I bought a 18% gray lens cleaning cloth (Spudz). Haven't used it much but figure might be a decent dual-purpose approach.

It's from Fountain's fbook page. I was wondering, is there an easy way to auto-focus like that? Or is that something I'd more like auto-focus and then manual to finetune the focus?

This would be shot zoomed in with the aperture pretty much wide open right?

I always leave my WB as auto when shooting raw. I can much more accurately fine-tune it in post than on my camera before shooting. If I was doing a whole shoot under perfectly consistent lighting conditions then I'd try to set it properly before the shoot to save the trouble. But in the same way you can just correct it on one image and apply it to the rest in post.

People that shoot digital and act like their refusal to do any post processing is a badge of honor are idiots. Post processing is the digital version of the darkroom and if you aren't doing at least some PP then your pics are not finished.

If you're shooting JPEG then you're leaving the post processing up to the camera's automatic settings, which is really not a good idea. If you're shooting RAW then you have to do the processing yourself.

This isn't to say you shouldn't try to get the best possible exposure you can from the sensor, but you can enhance your picture a LOT through effective PP and get the effect you are looking for.

+1000

"you don't take a photograph, you make it"

- Ansel Adams

wow, these are awesome ! I love the jellyfish one, it doesn't even look real.

http://www.diyphotography.net/diy-mi...ool-for-lenses

Great link for microcalibration of lenses, and to test if they are front or back focusing.

First of all: Love the pictures from asia by cardsharkk04


Secondly

I need to get out more. Have never done any photographing and I'm not sure if that would be a cool hobby for me or not but as it is I would want to try it out. As it happens I have alot of points on FTP and saw the Nikon-D5100 in the store. Quick googling and reviews puts it as a decent device. Should I just jump at this?
(This is 50/50 "will I like taking photos" and "is that a decent purchase for someone who is not sure they will want to do photo or not" )

Grateful for any insight, really not sure on this.

D5100 is a great camera. Good luck getting anything from the FTP store though!

So, I've had a few more weeks with the D7000 now, and I'm becoming more and more impressed with this camera. My photography still has a ways to go, but it's getting really helped along by how well the camera is coping with some difficult exposure situations that I throw at it.

As an example, I was out trying to grab a few shots recently when a helicopter came past and a couple of guys started waving at it. I thought it would make a cool shot because the sky was looking really cool, but there was so much dynamic range in the scene, and too much movement for me to try to grab an HDR that I just had to fire off a few shots and hope I got something usable. I was already in manual mode and had set the camera to underexpose quite heavily to try to retain as much detail in the sky as possible, but I overdid it and really underexposed. Thanks to how good the D7000 is at retrieving detail from the shadows, I was able to salvage this image. I really don't mind the foreground being in silhouette at all here because I think it adds something, but I was amazed to still be able to pull out some of the details in the background.


Helicopter over Mountbatten by Mike Quayle, on Flickr

not using great gear, but my wife was extremely happy that we were on the beach that afternoon to capture the amazing sky

Took me a couple of years to find this thread

Hi!

When I first saw the pic of this product I thought GENIUS.
Then I realized all my lenscaps are different size and would be super annoying & expensive to rambo-clip my strap

Then again you could use step-up or step-down rings to bring them all to one size, then use that product. Just a thought, I probably wouldn't do that myself

yeah i saw that too and had the exact same thought. fine idea for casual users

On a related topic, I've actually "standartized" to 52mm for my filters (ND, polarizer) as the majority of my lenses have a 52mm filter thread (9-18mm, 14-45mm, 45-200mm), while the ones which aren't can be stepped-up or stepped-down with no issues (20mm f/1.7, 40-150mm).

Very convenient.

A few images from a morning walk earlier today. I finally bit the bullet and picked up the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 that I'd had my eye on for a while, so now I'm trying to learn how to shoot with it.


Telescope offers a view from the promenade by Mike Quayle, on Flickr


Telescope offers a view from the promenade by Mike Quayle, on Flickr


Clouds over the promenade by Mike Quayle, on Flickr


A View Down the Promenade by Mike Quayle, on Flickr


Smeaton's Tower by Mike Quayle, on Flickr

Really like clouds over promenade and smeaton's tower, though I would have liked to see a full horizon across the bottom of 'promenade' and included the flags and buildings

really great sharpness and contrast btw

Smeaton's Tower my new background.

Thanks! Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, I do have another "clouds" photo in my photostream that contains both (it's in a portrait orientation), but I'm not a huge fan of it personally.


Clouds over the promenade by Mike Quayle, on Flickr

The thing I'm finding about shooting with an ultrawide is that simply using it to get a whole chunk of a vista into the frame is generally going to be a recipe for a pretty boring photo where everything is rendered so tiny as to be little more than background detail. I'm finding my favourite ultrawide shots so far all have something planted squarely in the foreground to lead the eye into the image or to help illustrate the distortion of perspective -- unfortunately the "promenade" isn't a great candidate for that as it's just a flat area of tarmac with no potentially interesting foreground subjects (at least that my fairly inexperienced eye could identify)

Thanks again! I can't take any credit for those - it's all down to the lens. It's a ridic sharp lens and its contrast right off camera is great. It's my most expensive lens investment so far but the quality of the images it produces have been outstanding. It's definitely going to take a while for me to learn how to shoot with it though as I'm finding a whole new mindset is required for shooting ultrawide when compared to a lens with a more standard focal length. I think my most successful shots so far have been the 2 of the telescope. They're quite simple but they're two of my favourite shots. I think they really benefit from the perspective distortion that's inherent in the focal length. I tried shooting the same subject with my 50mm f1.8 and it's no where near as compelling/interesting.


I'm flattered If you want a higher quality version to match your screen resolution, just let me know the dimensions you require.

I was referring to the landscape one you posted. The horizon trailing off towards the bottom right keeps me from being anchored into the pic. I like this one more than the portrait one because I think the clouds are more interesting and really fill the frame, but the buildings on the side give it more perspective so it's not *just* a sky shot. Not sure if it would have been possible to get Smeaton's into that shot or not, but that's basically what I'm saying.

The telescope pics are great too. What was aperture?

Ahh I see - thanks for clarifying. Yeah, basically the lens was at its widest (11mm - 16mm equiv on my 1.5x crop sensor), and shifting the point of focus to include the lighthouse would have meant there was nothing with any foreground interest in the frame. I guess I could have shot from a different location somewhat closer to the buildings in the foreground, but it didn't occur to me at the time, and from this distance at this angle, Smeaton's Tower would have been a really minor feature in the image

Aperture for the telescope pics is 2.8. I would have liked to blur out the background a little more, but at this focal length I think that's the shallowest DoF I can hope for.

I am a begginer so if this is dumb, sorry.

Is this good for practicing?
http://camerasim.com/camera-simulator.html

i ****ing hate iphoto so much. I used it to quickly go through all my photos and delete ****ty ones. I've got over 3k I've deleted and now iphoto is saying I can't export the ones I didn't touch. **** you.

Why is it saying that?