up to a larger wafer size like a 16 or 20 inch wafer, full frame sensors will eventually go down due to higher amounts of sensors being created on a single wafer.
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Jan 16, 2012 20:40
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Sevn posted:If I remember correctly, they call it a wafer, and on each wafer they can only cut so many sensors. Given the rate of problems in each wafer, it is easier to cut X number of smaller sensors, compared to Y number of larger sensors. Proof would be nice and I will search for it now. Yeah, wafers, I forgot what they were called. I think specific info is hard to find because it's a trade secrets sort of thing. http://www.naturescapes.net/092006/ej0906.htm seems to get right to the point with it.
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Jan 16, 2012 20:54
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