Tell us what pictures you have taken recently (that are interesting)

Blips · 2013-08-06T23:10:49.000Z

Hal, I’m totally jealous of how amazing all those photos look. Been experimenting with my new camera and the landscape photos are no where near as vibrant - I have to assume that you’re doing some post filtering or something.

Photo I took on the weekend during a hike:

hidZIu0.jpg1690×1618

I need to figure out how to do macro shots properly. This was just with a 18-105 in manual mode and as a result a large amount of the photo was wasted (I heavily cropped the image).

Chris_Nahr · 2013-08-07T00:34:33.000Z

Blips:

Hal, I’m totally jealous of how amazing all those photos look. Been experimenting with my new camera and the landscape photos are no where near as vibrant - I have to assume that you’re doing some post filtering or something.

I think the most fundamental trick is to always use a polarizing filter, in case you don’t have one. Post-processing helps, too – on my lazy amateurish level, I’m generally doing an autolevel in PhotoScape to make the colors pop a bit more.

I need to figure out how to do macro shots properly. This was just with a 18-105 in manual mode and as a result a large amount of the photo was wasted (I heavily cropped the image).

You need a macro lens or a macro filter, no way to get close enough otherwise to fill the frame and still keep the object in focus. My macro photos above are uncropped, taken at about 10 cm distance. The Marumi +5 achromat gives a wonderful magnification, downside is extremely limited range of sharpness, also evident in the pictures. That said, you already got an amazing amount of detail in your picture for not using a macro lens! What camera was that?

Blips · 2013-08-07T08:56:24.000Z

Chris Nahr:

I think the most fundamental trick is to always use a polarizing filter, in case you don’t have one. Post-processing helps, too – on my lazy amateurish level, I’m generally doing an autolevel in PhotoScape to make the colors pop a bit more.

I definitely don’t have a polarizing filter, but now I know to look for one, thanks!

Chris Nahr:

You need a macro lens or a macro filter, no way to get close enough otherwise to fill the frame and still keep the object in focus. My macro photos above are uncropped, taken at about 10 cm distance. The Marumi +5 achromat gives a wonderful magnification, downside is extremely limited range of sharpness, also evident in the pictures. That said, you already got an amazing amount of detail in your picture for not using a macro lens! What camera was that?

The camera I was using was my new Nikon D7100.

Hal9000 · 2013-08-07T10:34:39.000Z

Thanks, blips! Most of the shots I owe simply to nature, but a bunch of them are some very shoddy HDR, as that was about my only option to produce something workable. I also used a polarizing filter on some of them. Post-processing for me is usually just contrast, brightness, and dust spots past that.

Sarkus · 2013-08-07T10:40:54.000Z

skedastic:

Sarkus, you can get back a lot of detail with a little processing on shots like your mountains (below is a quick attempt off the 800x600 image above). If your camera has an automatic HDR mode you could also try that for such high dynamic range shots.

What are you using to process the picture? I’ve only messed around a bit with what came with the camera and didn’t get anything like that.

skedastic · 2013-08-07T11:28:42.000Z

I used Lightroom. I used auto tone, increased clarity and vibrance a little to try for some punch, used brushes to decrease the exposure of the sky and mountain and add fill light light to the foreground, and then tried with limited success to reduce the colour banding resulting from the low quality forum version of your image by adjusting the blue tonality. I finished with some noise reduction and the bit of sharpening the image could withstand. That all took about one minute, and I’m certainly no expert.

Much better results would obtain from the high resolution version of the jpeg or, even better, the raw image, if your camera produces them. Try downloading the free trial and check it out, it’s a wonderful tool.

Sarkus · 2013-08-07T13:45:28.000Z

skedastic:

I used Lightroom. I used auto tone, increased clarity and vibrance a little to try for some punch, used brushes to decrease the exposure of the sky and mountain and add fill light light to the foreground, and then tried with limited success to reduce the colour banding resulting from the low quality forum version of your image by adjusting the blue tonality. I finished with some noise reduction and the bit of sharpening the image could withstand. That all took about one minute, and I’m certainly no expert.

Much better results would obtain from the high resolution version of the jpeg or, even better, the raw image, if your camera produces them. Try downloading the free trial and check it out, it’s a wonderful tool.

Thanks. I’ll give that a try.

CLWheeljack · 2013-08-07T14:01:56.000Z

Sarkus:

Thanks. I’ll give that a try.

I started this thread a little while ago, if that helps.

Quarter To Three Forums – 3 Apr 13

Photo Management for Newbies

There’s a bunch of threads about buying new cameras, and photography, but not so much for managing the output of them, so I figured I’d start a new one. What do most people do with their photos to get them off their camera? In the past, I’ve used...

fire · 2013-08-07T16:13:18.000Z

If anyone else wants to see the before/after:

Sarkus:

skedastic:

mouselock · 2013-08-07T21:27:09.000Z

Sarkus:

Thanks. I’ll give that a try.

It’s really hard to overstate just how much information Lightroom can pull out of a photo. There are drawbacks, of course, but nothing that you’ll tend to notice on a screen at 72 (or even 144) DPI.

Now if you want to blow a picture up and hang it on your wall, yeah, you’ll need to get the lion’s share of the work done via the lens and sensor.

But lightroom is an amazing tool, even if it simply tells you what it is you can aim for next time you go out shooting.

Also, as was mentioned, if you can shoot RAW and care about the output quality, spend the money on the memory cards and make sure every shot is in RAW mode.

Coca_Cola_Zero · 2013-08-08T23:04:03.000Z

imMaaIc.jpg1920×1280

Met some friends at the Culture and Cocktails at the San Diego Museum of Art tonight, took this shot looking over the lily pond near the Botanical Building on my way back to the Zoo parking lot with an EOS-M (w/22mm wide lens).

Timemaster_Tim · 2013-08-09T10:40:31.000Z

We stayed in Sedona for a couple of days during our Vegas / Grand Canyon vacation last year. The sunsets there provided spectacular colour.

Sedona-2012-10-12-014 by pquan, on Flickr

Sarkus · 2013-08-11T23:48:40.000Z

skedastic:

I used Lightroom. I used auto tone, increased clarity and vibrance a little to try for some punch, used brushes to decrease the exposure of the sky and mountain and add fill light light to the foreground, and then tried with limited success to reduce the colour banding resulting from the low quality forum version of your image by adjusting the blue tonality. I finished with some noise reduction and the bit of sharpening the image could withstand. That all took about one minute, and I’m certainly no expert.

Much better results would obtain from the high resolution version of the jpeg or, even better, the raw image, if your camera produces them. Try downloading the free trial and check it out, it’s a wonderful tool.

To follow up on this, Lightroom seems like a no-go because the current version they are offering as a trial doesn’t support Vista, which is what this computer runs on. They don’t seem to offer a trial for the previous version, which did support Vista. I haven’t downloaded to the trial to see if it might actually work, though, just going by their requirements.

The camera does have HDR, though it seems rather clunky in how you turn it on. I’ll give it a try and see what it does on future shots. The camera does not support RAW images, unfortunately. The best quality mode is 1:4.

Alan_Dunkin · 2013-08-12T10:18:37.000Z

Qui, in Austin, Top Chef winner Paul Qui’s new restaurant. Spot Roger “Lunch of Kong” in this pic (back in June):

— Alan

Alan_Dunkin · 2013-08-12T10:25:38.000Z

Few extra Zion pics:

DSC_0454.jpg1130×636

DSC_0463.jpg1130×636

This waterfall appeared only during and right after the storm, and died off about 15 minutes later.

— Alan

Sarkus · 2013-08-12T20:03:42.000Z

So as I mentioned above, my camera does have an HDR mode you can turn on but it is rather clunky. Basically, it takes two photos (one right after the other), saving one “as is” and adjusting the other. Here’s a shot of Mt Rainier I took from Chinook Pass earlier today with both versions it saved:

jr5fm8.jpg1024×768

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And here is a photo of Mt. Adams, also taken today, with the camera on auto “landscape” mode:

ifd8hg.jpg1024×768

Chris_Nahr · 2013-08-15T09:49:23.000Z

Tried my hand at some more insects with a +3 macro filter. Google+ gallery with zoomable full-resolution pictures, descriptions & EXIF data. Low-resolution sample of a Meadow Brown:

Alan_Dunkin · 2013-08-16T12:52:52.000Z

Finishing up on Zion I think so am just gonna put on a few more:

— Alan

BigWeather · 2013-08-17T15:44:34.000Z

Amazing work as always, Alan. Having just gotten back from Zion I can’t believe how much more beautiful the park got between when I visited and when you visited. ;)

I really should try my hand at some post-processing. Maybe the meh pictures on my blog are diamonds in the rough and I just don’t know it. I’m tempted to also do a “Best of” post to wrap up my Southwest trip blog picking only the best picture of each day (even on days where I went to multiple sites) – would anyone like to see that? I also have a number of panoramas I’ve taken on all four of my big trips but have no idea how to blog those nicely (as they are soooo wide).

Also, the dark thoughts you have when you get back from a big trip and go… man, I can’t believe I missed going there. Kolob Canyon entrance to Zion and Great Sand Dunes NP outside of Alamosa, CO (which also has Henry Jones, Sr. house from the intro to The Last Crusade!) come to mind. Grrrrrr… Now I’m trying to figure out how to do a fifth big trip that picks up the seven lower-48 states I’m missing: Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I can do it mileage-wise pretty easily, but making it interesting…

Hal9000 · 2013-08-17T18:04:48.000Z

BigWeather:

Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I can do it mileage-wise pretty easily, but making it interesting…

You know a state’s interesting when it has this welcome sign:

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