General Photography Questions Megathread v4 - Don't Listen to Any of These Freaks

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > General Photography Questions Megathread v4 - Don't Listen to Any of These Freaks

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alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Greybone posted:

Oh, I do add meta-tags, but I still have to put my photos in a named folder on my hd/smugmug/facebook and so on

Right now I've been adding categories as I go along, and I feel a better system could save me a lot of work later on.

That's basically how I do mine also, with all the major categories like Events, Still Life, Landscape, Portrait, Street, etc. Within each folder I group them by subject or topic. My organising scheme roughly follows my Flickr collections: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alkanphel/collections/

# ¿ May 24, 2011 01:09

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:30

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

INTJ Mastermind posted:

If I'm doing macro photography, would shooting in live mode be the same as using mirror lockup?

Yup you don't have to use mirror lockup if you're shooting in live view.

# ¿ May 28, 2011 02:17

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

the posted:

I guess what I'm saying is, how do I know whether or not I have enough light? With film, I won't know what it looks like until it's developed. Is this something a light meter is used for? I actually have an analog light meter that came with an ancient Kodak camera I picked up, maybe I can use that

Yeah that's what a lightmeter is used for if your camera doesn't have one inside.

# ¿ May 30, 2011 04:35

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

To add on to what Rontalvos said, this is a pretty good site to understand the zone system for a digital camera: http://dpanswers.com/content/tech_zonesystem.php

# ¿ May 30, 2011 09:48

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

David Pratt posted:

How do y'all organise your photos?

I've currently got a folder called photos/raw where timestamped folders of .RAW images go. Then once they're developed they go to photos/[theme]. I know these things take time to figure out what's best for you personally, but I can see my collection growing hugely in the next months and I wondered if folk had tips for keeping that under control.

I do the same thing as well but I also split up the raws into timestamped folders in my To-Process folder, e.g. "2011-05-13 Garden Photowalk" so that it's easier to import into LR3 and much neater as well. After processing I just remove the timestamp and move the folder into its respective category.

# ¿ May 31, 2011 00:34

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Tyorik posted:

So I just discovered AEB for some reason, using my 5Dc and I'm wondering how often people use it. I've heard several times that you should always take multiple exposures of a shot, so does that imply use AEB for every shot/difficult lighting shots?

AEB is mainly used for easier bracketing in shots where the dynamic range of the scene is too much for just 1 photo. Usually this is the case for landscapes with bright skies.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2011 14:45

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

BeastOfExmoor posted:

I'm curious what people think about the economics of renting gear. I was looking into renting a lens for an upcoming trip and I've decided it's a waste of money for anything in relatively high demand.

The lens I was looking at, for instance, is the Canon 100-400mm IS. Lens Giant has it the cheapest at $107 for 2 weeks + shipping and handling and damage insurance or about $145 total. Used, this lens runs about $1300 commonly with occasional sightings at $1100-1200. If I were to buy it $1200, and use it for two weeks I could almost certainly sell it very quickly and easily for $1100. I would be out $100 (Saving me $47 minus any transaction costs) and I wouldn't have to worry about late fees, etc. Assuming I kept the lens in the same condition, I could probably sell it for $1200 and be out only whatever the transaction costs are (craigslist would be essentially free, forums might be more). The deal only gets better the longer you need the lens.

The only downside is that you have to have cash on hand to cover the cost of the lens, but if you can swing it easily it seems like the best way to handle medium term needs for lenses.

It really depends on how often you're going to use that lens. For example, over here to break even on a 70-200L IS II, I'll have to use it more than 50 times. If I plan to use it more than 50 times then it makes more sense to me to buy it rather than to rent it.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2011 02:11

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

tarepanda posted:

Did you miss his point? He's saying he would buy it, use it once, and sell it; the loss he takes in selling a "used" lens is less than the loss he would take in just renting, so it's more economical to just buy the lens and sell after the trip.

Ah crap I don't know how I missed he was buying 2nd hand

# ¿ Jul 28, 2011 02:20

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

MrBlandAverage posted:

Okay, so help me resolve an argument... One of my friends asked me to submit some pictures for a show of pictures of life around the world one of her friends is putting up at a cafe. I've been talking to the organizer by email and he insists on my sending him the digital files because that's what all the other people have been doing and he's going to print them himself on glossy paper on "a regular printer" (his words, not mine) at home. I'm also not going to be able to attend the show, since it's 800 miles away. Am I wrong or weird for not wanting to participate unless I can send actual prints? I realize the perspective of those posting here is probably going to be closer to mine than the other people involved.

If you're really fussy about how your photos appear when printed out, you may have a case. Otherwise I think the organiser is just trying to standardise the look and printing of all the submitted photos.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2011 15:59

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Paragon8 posted:

So apparently Google Chrome is terrible with colour management and some recent images of mine have been looking like dogshit on it. Any ideas?

Export them only in sRGB color space? I think that's all Chrome can handle whereas Safari and Firefox can handle more. I just use the save for web in Photoshop and tick the "convert to sRGB" box.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2011 00:45

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Prathm posted:

What about the 120? Any good?

The 120 and 150 are both pretty good portrait lenses for the Hasselblad but the 150 is somewhat cheaper and performs just as good as the 120. If you don't need the macro capabilities of the 120 I would recommend you get the 150 instead.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2011 01:18

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

QPZIL posted:

Wow, yeah, you're right, I don't know why I put it backwards. I meant it the other way around.

Basically my question was that I would maintain shutter speed instead of reciprocating, so okay cool.

Normally you would change the shutter speed though, cos changing aperture affects DOF and all that.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2011 02:17

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

I just set long edge as 720px and the resolution as 72 dpi and that's about it. No matter what, the Facebook usually screws up colors and constrast every now and then.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2011 13:06

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

ISO 400 film is generally more versatile and has a wide latitude in case you misread the exposure. I suspect that's a 80mm lens so probably the minimum distance is about 3 feet.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2011 06:11

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Bioshuffle posted:

Tell me about some books that every photographer should have on their bookshelf. Are there any you find yourself going back to reference over and over again? I'm looking to expand my skills beyond the basic photography class I took in highschool, and I'm having some trouble, especially when the subject is indoors or when the thing I'm trying to take a picture of is under a shadow.

I understand the basics of getting the correct exposure but I feel like I'm ready for the next lesson. Is there some comprehensive book that will help me? I've already ordered the book understanding exposure that someone else recommended here but I would like to fill out my library with some more books and manuals.

For reference my biggest interest is in landscape photography, although I've secretly always wanted to dabble into street photography.

Since you're already getting Understanding Exposure, his other book Learning to see creatively is a good read as well. Most of what I learned is by reading stuff online, looking at good photos that other people took and then going out and shooting a lot more. I really do recommend looking at photobooks as well, and since you like landscapes you can consider Ansel Adams's Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. It's a really good book on his thought processes when making his photos, even though some of it is related to film.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2012 02:44

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

eggsovereasy posted:

I'm planning on using an 80mm lens with a 36mm extension tube. Using these values in the formula above I get about .5. Does this mean I need to compensate half a stop, or does it mean half the amount of light will reach the film necessitating an adjustment of a full stop?

Yup you'll need to add 1 stop of light for every half focal length extension, hence a 1:2 shot will require 1 stop.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 01:16

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

squidflakes posted:

I've got a new Sekonic L-398 and reading the instructions I thought maybe my Westin Master III wasn't bad, I was just using it wrong.

So, if you're measuring light with the ping pong ball attachment, you're measuring incident light, and you should have the meter near the subject to measure the light that the subject is receiving, correct?

If that's the case, do you need to take in to consideration the distance back to the camera? It seems that if you measured a subject 10 feet away it would reflect twice the light as a subject 20 feet away. Am I misunderstanding something here?

Nope you don't. It is best to meter as near as possible to the subject, although in general metering in the same light will be okay.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2012 02:31

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Radbot posted:

I know this question has probably been done to death, but maybe I can get some education on effective focal length vs. perspective.

I've heard that even as effective focal length changes (say, a 24mm lens becoming a 36mm lens on a 1.5x crop body), perspective doesn't change as the only thing that changes perspective is distance to subject - but since that lens offers greater magnification on a crop body, you'd move back to maintain the same framing... doesn't that mean that, effectively, perspective does change with effective focal length?

I guess what I'm getting at is... if I want a ~35mm focal length look on a 1.5x crop body, should I get a 24mm lens or a 35mm lens?

24mm is what you want. A 1.5x crop from a FF 35mm is what you'd get from a 35mm on a crop body, so you'd have to move backwards. To get the same view in the same spot with a crop body, you'll need the 24mm because you'll be taking a 1.5x crop out of the 24mm full view, which is what a FF 35mm view would be like.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2012 05:33

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Legdiian posted:

It does have some form of "attempt to detect duplicates" on import, but honestly I don't know how/how well it works.

It works pretty well, by default it won't import the images that are already in the catalog.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2013 02:17

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

rio posted:

Wait, there is a "camera standard"? All I have ever seen is "Adobe standard".

They're used in ACR to mimic the various picture modes in cameras, like Vivid, Landscape, etc.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2013 05:46

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Baron Dirigible posted:

[edit: okay, next silly question: how do I delete files off an SD card? The option to delete them didn't come up in Lightroom (or I missed it), and I can't see any other way besides using the camera to delete each photo?

I usually just erase/format the SD card using the camera. Much faster than using your computer.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2013 01:55

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

SoundMonkey posted:

Said it twenty times before, will say it again. Amazon Glacier.

Hundred gigs of my poo poo is backed up for less than a buck a month, and using Arq, syncs automatically. Amazon's worst-case figures are 1 in 10,000 files not being retrievable.

(Only downside is that fetch requests take nearly half a day)

Question: Were you using S3 with Arq before you used Glacier? I'm using Arq for S3 now but I'm not sure how exactly the switching to Glacier will work.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2013 11:00

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

SoundMonkey posted:

No, I only bought Arq for Glacier. It seems to have really excellent support for Glacier though, even if the initial upload took four days. I think moving stuff between AWS systems is cheaper than uploading from disk, though.

EDIT: It appears to store some metadata in regular S3 though, even when exclusively using Glacier:

Ah ok thanks, I'll check with the creator then.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2013 00:41

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

GoldenNugget posted:

Going on the topic of books, which of the three main Ansel Adams books (The Camera, The Negative, The Print) would be worth getting? I've been photographing for almost a year and have a decent idea about my camera (digital but I also have a film SLR), lenses, and filters. I do have a bit of an art background (along with my science background). Lately I've been taking landscapes but might want to other subjects later on.

I think the question is why do you want to get the book? If you want a quick introduction into mechanical film cameras and their operations, get The Camera. If you're into shooting LF film via the zone system and want to do your own N+1 etc development and stuff, the best book would be The Negative. If you're going to get serious into darkroom printing, then you can also read The Print.

Or just read all 3 for the sake of knowledge and the fact that you're probably not going to carry out most of what he says unless you're really hardcore.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2013 00:26

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Combat Pretzel posted:

Is 500px.com a site I should bother with? Whatever filter categories I click on, including Fresh and Upcoming, which I'd expect to feature rougher content than in the Popular category, I'm still faced with very high quality photography. It's kind of intimidating.

I went on 500px because of all that high-quality stuff but after a while I realised it started to turn into a vote gaming community so I stopped using it. While majority of the photos are high quality, they're mostly all boring commerical style photos - high in production value but low in content. They all just start to look the same after a while. Now I just use my personal portfolio website or Flickr.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2013 00:21

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

I just use the 5 stars and the flag as 6 levels of filtering. First reject any obviously blur or random shots, then assign 1 star to any photo that looks like it's worth keeping. Then set the filter to show only 1 star photos. Repeat above step but now assign 2 stars to those photos worth keeping. Then set the filter to show only 2 star photos. Repeat until I've done the flagging round. In my experience, the flagged photos are the personal portfolio shots, the 5 star ones are good enough for the clients (or just uploading on Flickr etc), and 4 stars are worth looking at again.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2013 06:50

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

CarrotFlowers posted:

you guys who do multiple layers of numbering...I can't even imagine spending that much time on filtering alone. How long does that take? (not saying that isn't the way to do it, just couldn't imagine doing it myself)

It really is dependant on how many photos that are, but I usually use it when the total number of photos exceeds 100+. But nowadays shooting MF film, I don't even use it cos there's only 12 shots per roll so at a glance I know which ones I want to keep.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2013 23:10

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

dakana posted:

Side topic: how do you guys handle keywording? I've tried to implement it in the past but I never found a satisfying middleground between overly vague and stupidy specific, and having tags that actually encompass a lot of photos. I've been reasonably happy with just my folder system to find specific shoots / events, but I feel like I could be keywording. How are yours set up?

I just keyword with camera+lens+film, then location, type (e.g. urban, nature, landscape), and distinguishing features like lighthouse, tiger, party. This is mainly for filtering but so far I hardly use it because I use collections and sets more to organise the individual photos. Keywords do get useful for smart collections though.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2013 00:24

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Yup the CP-900 is pretty awesome, I have one too and it owns!

# ¿ May 1, 2013 01:08

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

I've seen some photographers using Tumblr as their portfolio site but they usually use some custom theme that's really nice and made for sharing photographs. On the other hand, I just use 4ormat afor my portfolio and link to Tumblr as my photography blog.

# ¿ May 6, 2013 01:59

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Jiro Kage posted:

It's not, really. When I go through renaming stuff, I append something to the end, like LT if the light levels look weird or BT if its too bright in some section. It's just so I know when I look at the directory how I did shooting, I guess. I'm probably doing a lot of stuff that would make you pros cringe in that it's a bit more time consuming, but I enjoy doing it.

At least right now I do.

I don't think I've actually bothered to ever rename my photos because it's not very meaningful at all. But that's probably because you're not using Lightroom or Aperture. Once you start, you probably won't bother about your filenames again, besides a mass renaming on import.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 06:05

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

big scary monsters posted:

Square format is the One True Aspect Ratio anyway.

Hear hear!

# ¿ Jul 14, 2013 22:59

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Combat Pretzel posted:

Something I've always been wondering about... Take my EOS 6D with the Sigma 35mm/1.4 and that Sony RX1, which is sensor and focal length wise the same, except for the smaller aperture. While I get that some of it is due to the larger aperture, why is the Sigma such a huge barrel, where the 35mm lens on the RX1 is so drat short?

A lot of it is also due to the wider aperture, as the lenses get larger once the aperture goes below 2.8, especially if they want to maintain a high level of image quality across the frame. Just take a look at the Canon 35/2 vs the Canon or Sigma 35/1.4.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2013 03:14

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

No Gravitas posted:

I did not see a book thread, so maybe this is the place to ask?

I'm looking for really good photography book suggestions. I'm interested in composition, the technical side I have covered and then some more.

Even then, I'm not interested in the basics. I'd like some *really* advanced books on this topic.

I kinda gave up on learning anything from a book in the past, but maybe there are some good surprises out there.

Consider 'The Photographer's Eye' by John Szarkowski.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 07:31

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Sludge Tank posted:

Is there any reason why a Canon 580exII plugged into a Hasselblad 500c/m via a PC sync cable into the lens would not fire a second Canon speedlite (430exII) wirelessly as a master-slave setup?

Maybe set the 430EX as an optical slave?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2013 06:10

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

404notfound posted:

I already am exporting in sRGB, though... I'll see if I can get a screenshot of Irfanview next to Lightroom tonight to show how differently the pictures look.

You may be exporting in sRGB but Lightroom's default colour space is MelissaRGB (which is the ProPhoto RGB color space with the same gamma curve as sRGB), so there can be a difference in the look. Like what the other guys have said, as long as it looks good on your color-managed workspace, just export in sRGB because you can never control how the other person is going to view it digitally.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2013 02:00

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Yeah I agree with Molten Llama, just make sure your monitor is calibrated with a Spyder or something similar, then export as sRGB. That's pretty much all you can do. And you can't do anything about MelissaRGB, it's the internal colour space of Lightroom that can't even be touched. I usually import photos as ProPhotoRGB then export as sRGB.

But yeah, it would be good to see how different do the photos look.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2013 09:01

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

xenilk posted:

I'll be traveling to china soon and want to travel as light as possible (tablet/gopro/camera/external hard drive). Is there any way that I could take my pictures from my CF/SD card and dump them onto my external hard drive without using a computer?

Maybe something like this? http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/887229-REG/Sanho_shdcsudma2160_160GB_HyperDrive_COLORSPACE_UDMA2.html

# ¿ Oct 15, 2013 10:28

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Pretty much the main landmark for the Sumida river walk.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2013 06:18

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:30

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

change my name posted:

Wasn't there a dslr running android with wifi or is it just a point and shoot? That sounds like a pretty viable option if publishers want to put out camera apps with extra features.

I think it was a Nikon compact. There's also that Samsung Galaxy camera.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2013 07:38

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > General Photography Questions Megathread v4 - Don't Listen to Any of These Freaks

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