Be Excellent To Each Other

That's excellent.

The rest of the thread points out that it's not actually focal length but the the vertigo effect which is made via zooming in with a camera on a dolly. Then there was lots of numbers and people getting angry and pedantic and probably insulting newbies, then somebody got 4000 karma for recommending the D3100 to someone who had 5k to spend because it's the camera they own so clearly there can't be a better one and anybody who owns a pro/semi-pro camera is a bastard r/photography


best photography subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/PictureChallenge/

D400 set to be announced in the summer, will be after the new budget full frame. I'm sure I've mentioned this but I sustain my gear habit by playing Ebay. I started with £500 and now have the two M4/3 cameras and a prime for them, a D300, a 18-200 VR with a odd noise when you turn it on, a 35mm 1.8, 50mm 1.8 and a 28-80mm old film kit lens (for buildings). Only the film lens and 50mm are full frame and I barely use them, in fact since I've got the M4/3 cameras I have used the D300 once. It's actually not because of compactness, it's because of the EVF and swivel screen. So instead of having my Nikon kit sat there losing money I'm going to put it on the bay now rather than in 2 years time when I sit there going "why didn't you sell it 2 years ago you idiot"

So what's my £500 going to be turned into? A Sony A77 with 15-50 2.8 lens. Not gone on the bay yet, my children are ill so I wouldn't be able to post till next week, so as always make me an offer, I'm not going to split and the whole lot is going along with a lowepro bag.

Slightly related: http://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-ki ... e-internet

Excellently written article on the steady decline of Flickr.

I think that some of the comments are spot on too. Perhaps it could have become Facebook but it's still relevant to people who like photography.

I'm glad of what it is, Flickr is spot on for me.

Can't fucking stand Facebook even though it is successful.

The Tesco clubcard exchange is on, and I have £88 in vouchers. This means I can get £170 off a NEX 5N which they want £500 for, with the pancake lens (the one Helen is missing). The other lenses cost heaps, separately.

HM.

(Anyone want a barely-used Lumix FZ45? No?)

Disagree. This is the main thrust of their argument



Flickr doesn't aim to fill either of those niches, and never did. Flickr allows for finding and sharing pictures that are either particularly good, or are about a subject that you're interested in. It has a system that allows for quality to rise to the top. That's so far from what Facebook does it's untrue. I know less about Instagram, but again that seems to me to be more about "take photo, share photo" rather than Flickr's paradigm of effectively providing interconnected art galleries.

Flickr has much more in common with the likes of deviantart than it does with Instagram or Facebook, and it's a shame that people like Giz are overlooking that because FB/IG have more users.

Surprise Tax rebate!

Probably going to get a nice macro lens for the D300, maybe the 85 VR depending on second hand price. Decided against the A77 after having properly tested the one I was lusting after (belonging to a friend) I realised that the iso performance on it utterly cack. I mean, oh shit the Nikon D90 or Canon 20D is better than this awful.

What Zardoz said.


I think the guy who wrote that article is confused. I accept his arguement that Yahoo didn't really know what to do with it, but I disagree with his notion that Flickr is a failure because it isn't Facebook or Instagram. For me Flickr still has a whole raft of great photographers who I'm contacts with and who regularily update. It's an amazing repository for film photographs and has some quality tagging that allows me to view what I want fairly easily. I like the way commenting and favouriting are very secondary to the photograph itself, providing a filip for the photographer but not overriding matters. (Although getting rid of those award gifs would be very welcome.)

The groups do work for me. I get to see lots of good creepy-atmosphered stuff through 'Lost Highway' and 'Lynchian', some beautiful melancoly through 'Rural Decay', some savage critique on 'Suburbia' and lots of good information on the Nikon lens groups and D90 group. Sure, people could post more in the communities but they're probably too busy looking at and taking photographs. The quality of the uploads is good, I like the sizes on offer and the sets and everything just works.

By contrast Facebook is hideous for photographs. It presents a stupid square truncation in the Wall that is immediately surrounded by clutter and the creative rights system is simply appalling. Uploading photographs to seperate albums is a pain in the ass and tagging is a joke. Not to mention that big white strip of comments next to your scrunched up photo. It's genuinely horrible and I should know, I'm forced to use it for library event photos at work.

What could make Flickr better? Well for people who really take photography as a passion it'd be nice if Flickr encouraged teaming with strangers at a similar experience and equipment level, sort of 'automatching' and allowing you all to progress with a limit of photos a week with mutual critique and support. Getting name photographers involved in these groups with challenges and blogs within Flickr (such as Namowrimo do) would further creativity and present more of an emotional stake for users. A seperation of those who just want to post reference pics for their website, store photographs or have ten million pics of cats and for those who really want to try and make something artistic would be good too - sort of a site within a site differentiated only by an easy filter you could apply.

Flickr IS great. I've seen great treasures on there and there are still wonderful things be posted. I'm not about to give up on it just because somebody tells me they've missed the boat in failing to cater to five billion idiots.

Oh, going to buy Lightroom 4 tonight!

Do you guys pay for Flickr pro?

Yup.

Me too, and I'm not convinced it's great value. The featureset has been essentially static for the seven or so years I've been using it. While Facebook and Instagram ran off with social and mobile, and the likes of 500px.com innovated in the prosumer space, Yahoo fiddled about with user auth and tried to monetise the database. Poor show, I say.

I nearly didn't re-up my Pro last year. I'm not sure if I will this year.

Yup.

And I'll continue to buy it as long as it isn't Facebook.

It's not the sort of service where I much expect a dynamic featureset though. I pay my road tax every year, I don't expect to suddenly get a new type of road out of it. It does exactly what I want it to do - provide a way for me to store and exhibit my photos, let me see my friends' photos, and let me explore photos from excellent photographers in a well organised way. And $25/year is nothing at all.

You know if you have a .btinternet.com email then you can just upgrade to pro for free in account options. It actually works out cheaper to get the email sub from BT than it is to get flickr pro.

I am not not interesting uploading to facebook because 1, you give them all rights to your photos and 2, I want to know what other photographers think of what I do not someone I randomly added because I went to school with them 15 years ago.

I think you guys are all missing Honan's point a bit.

His point wasn't that Facebook is better than Flickr for keen photographers. His point is that it's better for people showing photos to friends, and there are a hell of a lot more of those people than there are keen photographers. And don't tell me Flickr wasn't built for casual users; it had, as Honan says, very fine-grained sharing control for its day, with "friend" and "family" being independently settable, plus a "full private" setting.

I don't care that it's not trending and not drinking skinny frappachinos.

It has thousands of nerds there who look at my little space soldiers.

He was attacking Flickr as a service though, not as a business. From a business perspective he's completely right - they've missed out on the big page impressions that come with being a massively popular product. From a service perspective (ie. to the people who are actually using it), he's utterly wrong.

Surely Facebook would always have won out there, though.

No, because it didn't exist. Flickr was created in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005. It's ancient, in Internet terms. Facebook wasn't open to public registration until September 2006.

Then why is traffic declining? From Honan's post:



BTW, this is a good counterpoint to Honan's post.

Unless they had the foresight to do exactly what Facebook did, things which only seem obvious in retrospect (even despite the fact that they were arguably doing a few things that were a bit similar already) then Facebook would still have come along and swept them aside.

Because the people leaving are the people who want Facebook's social and ease of use features rather than the more specialised photography features Flickr provides. Again, a business problem, not a service problem.

Well, Mr Negative, it's starting to go back up now.

It's like anything, you get out what you put in. I often don't feel qualified to comment on people's photos because you run the risk of looking like one of those "great shot!" people. But I have one chap who often gives me advice and we chat in PM a lot and it massively helps me. I like looking at my groups and complementing someone at random on a picture I like, always most amusing when they are non-english speaking with three contacts and I am there only view - I've made some nice contacts that way as well.

That graph is only for the US too.

Or I can get a NEX 5N with 16mm and 18-55 from Jessops tonight and if I feel like it the 55-210 from Tesco, which effectively makes the pancake £80 instead of £200.

Or not bother with the superzoom at all (just grab Hel's if I want a long shot, or let her do it) and get the new super-wide addon for the pancake from Amazon, and then an adaptor for second-hand/non-Sony-E-mount lenses and join in with you lot properly.

Then I could get the macro for £80 from Tesco instead.

Sure I can't interest anyone in an FZ45? It's good as new, you know.

OK, I will invoke my gear whore powers for you.

1. You probably won't need the super wide add-on, 16mm should be fine for now, especially with Sony's panorama function.
2. You only need two of the telephoto zooms if you will be shooting things like wildlife or sports together.
3. Yes you want the macro. It's actually a better walk about lens than the 16mm.
4. Get used to the lenses you have before getting an adaptor, once you know the limitations then you will be able to work out what you are lacking.

I really need to sell that lumix now...

Do you have a London camera exchange near you? Often it works out the same as ebay fees.

What did you decide?


All my nikon gear is on ebay, oddly I'm doing the sensible thing with it and buying really awesome m4/3 glass rather than having it sitting there as a really expensive cat bed. Should get me enough for the Leica 25mm 1.4 and the Panasonic 100-300 for me nature photography and a bit left over. Mum is getting the G1, the girl uses the GF3 and I need to look at another body so we can all go out together and share lenses - right now mum is using her compact for everything and it's making her frustrated that her 8 year old granddaughter takes better pictures.

I decided to leave the superzoom, and intended to leave adaptors a while anyway but couldn't help myself on the superwide I'd kick myself if the pancake wasn't wide enough!

We'll get the macro, hadn't seen that point.

Thanks for the help.

Awesome - Tesco haven't managed to stiff me like they did when I wanted to buy a laptop in a previous Exchange, despite the website failing last night; Macro lens ordered using unspent-for-18-months vouchers. Okay, the normal price is 25% higher than Amazon's, but I pay less than half that.

30mm macro, 16mm fixed, superwide adaptor, 18-55mm and 55-210mm - I think that's enough lenses for now!

I love Flickr because it's not Facebook-like in any way.

If I want to show people a photograph or a set of pictures, it's perfect. You don't need to sign in, 'friend' me, and it's not full of idiots.

I can bung pictures up there and share them directly into my Rav account, I can use them on my blog. They are resized various ways to suit any of my needs and wants.

It provides such different functions to FB or IG that I struggle to see a worthwhile comparison.

Olympus OM-D EM-5 in silver ordered found one on the bay from my favourite UK based HK-import dealer the same price as the black is going for. Waiting on the gubberment for my lens money though

The macro lens is astonishing. Snap a bank statement from a couple of centimetres and each ink dot is clearly defined. The paper structure is visible.

It's a bit of an arse to get it to focus on what you want in real shots, like flowers on young plants, though. N00b fail I'm sure.

Which one, the 35mm or the 50mm? I was thinking about the Panasonic 100-300mm and the Panasonic Leica 25mm 1.4. and then waiting for the new oly 60mm macro. The new kit lens has a macro feature but I don't understand what this means as it's not telling me in 1:? terms

That's macro!

More often than not I move myself to get into focus, and hold your breath like a sniper!

The 35mm, Decca.

Z, do we need to figure out how to turn auto-focus off, then? Or half-press to focus, then move? It seems to like picking 1/80 and ISO100 with it (or the 16mm) on in the overcast weather we've been having, so moving's not too much of an issue.

I always use manual focus for macro, otherwise the lens hunts around like crazy trying to second guess what you actually want to get.

By moving I mean leaning forward/backwards to get what I want into focus then take the shot. When you're dealing with outdoor stuff (bugs etc) even a slight breeze can fuck everything up so I found that's the quickest way to capture stuff for me. If I'm focusing using the ring on the lens more often than not I've missed the opportunity once I'm happy with the focus.

Just remember that if you're doing macro, you're generally working with an exceedingly small depth of field. So instead of the difference between focussing on someone 5 feet away and someone 10 feet away, you're focussing on a leaf that's 50mm away instead of 53mm away. To get AF to know what you're trying to focus on is tricky.

Does the camera support multi-point AF? If it does, you can tell the camera to use a single point in the viewfinder to use when fixing its focus, rather than what they usually try and do and average focus across a large number of focal points in the viewfinder.

If it doesn't, then you'll need to work on either manual AF (although, do those little lenses even have a focussing ring?) or focus then move.

It does have a ring, though i have to change a setting for it to work. It have multi point focus i think, and I'm supposed to be able to tell it but haven't figured that out that.

That's why it's not working as you want it to right now then. What you're effectively doing is telling it that you want everything under all those AF points to be in focus. Then you're sticking a macro lens on the front with an extremely shallow depth of field, and it's freaking out because it's trying to get everything in focus, which isn't what you want. Switch it to single-point AF and you'll do much better, or get old-school like the Z-dog and shut off the AF altogether.

It does the intelligent thing, popping up multiple boxes where it thinks the good stuff is. Is that mukti-point focus? Anyway - settings must be twiddled. Check.

Eh, kind of. It's telling you where it's trying to focus - and it'll try and do as much as possible. But that's not what you want for macro.

Actually I use the focus ring when I'm doing indoor macro stuff on my tripod, the 'rocking' focus technique is for when I'm squatting in bushes.

OM-D is here Pretty much all I've done so far is set it up and taken pictures of the lens cap (battery needs charging) so all I can tell you is thatthe EVF is lovely, focusing is lightning fast, the main menu screen is rather good and my god is it pretty. Ordered lenses today and they should be here within the next week, went for the 25mm leica 1.4, the Panasonic 100-300 and the 35mm macro. Right now I'm very happy about the swap over from nikon, will be worth it to have a image stabilised 600mm lens which is something I could never have afforded otherwise.

Sure it's not an Aztec Camera?