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I did a panorama the other day.

That might make a great new Westhill background..

Quote from SamH :

Here's a question for everyone.. if I take a photo, I feel okay about adjusting the saturation, exposure, contrast, brightness, white balance etc. I even feel okay about sharpening up the images, when I'm resampling down, just to prod up/maintain the impact of a photo.. but there often comes a point when I'm touching up, where I feel like I've begun to cheat.. where it's no longer the photo that I took, and it's become a photoshop production and no longer anything relating to the thing I achieved with the camera itself.

Since we're all in the digital age, now, and we're not only responsible for taking the photo these days, but also for what happens in the darkroom.. my question is, how far do you go before you feel like you're cheating? How far do YOU go before you start backtracking/hitting undo? Do you use NeatImage to get rid of grain? Do you add vignettes, or burn areas of your image? What's the limit of acceptability before you've broken the thing you've made?

Good question - one I've often pondered myself. Usually when I see forums with people posting pictures (much like this one) it's not too long before someone posts an image that gets people cooing about how good it looks, but I'll sit there and think, "hmm, that's not really a photo anymore, it's just a jpeg that once started life as a photograph". I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to photo manipulation. I really can't stand HDR, it looks so fake - 99% of the time a much better photo could have been taken by using an ND grad filter.

Things like tweaking contrast, saturation, colour balance, slight cropping, sharpening, etc, are all ok in my book. After all there's a hell of a lot of this going on inside a digital camera regardless of whether we tweak the images in such a way afterwards. Dodging and burning is of course a valid technique from the days of film, but now that it's so easy I'm always reluctant to do it myself. Rather than darkening a specific part of the image I always ask myself whether I should've taken a better photo with better lighting/composition/exposure in the first place - no excuses not to on digital. Noise reduction is fair game too, imho. Film grain could be aesthetically pleasing, but rarely can the same be said for digital high ISO noise.

I think it depends on what you're trying to create as well. If you're aiming to produce an arty shot of a certain style or ambience then a fair bit of PP is fair game. I don't do much of that personally, and I aim for my photos to be interesting but realistic representations of how a scene/object/person looked.

Quote from SamH :

Jay, you know of Bill Oddie?? As in the ornithologist, former Goodie?? Do they show his stuff on WTTW or something? You're in Aurora, aren't you?

I know much about your Isle of Brittan, Samuel...much....

Also, I am a birder. Yes, I like to watch birdies fly around and twitter; SO SUE ME!!



Speaking of birds, this is a Baltimore Oriole, a very spastic bird that can be hard to capture on film. picture is severely cropped.

I've finally gotten round to uploading my pictures to the web, check out http://ashleyuk08.diinoweb.com/files/My%20Photo%20Album/ for my pictures. Any comments are welcome

More pictures will show as the day progresses.

Quote from SamH :

Here's a question for everyone.. if I take a photo, I feel okay about adjusting the saturation, exposure, contrast, brightness, white balance etc. I even feel okay about sharpening up the images, when I'm resampling down, just to prod up/maintain the impact of a photo.. but there often comes a point when I'm touching up, where I feel like I've begun to cheat.. where it's no longer the photo that I took, and it's become a photoshop production and no longer anything relating to the thing I achieved with the camera itself.

Since we're all in the digital age, now, and we're not only responsible for taking the photo these days, but also for what happens in the darkroom.. my question is, how far do you go before you feel like you're cheating? How far do YOU go before you start backtracking/hitting undo? Do you use NeatImage to get rid of grain? Do you add vignettes, or burn areas of your image? What's the limit of acceptability before you've broken the thing you've made?

When you boil it down you can do whatever the heck you want. There is no rule. Just think about what you are trying to accomplish. My friend James has made a living using photoshop since highschool. He is a master at it and can do some amazing things to turn a so-so picture into a great one. He selectively edits parts of photos, removes an errant tree limb jutting into the photo, etc. Thats his style. He is trying to make a piece of art. I on the other hand am simply trying to capture the reality of something, so I don't do any of that fancy photoshop stuff.

First I'll ask myself some questions:

Am I making a documentary?

If yes, then all pixel based editing is banned. I will not remove tree branches, clone stamp pimples away, remove distracting elements out of the picture etc.

Am I allowed artistic impression ?

If yes, then I'd probably use heavier split toning and other slight artistic tweaks with good taste.

Do I have to stick to reality?

I spit in the face of Deviant Fart. You all suck at Photoshop and there's no artistic integrity to be found inside an Adobe program. Die. And rot in hell with your Photoshop magic.

Anywhoo...

I'm completely anal about some tweaks that are quite impossible to achieve with a camera and lights alone so I'll end up tweaking black level and shadow contrast almost every time. I'll burn and dodge till my eyes bleed, I'll split tone the unsplittable, bump up saturation while decreasing some channel saturation, adjust white balance to cooler while warming up the whites and sooner or later you'll find me sobbing, in a pool of my own urine and Coco-Puffs spilled on the floor, clutching my D80 in my tear soaked fist.

hehe.. I find myself tending the same direction as STROBE on this. I do touch up images to remove dust, and the noise profiler in NeatImage often does a really good job of removing grain. I've never used the burn or dodge tools yet, but as STROBE said, it is a historically legitimised darkroom activity, so I probably wouldn't feel bad about doing that if I felt I needed to.

Seems to come down to a question of photographer/documenter vs artist/painter, as Spanky says. I guess I perceive myself as more of a photographer. It's true that you can make a really crap image look great in Photoshop, and that's exactly the problem. Anything I add artistically directly and proportionately subtracts x2 or more photographically, in my head at least. It's too bloody easy to use Photoshop to make crap look good.. for me, if what I'm about to do isn't something that I'd do in the darkroom, then I won't do it. I'm actually really glad I took O' level photography at college, or I don't think I'd even be willing to perform the standard darkroom stuff on my images without being wracked by guilt.

My thoughts on "photoshopping". Generally, all I do is adjust levels, crop, noise reduction, and some sharpening. I never do anything with contrast or saturation as levels adjustment works for me. I have tried messing with curves, but don't have the touch for it. I've messed the photos up more by messing with curves than I've improved anything.

I don't know where the following falls under, toning? Occasionally, I will do the standard B&W or Sepia conversions. Or something similar as exampled in this photo....




It's a preset that I use for an antiquing type photo. I haven't touched dodge and burn as I don't yet know what they do.

I think there is a difference between "photoshopping" and "developing" a digital photo. In film, you have to develope the photo, thus doing any standard type developement in photoshop is perfectly fine with me.

personally i see nothing bad with photoshopping - photo straight out of camera will never look exactly as you saw it with your eye, so why not help it a little bit?

you could as well say that doing black&white photos is very unreal...

Photoshopping is not an issue for me. In fact, I enjoy post processing as much, if not more, as taking photos with the camera. I actually feel weird when all the adjustments I have to do are levels/curves.

I feel pp allows me to give an image a unique character and mood. I don't take photos to document reality. I take them for aesthetic reasons, and in that sense pp just gives you more control. If I'm able to capture something truly extraordinary with the camera, then sure, I won't touch it up much. Otherwise, into Photoshop it goes

If you feel bad about photoshopping, remember this: Ansel Adams was the master manipulator of photos in the dark room. For example, his "Zone system":

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Ansel Adams was a genius. He was methodical in his work and extremely demanding in terms of the quality of his prints. Those who admire his work or attempt to imitate his methods are often perplexed or intimidated by the results. It seems that a vast majority of people believe that Ansel Adams’ techniques, often shrouded in mystery, are impossible to master. This is simply not so. This article is dedicated to demystifying the clever, yet relatively simple Zone System so masterfully devised by Ansel Adams and perfected by other virtuosos of photography.

To fully understand and appreciate the Zone System, one must first have at least a basic understanding of photography nomenclature. Mastery of the Zone System requires significantly more dedication to the fundamentals of photography and lots of practice. I will assume, for the purposes of this article, that my readers have a basic command of the principles of exposure - the interplay of light, shutter speed and aperture.

The f-stops here! The Zone System focuses on two very important aspects of photography – image exposure and development, which naturally centers on the f-stop (the size or opening of the aperture as expressed by a number indicating the amount of light transmitted through the lens). Unlike the vast colors, tones and brightness found in nature, the Zone System recognizes the limitations of film and/or digital image processors and works within these limitations. Sadly, no single camera, lens or film available today can absolutely equal nature’s immensity. However, by utilizing the techniques of the Zone System we can reproduce, as precisely as possible, images of nature that exemplify its tonal ranges and varying degrees of brightness with little discernable difference.

Imagine a ladder. The bottom rung of the ladder represents pure black (Zone 0). The top rung of the ladder represents pure white (Zone 9). The mid-point of the ladder (Zone 5) represents 18% gray or the accepted average reflectance of light from a given subject, which is interpreted by your camera’s integrated light meter as the correct exposure for both B&W and color images. From the mid-point, Zone 5, each sequential step or zone represents a change of one f-stop. Zone 4 requires an exposure of one f-stop less than your meter reading (or Zone 5). Conversely, Zone 6 requires an exposure of one f-stop more than your meter reading. Therefore, the entire Zone System encompasses a nine-stop differential, which is more than adequate to address even the most daunting high contrast scene in nature.

Now, let’s add values to these Zones. These are values Ansel Adams himself associated with the nine Zones.

Zone 9 – known as key white or pure white – pure white paper or snow in bright sunlight.

Zone 8 – gray/white, near white – distinct highlight detail, like a white wall in sunlight or brilliant surfaces in flat light.

Zone 7 – light gray – pale “white” skin, a concrete walkway in sunlight.

Zone 6 – mid-tone gray – average “white” skin or shaded areas in snow on a bright, sunlit day.

Zone 5 – medium gray or 18% gray – darker “white” skin or lighter “black skin,” light foliage or the dark blue of a clear blue sky.

Zone 4 – medium dark gray – slightly darker “black” skin, dark foliage or shadows in landscapes.

Zone 3 – very dark gray – distinct shadow texture is visible.

Zone 2 – dark gray/black – only subtle textures are visible.

Zone 1 – near black – shadows in faint light or rooms without light.

Zone 0 – key black or pure black – carbon or photo paper black.

Remember your camera is calibrated to read 18% gray as “correct” and assumes that is the desired amount of light reflectance. Thus, it will average the light readings of extreme shadows or highlights resulting in over-exposed or under-exposed images, respectively. The Zone System eliminates this problem by assigning these familiar “values” to each zone. The key to success with the Zone System is to carefully pre-visualize your subject and apply the correct Zone values to the important exposure areas. Then, you must adjust your exposure settings accordingly to accurately produce the results you want.

Let’s say you are on vacation and want to take a photo of snow-covered Pikes Peak. It’s a typical sunny day in Colorado. You take a meter reading of the snow, which suggests a shutter speed of 1/500 and a corresponding aperture of f/16. If you snap the photo using these settings, the resulting image will be dull 18% gray. According to the Zone System, snow in bright sunlight falls under Zone 9, which is four stops above Zone 5, or 18% gray. Therefore, you must first open up four stops to f/4 and shoot at 1/500. Now, your photo will clearly show the brilliance of the white snow under the Colorado sun.

What should you do if you want to photograph an interesting rock formation with a bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds in the background? The rock formation is moderately shadowed with lots of texture. You want to bring out as much detail in the rock formation as possible. You take a meter reading of the shadowed areas of the rock, which indicates a shutter speed of 1/60 with an aperture of f/2.8. Then, you take a reading of the sky, which indicates the same shutter speed but an aperture of f/16. Keep in mind that in high contrast scenes, you MUST expose for the shadows if you want to reveal the shadow details. Sometimes this means sacrificing some of the highlights in your subject landscape. You decide that the shadowed areas fall within Zone 2. Therefore, you must stop down three stops and shoot at 1/60 at f/8. Of course, this means that you will lose some of the highlight detail from the bright sky. Don’t despair. All is not lost.

Recall that the Zone System integrates nine f-stops. Yet, the latitude or exposure range of most readily available film varies from a low of three f-stops to a high of seven f-stops. Likewise, photo paper, in general, has a range of no more than five f-stops. How, then, can you compensate for the limited latitude of film and photo paper? The Zone System incorporates both exposure AND development techniques. Ansel Adams used large format “sheet” film affording him more control over the development of each individual negative. By varying development time, plus or minus according to a comparative f-stop scale, Ansel Adams was able to effectively defy the limited latitude of his film and photo paper.

Contrary to the photographic rule of exposing for the shadows, you should develop film for the highlights. Concentrating on the range of brightness in a given image negative, Ansel Adams established the following development scale:

Normal development time, plus 100% @ 3 stops

Normal development time, plus 50% @ 4 stops

Normal development time only @ 5 stops

Reduce normal development time by 20% @ 6 stops

Reduce normal development time by 40% @ 7 stops

The Zone System works best with large format “sheet” film since you can isolate each section of the negative and vary its development time. While you can apply these techniques to roll film, it would require identical exposure for each frame, which isn’t very likely or practical. If you are a digital photographer, like me, or a roll-film photographer hoping to take advantage of all the aspects of the Zone System, you can utilize both the burning in and dodging techniques. Burning in refers to darkening specific areas of your image. Dodging refers to lightening specific areas of your image. For digital applications, you can use the tools in Adobe Photoshop. For film, you can appropriately mark your prints for these advanced development processes.

By employing both the exposure and development techniques of the Zone System, you will be able to produce amazing images like those of the masters. Ansel Adams was, indeed, an innovator. He created a unique and valuable tool, in fact, a legacy for all photographers. Fine Art Photography wouldn’t be the same without the Zone System.

I hope this article will help you to realize that the Zone System is not complicated or mysterious at all. It merely requires a reasonable investment in time, effort and careful but straightforward calculations to achieve extraordinary results. If you wonder whether or not the effort is worth it, simply look at a handful of Ansel Adam’s photographs.

these are some of mine.

I see with the TVR you used an artificial blur (correct me if I am wrong, though) which is nice, but not to be overdone. Also, when taking pictures of cars, get down so your head is level with the taillights.

For example, there was all sorts of distractions behind this one:

The info on the zone system is very helpful, Jay.. that's turned a few lights on upstairs in my head! I have a rather useful filter that isolates all nine zones for you to work on. Now that I understand Adams' concept, I can use it healthily!

I took some photos in fairly miserably wet conditions today, down at the railway. Back at my desk, I worked specifically to the premise that any changes I made to images should only reinforce the experience I had.. specifically to not change what had been to something that wasn't.

One advantage of wet days on steam railways is that the "steam effect" is naturally amplified.

Got to play with a friend of a friend's 40D today.

So very very jealous.

The difference in quality of handling from the 40D to my K100D is roughly equivalent to that between my K100D and my old S2IS.



I need more money.

I like the picture a lot, Sam. It looks very "romantic"; you know, man and machine, the symbiotic relationship of both...

So, I gave up on my Nikon 18-55mm kit lens, and switched to my 50mm F/1.8, until I get a new lens: a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. Looks to be a good "walkaround" lens, since I visit this place once a week (I am a member).

So, this is what happens when you stop using the automatic setting and start playing with a camera manually, a very interesting result. Except for contrast, that is exactly how it came out of the camera.

Oh, and this huge strobe called the sun helped.

As threatened, here's some pics from Kew Gardens. Less than I thought I had worth sharing tbh, so I've added some taken that night, too.

#1

A700, Tamron 90mm, 1/320s, f/2.8


#2 The lake and fountain in front of the palm house at Kew.

A700, Tamron 90mm, 1/1000s, f/2.8


#3 The palm house itself.

A700, Tamron 90mm, 1/200s, f/8


#4 A water lilly.

A700, Minolta 50mm, 1/3200s, f/2.2


Well that's quite enough flower & nature pictures for now. Later that night, I was strolling around the Embankment and the South Bank. Well, I say "strolling" - what I actually mean was battling with a gale force wind blowing down the Thames, which makes me all the more pleased with the following photos as they were all handheld in a strong wind, and you can see below each one what the shutter speed was.


#5 The Embankment.

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 18mm, 1/6s, f/4


#6 Charing Cross station and Hungerford Bridge.

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 35mm, 1/3s, f/5.6


#7 I don't believe this one really needs any explanation...

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 30mm, 1/2s, f/5


Looking back through these pics makes me all miserable now - had such a nice time in London that I didn't want to come home, especially since the new neighbours in the flat upstairs are doing an admirable job of proving how little sound insulation there is.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

So very very jealous.

Bah, I'm beginning to get more jealous of everyone here as more and more photos are posted.

I am so limited with my little superzoom. I can get some decent photos out of it, but can't get any DOF unless I am right up on top of the subject at max focal length with a ton of room in behind the subject.

I do envy all you folks with the dSLRs. Shoot whatcha got I guess.

2 weeks until the RC airshow. I hope to fill up two 2 gig cards with photos and video (one benefit to using a superzoom over a dSLR ). This Thursday, now that today is the last day of school for my daughter, I think I'm going to head out to the local dirt bike track. Both my 7 year old and I will be sporting cameras. I hope to teach her a bit about the settings of a camera. She brought home her certificate for straight A's for her first year of school, so I'm pretty proud of her. She should be able to pick up on using the camera outside of Program Shift mode. She has a little 3 mp Nikon Coolpix 880 from around 2000.

hehe Mike.. I know how you feel.. it's a bit like trying to go hiking cross-country wearing a pair of sneakers.. you can try it and probably will survive, but you just know you'd be a lot better off wearing a decent pair of clod-hoppers.

I took an hour out today to go take a few photos. I have a 500mm F8 Reflex-Nikkor - an old manual focus lens that I think I need a lot more practice focusing with!

@ Jay.. what's the problem with the Nikon 18-55mm? I was thinking of picking one up. I only have a 24-50, which was great on my F4 but for digital is a bit useless as a wide-angle.

@ STROBE, those embankment/Thames photos are fantastic! What's noise like with that A700? Did you need to do any cleaning up?

Quote from Speedy Pro :

A few non-car shots



Sunsets with Golden Gate/SF in the background (I need a tele-zoom!)

wow. My new background - thats simply amazing

Quote from STROBE :

#5 The Embankment.

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 18mm, 1/6s, f/4


#6 Charing Cross station and Hungerford Bridge.

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 35mm, 1/3s, f/5.6


#7 I don't believe this one really needs any explanation...

A700, Sony 18-70 @ 30mm, 1/2s, f/5

They're great too strobe

Quote from SamH :

@ Jay.. what's the problem with the Nikon 18-55mm? I was thinking of picking one up. I only have a 24-50, which was great on my F4 but for digital is a bit useless as a wide-angle.

You might want to check out the 18-200mm. It's a nice lens with a wide range.

Nice shots by the way, i like 4 and 5 best.

Quote from SamH :

@ Jay.. what's the problem with the Nikon 18-55mm? I was thinking of picking one up. I only have a 24-50, which was great on my F4 but for digital is a bit useless as a wide-angle.

What is wrong with it? Nothing at all! But, it has a limited F stop range, and it is a DX lens. With the Tamron I am getting is a lens to take me to the next level of photography, because I can control so much more. The 18-55 is a great walkaround lens, but with all lensne, you get what you pay for.

I was going to get the highly coveted 18-200 Nikkor, but after fiddling with it in a camera store I discovered that it is OK in all ranges. I actually think it is about $200 overpriced.

Here is a picture taken with my 18-55mm:

I would love to be able to afford £300 for an 18-200, but it's simply out of my price range at the moment. I like my D1x specifically because it'll work with any Nikkor I find under a heap of musty-smelling romance paperbacks in a garage sale.

What's the disadvantage of DX lenses, then? I figured it was a "for-digital" designation.. is it more of a "for consumers" lens? The contrast looks fine enough in that photo, Jay.

Quote from SamH :

What's the disadvantage of DX lenses, then? I figured it was a "for-digital" designation.. is it more of a "for consumers" lens? The contrast looks fine enough in that photo, Jay.

DX-lenses have been optimized for DX-sensors (APS-size). Disadvantages? You get black corners on a full-frame sensor.

Anywhoo...

Some action shots now. My friend asked me to snap some photos on their small festival gig. Sunny summer evening, sexy girls, stoner rock and Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifiers...





Strait outta Compto--- camera.