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What aspect of photography totally escapes you? (self.photography)
submitted 1 year ago by [deleted]
Any particular part, technical or personal (e.g. photographing strangers) that has always bugged you, and you feel might impede your growth?
[–]kanakana 15 points16 points17 points 1 year ago
New photographers who don't use Google. There are 50 gazillion articles on the web that will tell you what aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are.
[–]brazilliandanny 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Not to mention the manual that came with your camera.
[–]nattfodd 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
The manual will tell you how to change aperture, not what changing aperture will concretely do to your images. Plus the whole thing is usually unreadable as anything else than a reference.
[–]brazilliandanny 3 points4 points5 points 1 year ago
Every Canon Manual I have shows examples of what changing the aperture can do and explains everything quite simply.
[–]cntlkbckwrds 8 points9 points10 points 1 year ago
Guide numbers and wireless flash setups
[–]thedailynathan 4 points5 points6 points 1 year ago
The guide numbers are fairly meaningless by themselves. Use it to compare flash power against other flashes, but in actually photography these days you'll never calculate or use a guide number, so I wouldn't worry about it.
The guide number refers to:
At max power, and at a certain ISO (usually given), combinations of subject distance times f-stop where distance * f-stop = guide number will produce a correct exposure.
So with a guide number of 100ft, at full power, you will correctly illuminate your subject from 100ft away with an f/1.0 lens, or 25ft away with an f/4.0 lens, etc. This is for direct illumination, i.e. firing the flash straight at your subject.
The reason that this number is fairly useless is because no photographer worth their salt fires flash directly at the subject anymore. Flash is bounced off a ceiling, or an umbrella reflector, or at the very least through a softbox or some other diffuser. Because of different reflectivity, transmission, and flash-to-surface distance for all of these things, there's no easy way to convert guide number to the correct settings to use anymore.
Feel free to ask any specific questions about wireless setups.
[–]vwllss 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Whenever I shoot with my wireless flash setup (often, as you said, bounced or umbrellad) I just guess a value that seems appropriate and make adjustments depending how over or under exposed it looks on the LCD or the histogram.
Do you have a more precise method for your own photography, or do you basically guess and check like I do?
[–]thedailynathan 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Just guess and check, to be honest. Even knowing the reflectivity and estimating out a flash-surface and surface-subject distance, I think it would take far longer to do a calculation than to just take a test shot. But if you shoot with the same lighting equipment (say a flash reflecting off an umbrella, that's always a certain distance apart), you'll probably start to develop a feel for the power you should use, just like you get a feel for the exposure settings you need given a particular scene after you shoot in it for awhile.
[–]ArtVandelay 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
For the longest time I could not make sense of wireless flash set-ups but as soon as you have your "ah ha" moment, you can really benefit from utilizing them to make photos.
Basically it works like this:
You have a radio that sits in the hot shoe (the place where a typical flash goes) on top of your DSLR. Said radio transmits to radio receivers that are attached to your off camera flash/flashes/strobes. If you have MORE than one off camera flash, there are two ways to trigger the additional flashes: More receivers or a built-in optical slave sensor. A built-in optical slave sensor is great because you DON'T need a receiver - The flash fires on it's own when it "sees" the other flash fire. This usually works at something like 1/8000 so synchronization is not a problem.
The best way to understand it is to just try it. It's daunting starting out but it's truly not rocket science. Best of luck.
[–]WillyPete 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
You need to spend more time at the strobist's blog.
[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
For me that made things worse.
This is what finally helped me to see things clearly. Unfortunately, his PDF is ridiculously overpriced. But if you google the guy you can find him on some podcasts where he pretty much gives all the inf away for free.
The basic idea is rather simple (yet effective). Use the "sunny 16" rule as a guide by using flash power accordingly:
Bright sun - f16 - flash 1/1
Slight overcast - f11 - flash 1/2
etc.
Exposure time (and ISO) is independent and sets background light/saturation.
Also, read up on high speed sync. The look that most people go for (the "McNally"-style) cannot be achieved without TTL.
Yes, good tips. Another good source is Neil Van Niekerk's site.
He's a renowned wedding photographer that's written a lot about flash, particularly balancing ambient with flash.
http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/flash-photography-tips/
http://neilvn.com/tangents/2008/03/27/so-what-are-your-settings/
Yep. Tangents is a great blog. Kind of a counter part to strobist since he Neil is all about on camera flash. He was on someone's podcast recently and it was one of the few times where a photog would just pour out great advice (instead of filling time with fluff talk). Great guy.
[–]jake40509 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
yeah..me too!!
[–]JimmyJamesMac 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Ask away.
[–]duxup 16 points17 points18 points 1 year ago
Taking good photographs :(
I've perfected taking crap photographs.
[–]JimmyJamesMac 12 points13 points14 points 1 year ago
Hipster.
[–]vlf_fata 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
where he messed up is he got 'crap' and 'my gift from the gods of photography' True hipsters know the difference
[–]duxup 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
I've perfected that too but mostly just due to the tumblr Polaroid method :(
[–][deleted] 1 year ago
[deleted]
[–]feureau 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Same here. :(
[–]zhx 5 points6 points7 points 1 year ago
Street photography. I don't think it will keep me from growing in other areas, but I love looking at street photography, would like to create it, but you come off as either A: a complete creep, B: a complete asshole, or C: some combination of A and B. I just can't bring myself to do it.
[–]potatolicious 9 points10 points11 points 1 year ago*
You don't need to be either. Sure, being A, B, or both gets you some shots that I simply don't get - but I'm not really in any dire need of subjects and good shots ;) There's plenty happening in the world, one can do just fine without being a creepy asshole.
The trick with street is that 95% of the world doesn't really give a shit about you taking a picture of them. Read their body language - make your camera fairly obvious to bystanders; the ones that are paranoid about being photographed will stand out - leave 'em alone, not worth the trouble, and they're probably not at their most natural state with you around anyways ;)
For the rest, if you think they're a bit uncomfortable, introduce yourself. Sometimes it helps to explain what you're trying to do - you're a street photographer who captures what life is like in the city, etc etc - but most often you just say hi, exchange some pleasantries, and ask if you can take some photos while they go about their business (or pose for you, if that's what you'd like). Purists say this destroys the candidness - but unless you're hiding in a tree with a pinhole camera, that candidness didn't exist in the first place... and most subjects have no trouble being natural - since all you're asking them to do is ignore you. >90% of the people I ask say yes, most enthusiastically at that. Dress well, don't tote around a point and shoot - look like you know what you're doing and people will go for it.
Honestly though, the vast majority of people you don't even have to ask. Just do your thing - but whatever you do, do not act secretive. Make your camera obvious, and avoid the urge to put your camera down right away after you take the picture - it makes you look like you're sneaking pictures. Be deliberate in your movements - if they look right at you, smile and wave or something. Be friendly. Do not be confrontational - if your first thought while doing street photography is that ol' photographer's rights card in your wallet, you've already half-failed. Your legal rights are an absolute last resort - don't play that card until all friendly avenues are exhausted.
Oh, and leave the earbuds at home. People will want to talk to you - don't project the air of indifference while you're doing your thing. Your subjects are lending you private moments of their lives, and most are very willing to share, don't take that for granted.
[–]zhx 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
That's all great advice.
[–]tim404 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Well said.
[–]WillyPete 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Get a business card, even if it's just for a throwaway email address or a flickr account.
Get a tripod. People think it's architecture when you 're setting up for that.
Kneel, lie down, stand on fences and shoot one handed with a wide angle. These will make people think you're not a creep, but someone looking for the truly unusual.
Carry some loose change to drop on a busker's bag.
Smile. It's the same as asking permission.
If anyone responds favourably and tries to ham it up a bit for you encourage them. Monster faces, Jumping, recreate the classic scenes like the sailor in Times Square, etc.
[–]potatolicious 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Needed to quote this for great Truth(tm). I see a lot of street photogs going around all serious-looking. They're also the ones who are likely to get hassled by their subjects.
[–]Chroko 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
I can't get into street photography because I see so many people trying to do it. Roving packs of MeetUp and Flickr photographers circulate past near where I work every day, all taking pictures of the same few tourist attractions.
It's really hard to feel inspired when you can't throw a SLR without hitting a hipster. I'm sure most of them are taking terrible pictures, but still...
[–]potatolicious 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Those aren't street photographers - pay them no mind. I've gone to the MeetUp events, those are more about walking around socializing with other members and taking pictures along the way than they are about any sort of real, serious work.
Now, if you were more concerned with photography than you seem to be concerned with being seen with a bunch of hipsters... Get off the high horse and just go take some pictures - relax, it's fun.
[–]Chroko 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago*
Yeah, you're right. I'm sure hipsters are people too.
I've already taken the effort to pare down my gear to be as nearly-invisible as possible - ditching the day-glo neck strap in favor of a heavy-duty wrist strap seemed to be a big help - so I should just go for it.
[–]breakbread 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Hipsters always go for the fisheye.
[–]vlf_fata 5 points6 points7 points 1 year ago
I have the canon fisheye lens and maybe its just me or maybe its how hipsters use the holga/dianna/whatever fisheye lens; but My fisheye shots, in my opinion don't look all that hipster matic. lemme get some examples up soon
[–]eartho 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
people actually do this?
[–]GoogleIsMyJesus 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
As a nightlife photographer, Both are true.
[–]zgh5002 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
This is why I cannot get into it. I live in a college town, so if you're male, you're obviously a rapist if a girl does not know you, but if you stick to the "artsy" end of any campus and are college aged, no one will bug you, just come up and ask you all sorts of questions about photography in general.
[–]JimmyJamesMac 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Get a rangefinder or a TLR. You'll look like an artist instead of a jerk.
[–]gargantuan 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Learn to shoot from the waist if you are on the street and are too shy to ask people to pose for you. Hang the camera on your neck, adjust your strap length, and then learn point it the right way (depending on the focal length of the lens and focus distance) and start clicking. It help if it is noisy or your camera has a silent shutter.
You get a lot of bad shots (butts and crotches) but also a lot of interesting, slanted horizon shots, dramatic movement blur, interesting angles. Works well in a bazaar or market were vendors are sitting down. You get the produce and their faces.
Warning: you are flashing your potentially good camera equipment. I had some thugs follow me for a while I guess planning kick my arse and take my camera, but I just jumped into a taxi and escaped. So be careful!
Talking to a professional photographer, who worked as a journalist for some number of years, the best way to get good shots of people is it to actually be a creep for a while and continuously walk around with a camera up to your face (she used a Leica, a nice, smaller, less threatening camera). It works if you are interviewing someone, at first they kind of look at you weird, but if you talk to your subject and ask them something that interests them, they start to ignore your weird constant clicking and skulking around and start to act naturally, that's when you get the best shots. That is impossible to do on the street and works only when working with a particular subject.
[–]no_frill 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
I am terrible at this too. And turned to the guys here on reddit. They gave me all some amazing advice, videos and cool stuff. Until finally I went and took some pictures. Just last weekend, I was taking pictures of kids skateboarding around Fredericton, NB because I had the guts to ask them for a picture. here is the link to the post:
http://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/bgq1d/photographing_people/
[–]thumper242 6 points7 points8 points 1 year ago
Landscape. I could publish a book full of really bad landscape photography, punctuated by shots that are almost but not quite.
[–]feureau 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Put a polarizer on your lens.
[–]thumper242 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Hmm. I wish you would have said that a few hours ago before I went out and wasted some digital film on 1-off landscapes. :) I will try that next time.
[–]mrsnugglecow 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
True that. I am now starting to shoot panoramas, which are cooler in general, but landscapes are definitely my bad point!
That's because it's very difficult to shoot a landscape that is interesting to the human eye. I can't shoot them because I'm bored before I even push the trigger. Proof. And that's my best one ever!
But so many people would be like "OMG that's an amazing picture!" It just seems like for 90% of "good" landscape photos I'm exposed to, it's more about where they're at than who they are.
[–]pbarmasher0 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
The zone system.
[–]daragh 7 points8 points9 points 1 year ago*
The Zone System has a reputation for being far more complicated than it is. It's a way of thinking about exposure based on how you want the most important part of your photograph exposed. For example: if you're taking a photograph of a person with average caucasian toned skin you can meter off their skin and then overexpose by a stop to get a "good" exposure. This is because your camera's built-in light meter is designed to give an accurate exposure value when it is presented with a tone of approximately 18% grey (also known as middle grey) and caucasian skin is typically about a stop brighter than middle grey. So because you know that your camera is reading your metered value as middle grey you can tell that your photograph will be underexposed, in order to compensate for this you open up a stop and get an acceptable exposure. That's the essence of the Zone System, deciding how you want key tones in your image to appear relative to middle grey. In the Zone System though, middle grey is known as "Zone V" and average caucasian skin is a stop brighter and usually sits on Zone VI.
That said, you can assign the values any way you like. For example: if you wanted the person's face to appear very dark in the scene you could meter off their face and underexpose by a stop, effectively putting their skin tone on Zone IV.
You can think of the zones in terms of how they differ to your metered values:
(Ansel got 11 zones, but for most purposes I'd tend to think of them as only around 5-7 zones until you really know what you're doing.)
In summary: The Zone System is a way of deciding how you want to expose for important tones in your photographs.
[–]parkerpyne[] 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Ah, but that's only a fraction of what the zone system is about.
There's three aspects to it: Arriving at an exposure that does justice to the darkest textured area. This is the thing you will spot-meter first and then subtract two zones to place it in zone III.
Next you meter the lightest area that you want fully textured. This determines how to develop the negative. If your metering concludes it's in zone VIII instead of VII (assuming you want zone VII), you develop at N-1 (effectively pull-processing it by a stop). If it's in zone VI, you push it a stop (N+1).
Finally, but this is less formalized, comes the printing where it's basically down to fine-tuning the contrast by using the appropriate graded-paper or dodging/burning to adjust the brightness of certain areas. Nowadays, most paper is multi-graded which takes away a little from that final step.
The idea of the zone system is that film exhibits non-linear behavior when varying development times. If you develop longer, lighter areas will get brighter faster than dark areas which will hardly move at all. What this gives you is control over the overall contrast and dynamic range of your images, something you absolutely cannot do with digital.
There's limitations to the zone system. It's entirely inapplicable to digital photography due to the fact that digital sensors tend to behave linearly (both in the shadows and highlights) to increased or decreased exposure times. It's also less useful for color film as modifying the development time there is more likely going to result in color casts.
And even though I'm primarily shooting B&W film which I develop myself, I find the zone system often difficult to employ. It was really designed for large-format view-cameras where you take and develop exactly one frame. It should be obvious from the above that you cannot really have frames on the same roll of film that require different compensations during development. Ideally, you can only shoot the whole roll at, say, N-1.
I believe there's photographers out there that carry more than one camera around: One for each in N-1, N and N+1. It should be obvious how quickly this becomes awkward and that it requires quite a bit of book-keeping.
[–]daragh 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago*
I agree for the most part in that the overarching idea of the Zone System is a way of controlling exposure and contrast when shooting, developing, and printing individually dev'd large format B&W negatives. I do, however, think a portion of its methodology (the part I've outlined above) can be applied to digital photography for the purposes of determining exposure despite digital sensors' linear light response curve vs. film's logarithmic one.
Anyway, I just thought it might be a good idea to give people a foothold into the Zone System without necessarily understanding absolutely everything in The Negative.
[–]parkerpyne[] 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Fair enough. The realization that a light-meter is going to place whatever it meters into zone V is maybe the most important detail about light metering there is to know.
With this knowledge alone, you can set your DSLR to spot-metering and you will finally get predictable and controllable results. I abhor matrix-metering as it's so often unpredictable.
[–]daragh 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Yeah. It's a pity so many people don't actually understand metering and exposure beyond having read Understanding Exposure and thinking they know all they need to know on the subject.
[–]pbarmasher0 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Cheers!
[–]spoids 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Studio lighting. I just seem to suck at it.
This is best learned in real life from a real person. It can be so frustrating.
[–]Tsen 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Seconded. Plus learning how to set up strobes or even wireless speedlights without being shown how to at least once in person is nigh impossible.
[–]chatmonchy 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
I've only been using pocket cameras, but white balance always seem to be a strange art to me. I've used either auto or the correct specific setting (Cloudy on cloudy days, etc) but the pictures still tend to come out wrong and I'll have to correct the Level with Photoshop afterwards.
What gives?
[–]thristian99 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Well, the "auto" setting tries to guess based on what the camera sees, while "specific" settings are only very approximate (what are the odds that any two cloudy days will have exactly the same colour tint, given how widely clouds vary in colour and size and shape?)
The way to get white-balance spot-on is to actually measure it, then and there, in the field. Most cameras have a 'custom' white-balance option, sometimes labelled "◣▪◢", where you point the camera at a neutral-coloured object and tell it to capture that. If you go to a photography shop and buy a "neutral 18% grey card", you can use it for exposure metering as well as white-balance, but if you don't have one you can use any ol' white or neutral-coloured thing - a sheet of paper, a white wall (be careful you don't accidentally use a cream wall!), a t-shirt.
[–]h0er 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
I read somewhere (I think here in r/photography) that the inside of a camera bag is always 18% grey. I take this as a truth (It seems alot like 18% grey) so you can also use that instead of buying a card which you'll eventually lose.
[–]takenwtf 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
oh damn, the inside of my bag is gray, and im pretty sure its the right shade.
[–]chatmonchy 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
That makes a lot of sense.
My Canon does support that, but one more question, do pointing to a white thing and 18% grey card result in the same, correct white balance? I mean those are different colors, but then again I don't know how the camera does custom wb.
[–]thristian99 7 points8 points9 points 1 year ago
The way it works is something like this:
So no, "light" or "dark" doesn't matter to white-balance - just the relative intensity of red, green and blue. "light" and "dark" make a great deal of difference to exposure, of course. :)
[–]chatmonchy 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Holy cow, now I get it. Thanks for the brilliant explanation!
So with a grey card, do you just snap a picture of it, then move around the color sliders until the image on LCD matches the card?
[–]thristian99 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
It depends on the camera. Video cameras I've used have you point the camera at a white surface and hold down the special "white balance" button until the "white balance" icon on the screen stops flashing. My Nikon DSLR needs me to go into the "white balance" menu, point the camera at something and press the shutter, but it doesn't save the result to the card, it just uses it to calculate the white-balance settings then throws the picture away.
If your camera doesn't have a custom white-balance setting, but does have colour sliders, then you're probably stuck doing it manually as you describe.
I've used have you point the camera at a white surface and hold down the special "white balance" button
My photo camera has something like that. It seems if your camera can do auto-whitebalancing it needs to know that you pointed at the whitest surface you can find, otherwise if you use a grey card it would have to be a standard Kodak (or similar) grey card specially made. So if your camera knows you are using grey card #132 from Kodak then it can automatically fix the white balance for you.
The next question is, what is the advantage of a grey card over a white surface. Does a white surface calibrate well for the white point not well enough for the shadows? I remember using a grey card in my film photo class and that produced good results, but it is just another thing to carry with you.
As far as I understand, the only advantage to using an 18% grey card is that you can use it for both metering and white balance, instead of having to carry around one card for each purpose.
If you think about it, it's impossible for there to be a different colour-balance in the highlights versus the shadows, since the same light is falling on everything (if you have different light-sources with different colour-balances shining on different parts of the same scene, then (a) you're in a world of pain, or (b) it's being done deliberately for effect, and you're not looking for a neutral white balance anyway.
Thank you, that makes sense.
[–]jfasi 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
I'd suggest using custom white balance if your camera supports it. Somewhere there should be an option to set the white balance by shooting a picture with a white object in the center. The white balance is then calculated from this.
[–][deleted] 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Having any sort of edge or style to my pictures. I generally enjoy my shots but they just don't have much wide appeal. I feel that I am slowly improving but I am just starting to use lightroom and RAW, which I think should help quite a bit.
[–]gargantuan 5 points6 points7 points 1 year ago
Improvement can come from technical side (use better RAW post-processing, choose better camera settings, better camera, more precise white balance and so on) or from the artistic side -- shoot from different angles, shoot closer, shoot further way, use extreme wide angles, use blur, work on your composition. Both of these will come just by shooting more. Play around and you'll improve just by practicing.
I showed my portfolio to a professional photographer once, and they liked some pictures but they immediately said "you don't shoot enough" and they were right.
The next level is you'll notice that you develop a style. Just like someone looks at an Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz photo and they recognize the artist by the style. But don't strive for that -- just keep shooting.
[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Thanks for the words of wisdom. I am definitely starting to shoot more since finishing university though so that is a plus.
[–]agen_kolar 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
External flash. I just can't seem to comprehend how to work them.
[–]MDPhotog 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
By external flash you mean off-camera flash?
There are 3 ways to operate off-camera flashes.
1) Long hotshoe-to-hotshoe cord. This method is good, but limited by the length and annoying of having a wire.
2) Radio triggers. ie: pocket wizards, radio poppers. This is the best, but most expesive way.
3) Command/Slaves. These work by flashes talking with other flashes. This is the cheap and ghetto way to use off-camera flash. Another con is that they're limited by slight, where radio can go through walls/backwards.
Which do you want to learn more about?
[–]agen_kolar 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
No, well those too, but I bought an external flash (obviously not the right terminology), a Speedlite 580EX II and just can't seem to grasp how to use it. There seems to be no rhyme or reason with how it works, but I know it's just user error.
[–]MDPhotog 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Is it getting stuff too bright or too dark? Is it set in TTL?
E-TTL. But I don't know enough about it to even describe what my problem is, despite reading much of the manual. The manual assumes you know what all of the terminology already means and exactly what results will be produced. :/
I suggest you invest about $100 in upgrading your most expensive, complex, and versatile piece of equipment... your brain!
Seriously, go take a class that covers flash, you will learn SO much at your point and you just can't replace one-on-one teaching with a book or webpage.
[–]colbyolson 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Right now I am a little stumped on how a 30mm lens equals a 45mm photo with the 1.5/1.6 sensor crop. The more I read about it, the more I begin to understand, it's just a little technical sometimes.
Nothing a little research cant help, but I thought I would at least share a personal hurdle.
Easy way to figure this out.
Take an image, and put it into photoshop. Now, crop out the middle part of it. Notice how it has a narrower field of view now (i.e. it is "zoomed in"). By cropping the image, you just turned your 50mm shot into something that looks like it was taken with an 85mm (or however far you cropped it).
This is the same thing happening with crop sensors. They are smaller than full-frame sensors, so they are effectively cropping out just the middle of the actual image, and thus deliver an effectively "more zoomed in/greater focal length" shot.
[–]colbyolson 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
So, when I use my prime 30mm sigma it turns my shot into a 45mm because my 30mm lens is being cropped automatically by my D90 1.5 sensor?
I just get confused because I guess I associate a larger picture because the mm is getting larger. Something to that effect.
[–]biotmessiah 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Really, it is just the field of view changing. For example, a d700 is a full frame camera that can be set to dx crop mode. Take one shot on full frame with a 50mm, and switch to crop without changing anything and you will end up with a 85mm field of view, but depth of field and magnification of the 50mm lens at that focusing distance.
The advantage of crop sensors is they put say 12mp on the center of the image circle, where as a d700 has 12mp across the entire image circle.
[–]dubcroster 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Let me try to explain it to you then.
Let me quote Ansel Adams "The Camera":
"It is important to understand that all lenses of the same focal length give images of the same size for a given subject and subject distance. If a 4-inch lens produces an image one inch high of a certain subject, the image size will remain one inch regardless of whether the lens is on a 35mm camera or a 4x5 camera. However, on the 35mm camera, the one-inch image will fill the frame [...], while it will occupy only about one quarter the height of the 4x5 film."
This, I believe explains it very well.
To give you an example: Imagine a painting on your desk, without a frame. Imagine having two frames. One large enough to frame the painting and one about a third smaller. This is how focal lengths work on full frame versus crop. The smaller frame will give you a framed area that looks like what you would get from a lens of a longer focal length, and it looks like you have zoomed in a little.
When people say a 30mm is like a 45mm, they refer to the fact that the image that will fit within the smaller crop sensor will have a field of view similar to that of a 45mm sensor.
I hope this helps clarify this for you.
[–]jelliedbabies 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Draw a stick figure in a box and label this box full frame. Draw another box in the ff box and label it dx. These are what your sensors are seeing. at the same focal length
[–]cabbit 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
The taking photos part.
[–]GoogleIsMyJesus 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
perfect wide angle shots.
Wide angle is about context. Think of the composition as a story that you're trying to tell. All of the elements should have something to say, otherwise they're just noise. Choose your lens/focal length by the way you want to tell the story.
[–]TheGanjaGuru 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
Couldn't agree more. Wide angel shots require a lot of composition forethought, and it is much trickier to compose well since so much is captured. This is the best explanation of how to take good wide angel shots I have come across to date.
[–]WillyPete 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
I've been beating myself up with that, until I learned to shoot even wider and then crop.
The slr viewfinder is NOT a good tool for finalising composition compared to a 21+ inch screen.
[–]anonysaurus 1 point2 points3 points 1 year ago
I've only got one good wide angle here. It's all about perspective.
[–]thedailynathan 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago*
Got examples of what's wrong with your current ones? If you're shooting organic subjects (i.e. people), the biggest mistake everyone makes is buying a rectilinear lens. E.g. Canon 10-22mm, Nikon 14-24mm, Canon 16-35mm, etc. etc. These lenses are absolutely terrible due to their pincushion distortion relative to what you expect to see at close-up perspectives. Way too much stretching at the edges of the frame.
Grab a diagonal fisheye, it will do wonders. Or if you don't have the budget for that, at least introduce some barrel distortion in photoshop to correct your current images (of course you lose resolution at the center).
[–]ranzino 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Telling a larger story in a landscape photo.
[–]bornfromblue 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Field lighting.
[–]ephemeron0 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
portraiture.
as far as i am concerned, a good portrait is completely accidental.
a great portrait can be left much to chance, but if you ever hear a photographer like Platon speak, getting the most out of your subjects takes hard work, not only technically but personally.
[–]lord_of_the_wings 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago*
Making money from it the way I'd like to. I am the in house photographer/designer at a company now, have worked in studios, once did a wedding, but I would much rather being selling prints of my work.
Edit: Also comprehensive organization which probably is the root of many issues I have :)
[–]justforkix 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
the Zone System
[–]GunnerMcGrath 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago*
I'm a total noob. My biggest problem so far is figuring out how to get my camera to expose the foreground properly if the background is too light. Basically any indoor photo on a sunny day where a window is in the shot.
EDIT: Thanks for some of the tips. I will play more with spot exposure and the flash. I usually hate how photos with a flash turn out, though I have read that buying one that turns up to bounce off the ceiling helps tremendously, I just don't want to get into the habit of throwing money at every minor roadblock rather than improving my craft.
[–]ZeroGhz 2 points3 points4 points 1 year ago
Quick fix: use the flash on your camera. The problem, as many others have described below, is that the background is too bright compared to your subject. Using flash should brighten your subject enough to expose both properly(ish). I know it seems a little strange using flash during the day but with a dark subject against a light background a little flash will help tremendously.
Another thing that's good to know is that sometime you CAN'T do both property. The Dynamic Range of every camera available today doesn't even come close to that capable of your own two eyes so unless you start using graduated ND filters or exposure blending you're likely to be disappointed.
This happens because the camera doesn't know which to meter off of - should it try to make the sky the "correct" exposure, or should it make your portrait subject the correct exposure. Since it sees both, and isn't intelligent enough to decide which, it often goes for a middle ground, in which both the sky turns out blown and white, and your subject is still dark.
Ways to fix this:
Use exposure compensation/bias. This is the setting in your camera where you can set EV+1, EV-2, etc. 0 is the baseline, so if you find your images coming out too dark, set it to +1 or +2 (or however much) to boost it up. Vice versa for overexposed images.
Use spot metering, if your camera has it. Instead of looking at the entire scene to come up with an exposure, with spot metering you can use your camera to target specific areas, such as your subject's face, and it will optimize the exposure just for that, ignoring the brightness of anything else in the scene.
[–]jamougha 0 points1 point2 points 1 year ago
Assuming you have a P&S camera, the exposure is normally set when the shutter button is half depressed. So, point the camera so that the window is out of the shot, half depress the shutter, recompose and shoot.
Some DSLRs work this way, some don't. But AFAIK they all have a button on the back saying something like AE-L/AF-L, which will do the same thing.
Set you camera to spot metering to start with for these types of scenes.
[–]eartho -8 points-7 points-6 points 1 year ago
if you have a digital camera, try, oh i don't know, experimenting?
[–]GunnerMcGrath 3 points4 points5 points 1 year ago
Thanks, I never thought of that!
Idiot.
[–]eartho -3 points-2 points-1 points 1 year ago
well, if you haven't yet figured out how to do it, then obviously you aren't pushing the buttons enough.
all it takes is a username and password
create account
is it really that easy? only one way to find out...
already have an account and just want to login?
login
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