Be Excellent To Each Other

I Lightroom.

Aperture's integration with iOS will always win out for me.

I booted it for the first time in ages last night as I had to batch resize a ton of pictures & couldn't be remember how to do it with the Gimp. Need to play with it more often as I had forgotten how different the .DNGs are instead of .JPEGs

I don't need it, actually I hate it when I plug my iPod Touch in and Aperture launches. I do like the Flickr integration though, but Lightroom has that too.

Not that (I turned that off). I mean the fact that my iPad has a complete mirror of all my Aperture content, albums, smart albums ("all photos tagged 'food' rated 3* and up), faces, and geolocation tagged photos. Meanwhile my iPhone has "all photos taken in last 30 days" and "all photos rated 3* and up" and "all photos of Danielle".

You lose all this metadata if you use Lightroom, which is why I switched from Lightroom to Aperture in the first place.

Yeah that's good, but again I never use that feature. Only bothered with the exif data.

Also Aperture is spodsApple users only.

Yes. If only I was an Apple user.






ZOINKS!!!!!!!

Just been out in lovely Bute park photographing things - mainly flowers. Here are my findings...


I don't know what people are blithering about regarding the manual focus being too loose, I found it just right. It's not an over-ride focus though, so you'll have to flip the switch on your camera from Auto to Manual. There's probably another switch on the lens but I didn't see it. The lens feels solid and secure and lighter round the neck than in the hand. Focusing is swift, at around a second to half a second. It sometimes has to hunt, but that's only on complex scenes at very close range.

Working distance is a little wide, you can't be closer than a metre. I don't find this much of a problem personally, though I found not being used to it that being too close was behind half of the 'hunting' my focus was doing.


From my LCD reviews I've found it has a air to it, with colours more muted than the modern AF-S 'G' lenses. Pictures are therefore slightly less punchy but more realistic in colour. This would work very well for skin tones. Picture contrast is good, though again lacks the 'punnch' of the new lenses. I think I actually prefer this more natural feel. For all that the colours are rich and smooth and gorgeous. The lens is incredibly sharp, only becoming a little less so wide open - but even then it's still sharper than the 35mm f/1.8. Pop it back to f/2.2 and it's sharp and at f/5.6 it's razor sharp. Being an FX lens on a DX body, corners are as sharp as the centre, though I am assured it is universally pretty sharp full frame too.

I haven't seen much in the way of chromatic aberation in fringing. This may be due to not stopping quite wide open, which is when it shows itself apparently. Acely, this lens has zero distortion of any sort.

Now for bokeh. The aperture blades are straight rather than circular, so bokeh for bright specular things like fairy lights will be hexagonal. For general light filtering through trees they're pleasant, if not uniform, and a tad rimmed. Good, but not great. However, for general bokeh - as in smoothness and transition and defocus - it is almost without peer. Backgrounds are dreamy and look like beautiful washes of colour, or impressionistic art depending on stopping down. It's just the specular bokeh circles that aren't perfect. Apparently the f/1.4 has perfect bokeh in every regard, but that costs about five to eight hundred pounds more first hand, so forget about that.

It's odd working out how far away from someone I need to be to get full body - head and shoulders - head shot. I'm so used to the nifty fifty range. Going to be fun practicing!

So far awesome then. Really loving this lens!

As for the final result - well, I guess the proof will be in the pudding!

Crap. Lady T phones up this morning: 'I'm in the city and all the photos I've taken of me and my sister doing touristy things this weekend on the 400D have come out black'

Doesn't sound good. I'm not seeing them til tomorrow evening, but it doesn't sound like something I can do much about anyway.

May well be time to consider a new body (or a repair)

That's possibly 2 good cameras damaged in a month - the Panasonic TZ7 got dropped and the LCD screen is all screwy. Awesome

You asked about lens caps, right?

http://i.imgur.com/vEtH4.jpg

Polarising lifter.

Ha ha, yes and it was switched on too. Of course, if she'd checked the results as she was taking them it wouldn't have been an unpleasant surprise to find a weekend worth of touristic snaps gone.

Is it possible she knocked the wheel onto fully manual, and that was set up for something ridiculous like taking photos of the sun, or something?

Buy a Nikon.

Not impossible, but really very unlikely. She's really quite good with the camera (technically it's her camera, and she's been on courses and shit). She had the thought to try the other lenses, and no joy

Did she try a different memory card in it?

A question. Is there any such thing as a small backup device that will copy the contents of one memory card to another so that precious piccies are safer if you're on a trip?

Question: My D80, when taking photos in bright daylight, always blows the sky out to almost white, so the whole sky flashes when I put it into Highlights mode.

I don't like this, so at the moment I get around it by dropping the EV to -2.0. I'm shooting on P mode, incidentally, with (in this case) a 35mm f/1.8.

How do I tell the D80 not to blow the sky out without having to drop the EV down to -2.0? Is it something to do with my metering that's not working properly?

Yeah, it might be that you are spot metering the ground and so the sky gets blown out. Try changing the metering mode or aiming your camera up a bit, metering and then shooting. Usually though it seems that there's always a little bit of trial, error and often compromise in high contrast situations.

I am getting more and more annoyed by the distracting shadows on my food pics (like this one). My kitchen has two sets of track halogens and more under-counter halogens, so it's lots and lots of harsh, direct light; it's almost impossible to avoid some shadow, usually from my crouched over the food. To add insult to injury, the only counter that's directly under the window has a big draining board... thing... cut into it, so it's no good to take pictures on.

I'm starting to ponder the virtues of a cheap-off-eBay light tent, if only to try it out. Or perhaps a Speedlight, which would have more use outside of the food pictures.

I bought this in the end. It's lovely.

Couple of no/low cost solutions to try first:
Turn the lights off and bounce the natural light from the window with white card (or similar).
Use a nice wooden chopping board on top of your draining board.

There might not really be anywhere to bounce the light to, because of my kitchen layout. You can see it here from the estate agent listing from before I bought it. Where the last owner has pasta jars and kitchen roll holder, I have my microwave, steamer, and bread maker.

That draining board whatsit is a puzzling thing. It does nothing (the drain plug in the bottom of the metal bit isn't plumbed to anything because the washing machine is right underneath -- there's no room) and it wastes valuable counter space. Why on earth the guy put it in, I'll never know.

This occurred to me just after I hit "post", as it happens. This might work -- although it'll not be much cop in winter, when I'd generally be looking to shoot around 7pm.

Well, when I met them, the camera had been fixed at a camera shop. And it didn't cost anything. Apparently, the guy at the counter tried 'cleaning the contacts' by roughly bashing the lens and camera together, a couple of times

That didn't work, but Lady T left the camera there, and a lady at the shop looked at it out the back. I have no idea what she actually did, and there was no repair slip or any details given (the nice lady that fixed it was out at lunch when Lady T returned). But hey, it works again.

Although, I'd pretty much decided that we should drop some coin on a more serious new body anyway. Considering something like a 7D....

The Metering is working as intended, meaning that at times it will make you want to punch walls. There will be people who will defend Nikon's metering system to the death, I am not one of them. Were you using centre metering? I'm surprised by -2.0, normally it's -0.3 on the 35 with matrix. Not sure if you are aware of this but on the older nikon models (including my D300) there is a hardware bug with light going in through the viewfinder, turn your camera on with the lens cap on and you will see the numbers - the camera will factor these in when metering.

edit: I have got to get my dad a camera, my mum has a new panasonic that she couldn't remeber the name of but I suspect it's micro 4/3 and he keeps stealing it.

Do you have an angle poise lamp (or similar)? Have a muck about with lighting your food from the side with it (it will get rid of the strong shadows or at least make nicer ones if angled correctly) and experiment with and without the overheads on. I'm sure you'll be able to work something out.

Only a clamp-to-the-desk one in the office, which I use anyway. I'll keep an eye open for a cheap one next time I'm in Ikea or similar though.

Yeah, get a daylight bulb too if you see one. Normally a couple of quid at Art/Craft stores.

Just ordered this. Expect much zoomed in fun in 3-5 working days.

Exciting!

I want to buy something now...

Buy a Canon camera.

LOLZIPOPS

I think I'll be buying Kenko AF extension tubes next.

But... you've already got a macro lens, why would you need 'em? Unless you want to go sub-atomic, that is.

I think I'll be getting a speedlight next, either a SB-600 or SB-700. Probably the latter. I also bought a replacement tripod head today for my broken old one, planning some self-portraits and indoor atmosphere high-DOF stuff.

The SB-400 is on my shopping list.

From what I hear it's worth saving the extra £80 and going for the SB-600, Doc. More flexible, better range, power, speed, light etc. I think the SB-400's just a bit of a jumped up standard pop-up flash. Depends what you're using it for I guess though, but for anything other than casual very-close-up people stuff I'd think again.

Update on my dad's camera thing. He is buying a Panasonic Lumix TZ20*, and we are going to set up a regular photography day thing - it's wont be long before he does what he was bloody well told to do in the first place and buys a micro 4/3 camera (dslrs are "too big", fun fact; my dad is 6"3). You see, my dad is utterly convinced that because some compacts hve A mode he will be able to get bokeh ("the background out of focus like your flower shots") out of it:
"no I can! it will be just like yours, you'll see!!". Why yes, father yes we will, no no you are right sensor size is just to do with megapixels, carry on...


*he made up his mind to get a compact, there was no winning this so the least I could do was make sure it was not shit.

Hmm. That's twice the price, though. I am attracted to the SB-400's smaller size and (from what I read, which admittedly wasn't extensive) it sounded fine for what I wanted (basically, some reasonable fill-flash on bright days and -- mostly -- some bounce flash indoors). I need to do more reading, though.

I don't think I care about the remote modes on the higher models (indeed, I don't think my D5000 can do wireless remote triggering anyway).

The only way is down, baby.

Your next camera will though.

Going through the photos my dad took with my camera and it's a bit "for the love of god why!" Live in the peak district, take photos of the daily telegraph and a nice big rose in the bottom right corner of the frame, this is deliberate, I think he thinks it's being artistic. I know he stalks my flicker so I'm going to have to do what I can with one of them.

Macro lens has been delivered to the "safe house" across the border. Should be able to go tomorrow and pick it up! Double squee!

My telephoto is in my house!

I'm on my way to Middlesbrough!

Why didn't you take it?

It was delivered as MrsPaz was leaving the house to pick me up. I haven't been home and she didn't know what it was

She knew.

Well, apparently she put the parcel in the car, but didn't bring the camera bag

Now for the bad news: The lens was bought 2nd hand through Amazon, but it look like there is dust inside the casing. Without the camera, I can't test if it'll show up on the image. Frustrating.

A Gentleman's or a Lady's Flickr is his or her own. I would compromise mine for no man. FOR NO MAN.

Tell him to get his own channel.

If he got his own channel then I would lose power over the editing of his photos and that isn't going to happen with a man that says things like "you are going to have to explain torrents to me again" when there is a 5 step simple instructions notepad file on his desktop.

Edit: you know when I read stuff back about my parents lack of technical knowlage it sounds made up, it isn't. They got broadband last year and were using some sort of box plugged into the phone line that gave an engaged sound on the phone before that. They got it as an alternative to dialup many many moons ago and it was just fear of The New that stopped them switching. I ended up ringing sky from their house and got BB put in for them. (obv. Mum spoke to them before I did to say I had permission to do this)