Official Photography Thread: Vol. ICan'tFindTheLastOne

[keepitgully]

2 random shots. Unedited.

 

[bayest]

There's application on the iphone I copped where it turns any photo in your phone into old styles such as mediumformat/polaroid/cinema..fisheye...infrared. the ones that seem to be the coolest is medium format and polaroid

 

[yamakazi18]

Originally Posted by JPioneer

Rookie is back once again...

I need to start studying PS...

Any C&C is Greatly appreciated!

your pictures seem to have a central theme: medium-shallow depth of field with focusing on the center. maybe try a bit off to the side, play withthe edges, play with the background? anyway it's good to start with DOF, i myself started out with composition!!!

Originally Posted by BayEST

A picture I pulled up from the July show in SF

i like this. seems just about perfect for this type of photograph (club, concert, etc), not overly harsh with flash and seems very natural with agreat action pose; the angle of the shot is really awesome too, i just really like everything about this picture (except for the corny RNA tag on the bottom!

i generally hate tags, so don't take it personally, haha). i lovethe very slight blurriness to it, i am not a big fan of crystal clear pictures of such fluid events such as at concerts, seems so fake to me. great job andwell done, wabi-sabi FTW!!!

Originally Posted by keepitgully

2 random shots. Unedited.

the first picture could probably do with some PS/LR by recovering some of that whiteness, it's very harsh to my eyes and takes away from thesoftness of the picture. i really like the composition, i take a lot of these types of shots at weddings, with similar composition. background is placed verywell too, i would have to add. only other tiny tidbit i would add is that maybe she should be smiling! or looking forlongingly into the distance, instead ofthat look she has on her face right now. pickiness notwithstanding, good job!

i usually am not impressed by flower pictures, or macro pictures, since they involve very little creativity. however i kinda like this one, for the fact thatit's a bit more abstract in where and how it is placed; my mind wandered for a second when looking at the picture, and my eyes stayed on the photograph.

Originally Posted by BayEST

There's application on the iphone I copped where it turns any photo in your phone into old styles such as medium format/polaroid/cinema..fisheye...infrared. the ones that seem to be the coolest is medium format and polaroid

old school polaroid going with old school car close-up? perfect

only nitpicky thing is the angle, it's a very modern thing to do (tilting), otherwise if not for that big clue, if you told me it was a photo from1980 i would have believe you, especially with that inherent blurriness of older cheap cameras!

 

[ebayologist]

Originally Posted by yamakazi18

Originally Posted by alljayevryjay

Hey Quickster (sorry, its just easier to remember/type lol), how much off-camera lighting are you working with? I'm thinking about getting an umbrella type thing for my speedlight, or even another speedlight for fun.

Just one.

speedlights are for when you don't have the option of umbrella/studio lighting, it's either one or the other for me. the studios that i've worked with have never used speedlights with umbrellas. speedlights are expensive, and i'd buy just one for fill lighting, and spend the rest on a decent system of novatron 250W/s for under $100 each for studio use.

Do yourself the favor and skip full on strobes. Unless you're just going to keep them in a studio or have an army of assistants it's #*$%$!% pain inthe $@! to use strobes. Look into bulb based flashes like Sunpak 120J. I have two of the Hasselblad equivalent called D-Flash 40. Far more powerful than anyspeedlight and if you get 120J-TTL it's reasonably automatic.

 

[SVNTI]

That CameraBag app is pretty dope. Here are a few I took to try it out.

 

[dreday0789]

 

[jpioneer]

Thanks for the coment Kamakazi. I see what you mean

 

[i just got lucky]

Originally Posted by yamakazi18

Originally Posted by elboricua 6

yamakazi18 wrote:

---

elboricua 6 wrote:

---

So the weather has been really crappy here in nyc, but not as crappy as my pictures .. But hey - Still trying .. Sorry if I have ruined some of ya appetite!!!

don't be too hard on yourself, everyone has to start somewhere! when i started out i definitely did NOT know what the hell i was doing

to suggest some things: try not to use the flash so harshly, in that picture with the girl. i personally am not a big flash fan, and the harshness of it takes away from the "softness" a girl provides in that "skyline of the night" photo. in the pic above that i quoted, i really like the framing of the V and upside down V, utilizing that great rule of thirds

the rocks on the left provide a great depth contrast, which is one of my pet peeves (that people don't leave enough sense of depth in their composition). i like also how the rocks "melt" into the reflection of the bridge lights, providing an undistracting, easy transition. there are the 3 minimum layers i usually try for in "landscape type" pictures: background city lights, middle bridge, and just a small touch of foreground provided by the rocks. nice composition!

your night skyline pictures aren't half bad, at least deserving to be on a postcard! i had a period about a year and a half back when i was really into night skylines, it at first frustrated me because i didn't really understand why my pictures looked so "postcard generic," but i just kept on visiting the same places over and over again until i ended up with different shots from different angles that i thought were more original and fit my style. long exposure stuff is fun, keep at it!

I be comparing my work to people with lots of experience, maybe that's why I have so high hopes and be so let down. LOL ....

But the weather plus the fog plus the low light be making some of those pictures look like crap.

Also, I used flash for only one picture above and that's the one you mentioned, if I didn't then I would of have had no shoot. The lens kept searching and couldn't find her and when it did I had to shoot something like 4 sec to even show. That wasn't going to happen, so I had to use (stock flash) - I'm going to invest in the 580 and a buffer, don't know what they due but I heard good things about it ....

Thanks for your comments, I def keep them in mind ..
yea i think that is one of the ways to improve, to look up to those pictures from people you like. however just make sure to emulate them to make your own, not copy theirs! yea the fog/low lighting is hard to take pictures in, but that's why people need to start using that manual focus! autofocus isn't the end-all be-all, and like i mentioned previously, a lot of the older folks i have worked with simply do fine with manual focus. one "trick" to check for sharpness is to use that zoom-in feature on your LCD, it comes in handy. also, some cameras will have that small built in light to try to light up the subject better. another "trick" is to simply bring a flashlight to help out your autofocus, it's so cheap and easy and commonsense, yet whenever i tell people this they give me a really dumbfounded "oh" and it's a bit amusing, haha. anyway i LIKE fog in pictures, it gives EXTRA depth of field in the composition, not to mention an interesting aspect to an otherwise "normal" photograph, you know what i mean?

lastly i forgot to mention i liked your border for that picture, sometimes white works, sometimes black works, and i think you chose the right one!

Nice pictures BTW. I like the shot with the bridge/skyline, but I am also a big fanatic on long exposures. I'm not a pro but its one of favorite thingsto shoot. One thing that I noticed though is that autofocus sucks at night for some reason, so I usually use manual focus when I'm shooting at night. Quick question though, what ISO did you use when you shot that picture? as far as you mentioning the fog IMO it gives this picture a different feel, insteadof the usual clear black skies at night. I like how its not too saturated and bright.

One thing that I am still trying to learn is shooting "bulb" i dont really know what the hell that means but I've tried looking and reading aboutit but I'm having a hard time understanding what it suppose to do and difference between shooting 'bulb' and just shooting in aperture priority orshutter priority at night. I always shoot using shutter and aperture, just easier to do at night IMO. (this is a question BTW...can someone please explainin a n00b way about shooting in 'bulb'?)

 

[yamakazi18]

Originally Posted by i just got lucky


Nice pictures BTW. I like the shot with the bridge/skyline, but I am also a big fanatic on long exposures. I'm not a pro but its one of favorite things to shoot. One thing that I noticed though is that autofocus sucks at night for some reason, so I usually use manual focus when I'm shooting at night. Quick question though, what ISO did you use when you shot that picture? as far as you mentioning the fog IMO it gives this picture a different feel, instead of the usual clear black skies at night. I like how its not too saturated and bright.

One thing that I am still trying to learn is shooting "bulb" i dont really know what the hell that means but I've tried looking and reading about it but I'm having a hard time understanding what it suppose to do and difference between shooting 'bulb' and just shooting in aperture priority or shutter priority at night. I always shoot using shutter and aperture, just easier to do at night IMO. (this is a question BTW...can someone please explain in a n00b way about shooting in 'bulb'?)

bulb is just a manual way to set exposure time. it allows you to open the shutter and control it remotely (or until you stop pressing theshutter), so you can keep your shutter open for as long as you want. it's meant for shooting star trails and ansel-style night photos with everything infocus, but there are easier (but not necessarily "better") ways to do both.

on older SLR's you'll see a dial with all these exposure times, and at the end of it is a "B" meant for setting a long shutter exposure.

 

[ebayologist]

^^Bulb on a film camera is for long exposures. When you depress the shutter it stays open for as long as you're depressing it the shutter. I suppose yourcamera can tell you a long exposure with the internal meter but like my light meter will read an exposure at a low iso at night that will be in multipleminutes so you get a cable release with a lock and just time with like a stop watch.

Like this is on Kodak Etkachrome which is 64iso tungsten balanced film something like 6 minute exposure at F32. Plus it's multiple negs (that'sactually a crop of the full combined image) so just used stop watch and bulb shutter.

 

[bayest]

Right on for the feedback, Yamakazi!

I hella appreciate that. I need to start doing that more often also, just to practice my critiquing. Been doing a lot of that in class lately. Yeah so I'mpretty much bored on a sunday sooo.

 

[ebayologist]

^that your Yashica?

 

[i just got lucky]

Yamakazi and ebay...thanks for that explanation. Gonna have to try that out and take some pics of the sky/stars.

 

[elboricua 6]

Broke out the nifty two fifty today before going to my boys place to watch some football and I must say I like it .. my cheapest lens and I'm pleased withthe results ..

The weather ain't letting out here in nYc though ...

Glad I purchased this lens to start out on the zoom, because IMO is a little tricky especially with unsteady hands ....

 

[keepitgully]

Thanks for the feedback yamikazi. Ill try and get her to smile next time. Haha

 

[shpat]

Ocean City, Maryland about two years ago, my brother took this pic of me.

 

[mextra45]

From the other night . I have been slacking on taking pictures tell me what you think these where taken with the kit 18-55mm lense

 

[bayest]

Originally Posted by ebayologist

^that your Yashica?

Yep. The lens is kind of dirty to a point where it's slightly blurry.

 

[ebayologist]

Originally Posted by BayEST

Originally Posted by ebayologist

^that your Yashica?

Yep. The lens is kind of dirty to a point where it's slightly blurry.

Dirt in-between the lens elements like mold or just dirt stuck on the front plane? It's fully functioning otherwise? Internal meter work, etc.?

 

[bayest]

i have yet to develop a roll (just got it from a friend).

but the meter seems to be adjust fine w/ the fstops

the shutter seems to function as i go through different speeds.

..

so w/ all that mold/dirt, it's going to be there w/ the image regardless, right???

 

[ebayologist]

^Unless you get a Rollei it's not going to be the sharpest image from a TLR to begin with… (I'd take any Yashica TLR well before all these 3 party DSLRzoom lens for sharpness but…) But yeah you should get an image, just depending on how much mold or dirt is inside will affect the quality of that imagesignificantly.

What film did you run through it?

 

[bayest]

120 film
100speed
kodak.

sucks that school is out, cause i gotta get it processed for like 8 bucks somewhere out in SF. but the first roll i develop should let me know if i wanna keepusing it.
i hope they turn out decent, i always loved looking a photos in that SQUARE FORMAT..especially in FILM

 

[bayest]

yup

 

[ebayologist]

^T-Max?

 

[ebayologist]

^Why don't you just buy a reel/tank and the chemicals? If you have a sink, thermometer, and room you can blackout completely you set. Maybe $30.