The Photography Thread

[nudge]

It just occurred to me that while we have quite a few people interested in taking photos and numerous threads for posting pictures and whatnot, there's no place to talk about photography in general - news, gear, techniques, favourite styles and subjects, ideas, tips & tricks, post-processing and editing,  technical insights, etc. Just anything photography related really...

I took a long break from photography and am now getting back into it again, would love to talk about it with others on here. Anyone's interested?

[CaaC (John)+]

Photography is like art to me and I love both, I have a love for old black & white photos from years gone by, they haunt me when I look t the people in the photo staring at the camera and you can just imagine them thinking "what is that box thing on a stand with the guys head under a canvas and what is he doing?" 

The Gaiety Theatre, Kirkgate, Leith, Edinburgh in the late 1800s or early 1900s

[CaaC (John)+]

Yesterday, 1902

Today, 2017

Edited April 27, 2020 by CaaC (John)
Restore photos

[nudge]

5 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Today, 2017

I hate to break it to you, but it's 2020...

[CaaC (John)+]

22 minutes ago, nudge said:

I hate to break it to you, but it's 2020...

I took that photo in 2017, that was one of a few in my photo album from 2017, like the other one below  

 

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by CaaC (John)

[nudge]

This is a great guide to composition, including main concepts, elements, techniques and examples for actual real-life situations: https://antongorlin.com/blog/photography-composition-definitive-guide/ 

By far the best I've read throughout the years. The composition decision making flowchart is quite a nice addition too.

[Mel81x+]

12 hours ago, nudge said:

This is a great guide to composition, including main concepts, elements, techniques and examples for actual real-life situations: https://antongorlin.com/blog/photography-composition-definitive-guide/ 

By far the best I've read throughout the years. The composition decision making flowchart is quite a nice addition too.

Phew, thats quite comprehensive and covers so much about the varying aspects of taking pictures. I spent a lot of time maybe four years ago or more in trying to learn post-pro fixes with Lightroom and I think no matter where you're sitting in the spectrum of producing your work there is so much to learn. Camera phones can take such gorgeous pictures these days you are sometimes hard-pressed to wonder how much the on-board software is doing versus doing it manually.

Thanks for starting this thread and I look forward to seeing what we can come up with in here.

[CaaC (John)+]

It's weird but a lot of people nowadays can get decent photos on a decent mobile and you don't have to go into one of these shops and get photos runoff, all I do if I take any pictures and want to keep them I just forward them onto my MSN photo album and if I want to run any off then all I do is use my printer and scanner, I have some lovely shots of the grandsons and family, coloured and enlarged and then framed hanging or sitting around in here.

The wife's cousins hubby did all the old fashioned photography bit with darkroom the lot and he was bloody good at it, I would still like to get a camera the daughter has and takes some brilliant photos with it and downloads them onto her MSN album. 

[nudge]

8 hours ago, Mel81x said:

Phew, thats quite comprehensive and covers so much about the varying aspects of taking pictures. I spent a lot of time maybe four years ago or more in trying to learn post-pro fixes with Lightroom and I think no matter where you're sitting in the spectrum of producing your work there is so much to learn. Camera phones can take such gorgeous pictures these days you are sometimes hard-pressed to wonder how much the on-board software is doing versus doing it manually.

Thanks for starting this thread and I look forward to seeing what we can come up with in here.

Yes, camera phones are truly incredible these days, and while they still definitely have their limitations, the majority are great for what they're good at - namely wide angle shots, good light conditions and close-ups (to a certain degree).  The algorithms for balancing the scene for the "best" possible outcome are getting better and better. The whole computational photography thing has taken it into a completely new level in terms of generating a great image with minimal effort required from the user. It surely has pros and cons and in the end it comes to personal views and preferences. I'm not a big fan myself due to many  reasons (a big one being the fact that a camera phone simply can't handle certain things that I like to do, e.g. moon shots, wildlife in action, long exposures or any situation where aperture control is required) but I think it's great for actually learning and practising composition, as it having a prime lense means you have to think and move around to frame your shots well. 

I started shooting film almost 20 years ago and only made full transition to digital photography about 5 years ago, and in all honesty, I still struggle with it despite all the advantages that it has to offer. My biggest gripe is the colours, I just can't come to terms with it. I have used numerous DSRL cameras and numerous lenses throughout those years, I played around with all possible settings and I've still been disappointed with all of them when it comes to reproducing actual natural colours compared to film, it's not even close in terms of colour richness, depth and vibrance that a Velvia or Ektachrome film (as an example) offers. I obviously talk about the images straight out of the camera before any post-processing; as you mentioned, one can do wonders editing RAW files in Lightroom, and the learning curve is literally endless, but are my expectations to have a satisfying end result without having to correct it in post-processing too high?.. I guess I just have to accept that film and digital photography are completely different beasts and stop searching for the "film look" that I'm so accustomed to haha.

What kind of gear are you using?

[nudge]

7 hours ago, CaaC (John) said:

The wife's cousins hubby did all the old fashioned photography bit with darkroom the lot and he was bloody good at it

I used to develop film at home in a darkroom many years ago, only B&W though as developing color film is a much more complicated process. The excitement while waiting for the results to start showing up used to be unreal.

[Viva la FCB+]

Ill have to check out your link at home, my work comp denies it 

This is probably one of the best times to get back into photography if anything. Ive taken a year or so break as well. My biggest issue was always editing and going through and even uploading photos. I loved and still love going out and taking the photos but it kind of always stopped there for me  I am still subscribed to a Canadian photo magazine that has some amazing photos I still love to go through. Maybe your article can push me back into it.

I remember nudge you where a Cannon person? what are you using these days? I still have a D90 i picked up in Signapore a decade and change ago!

[nudge]

2 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

Ill have to check out your link at home, my work comp denies it 

This is probably one of the best times to get back into photography if anything. Ive taken a year or so break as well. My biggest issue was always editing and going through and even uploading photos. I loved and still love going out and taking the photos but it kind of always stopped there for me  I am still subscribed to a Canadian photo magazine that has some amazing photos I still love to go through. Maybe your article can push me back into it.

I remember nudge you where a Cannon person? what are you using these days? I still have a D90 i picked up in Signapore a decade and change ago!

Pretty much the same with me... I don't like editing, and handling images in a digital form is just a bit meh for me. Like you, I still love the actual process of taking photos, but I also took a break for over a year due to lack of overall enjoyment I felt when I transitioned to digital. I have slowly started getting back into it recently (as you said, the time is perfect now haha), and I'm just adjusting my expectations a bit now. 

I'm still pretty much a Canon person, hehe. I mostly use Canon EOS 450D and Sony α100 for digital (an upgrade is well overdue, but I couldn't justify it in recent years), and Canon EOS 5 for film photography these days. The latter is getting tricky as I have trouble finding a decent lab to develop and process the film. The last one I found made an absolute mess of my negatives and then an even greater mess of scanning them, so I kind of gave up after that. I still have a few B&W rolls so there's a good chance I just develop them myself...

[Mel81x+]

12 minutes ago, nudge said:

Yes, camera phones are truly incredible these days, and while they still definitely have their limitations, the majority are great for what they're good at - namely wide angle shots, good light conditions and close-ups (to a certain degree).  The algorithms for balancing the scene for the "best" possible outcome are getting better and better. The whole computational photography thing has taken it into a completely new level in terms of generating a great image with minimal effort required from the user. It surely has pros and cons and in the end it comes to personal views and preferences. I'm not a big fan myself due to many  reasons (a big one being the fact that a camera phone simply can't handle certain things that I like to do, e.g. moon shots, wildlife in action, long exposures or any situation where aperture control is required) but I think it's great for actually learning and practising composition, as it having a prime lense means you have to think and move around to frame your shots well. 

I started shooting film almost 20 years ago and only made full transition to digital photography about 5 years ago, and in all honesty, I still struggle with it despite all the advantages that it has to offer. My biggest gripe is the colours, I just can't come to terms with it. I have used numerous DSRL cameras and numerous lenses throughout those years, I played around with all possible settings and I've still been disappointed with all of them when it comes to reproducing actual natural colours compared to film, it's not even close in terms of colour richness, depth and vibrance that a Velvia or Ektachrome film (as an example) offers. I obviously talk about the images straight out of the camera before any post-processing; as you mentioned, one can do wonders editing RAW files in Lightroom, and the learning curve is literally endless, but are my expectations to have a satisfying end result without having to correct it in post-processing too high?.. I guess I just have to accept that film and digital photography are completely different beasts and stop searching for the "film look" that I'm so accustomed to haha.

What kind of gear are you using?

I'm going to try and answer this the best way I know how ignoring the first paragraph as I am completely in agreement with you there.

Color profiles and the rabbit hole called sRGB and color gamut profiles with Windows specifically.

You aren't necessarily limited in your expectations for what to expect from a pre-processing aspect of taking pictures because guess what, all you have with the traditional camera system (not digital) is light, mirror, image. Obviously you'll get aberrations in the color spectrum just because its going through so much before it finally reaches the mirror that you probably lose about 20% of what the natural light spectrum allows you to see before you finally get it reproduced in a light room (not the software) where you can lose even more depending on what you're working with. 

With digital its far different and this goes directly into the mechanics of light-sensor and mirrorless devices where we think that the 20% can be reduced to something closer to 8% or maybe lower but you still have to remember that its only achievable because of the lens you're using and when you get into this dirty territory the money starts to pile up really fast. Then you go back to the link you posted about composition and understanding light because lets face it you can see it and the ambient light source you're dealing with from a perception standpoint is nowhere close to what the lens has going for it before it spins the image and fires that onto the sensor for processing. We'll also take into account that the same tech in phones and their corrective abilities are now transmitted back from the lens to the mirror in the body to allow for even more correction based on all the settings the camera has (these settings you have no control on as the firmware does most of this and you really dont want to mess with it anyways). I've found that with much higher end bodies coupled with a mid-range to high-range lens that the first shot pushed against a RGB (whichever standard you use) profiler produces some of the best and closest to what was shot and I'll explain the issue here and its not even you or your camera. So, the end note here is this, better body + better lens in the digital world = closer to life pictures but they still come with all the good loving issues of lens profiles, color gamut corrections, profile scaling, etc. because god-forbid any of these companies make a true lens that does this then you'd probably need a lens body the size of, well your body and thats very impractical haha.

Now, lets get to the one place you probably will struggle a lot when it comes to image clarity and that is ... your monitor. Yes, its your monitor. Over the years I have learned that when you get monitors from your vendor or look at images on laptops you tend to get poor reproductions of pictures until you take the same picture to a printer (not the regular ones either) and then see the awe of your shot because of whatever color profile you set at that point. But, lets put that aside and go back to your monitor. The type of monitor used comes with sRGB and Adobe RGB corrections so what you see on the screen may not even be what you shot no matter how much you correct it and keep in mind that the LightRoom or whatever app you're using is correcting it incorrectly if the monitor isn't in the higher 99% bracket and even then there are limitations like black reproduction etc. If you choose to navigate this path you'll end up spending a lot of money and in some cases it will produce the color repro you want without the post-production but I generally find that if you're going to spend that time in post-prod spend more time learning how the lens profiles work and work around the limitations of the lens if your monitor doesn't have the reproduction ability you want it to have. 

So, yes you are being a bit unrealistic in your expectations about pre-processing image expectations but keep in mind that what you see on the camera display vs the monitor display vs print reproduction all have varying levels of reproduction failure with the print repro having the second highest failure due to the fact that its costly to actually reproduce pictures the way you want them to be reproduced. 

As for gear I am using this is what I have accumulated over two decades of fiddling with cameras and trying my hand at strictly portrait photography haha.

• Canon 1D Mark II (Birthday present from my family when I turned 24)
• Canon 50mm f/1.2 L
• Canon 50mm f/1.8
• Canon EF 100mm f/2.8
• I have some other odd ball lens from Canon and two from Sigma but I like my portrait lens the most and I have a wide-angle lens from the introductory range of Canon lenses too.

As for desktop processing and using Lightroom I use the following which I have also carefully purchased over the years.

• The new kid on the block - LG 32ML600M-B Monitor
• The old kid on the block - LG 34UC98-W Monitor (I don't recommend this monitor for any kind of picture/color work as wide-screen curved monitors are absolutely horrible for this but its better than the previous monitor for color reproduction)
• LightRoom - for touching up pics that my family sends me from what they shoot because the only way to get better is to just keep trying and learning

[nudge]

21 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

I'm going to try and answer this the best way I know how ignoring the first paragraph as I am completely in agreement with you there.

Color profiles and the rabbit hole called sRGB and color gamut profiles with Windows specifically.

You aren't necessarily limited in your expectations for what to expect from a pre-processing aspect of taking pictures because guess what, all you have with the traditional camera system (not digital) is light, mirror, image. Obviously you'll get aberrations in the color spectrum just because its going through so much before it finally reaches the mirror that you probably lose about 20% of what the natural light spectrum allows you to see before you finally get it reproduced in a light room (not the software) where you can lose even more depending on what you're working with. 

With digital its far different and this goes directly into the mechanics of light-sensor and mirrorless devices where we think that the 20% can be reduced to something closer to 8% or maybe lower but you still have to remember that its only achievable because of the lens you're using and when you get into this dirty territory the money starts to pile up really fast. Then you go back to the link you posted about composition and understanding light because lets face it you can see it and the ambient light source you're dealing with from a perception standpoint is nowhere close to what the lens has going for it before it spins the image and fires that onto the sensor for processing. We'll also take into account that the same tech in phones and their corrective abilities are now transmitted back from the lens to the mirror in the body to allow for even more correction based on all the settings the camera has (these settings you have no control on as the firmware does most of this and you really dont want to mess with it anyways). I've found that with much higher end bodies coupled with a mid-range to high-range lens that the first shot pushed against a RGB (whichever standard you use) profiler produces some of the best and closest to what was shot and I'll explain the issue here and its not even you or your camera. So, the end note here is this, better body + better lens in the digital world = closer to life pictures but they still come with all the good loving issues of lens profiles, color gamut corrections, profile scaling, etc. because god-forbid any of these companies make a true lens that does this then you'd probably need a lens body the size of, well your body and thats very impractical haha.

Now, lets get to the one place you probably will struggle a lot when it comes to image clarity and that is ... your monitor. Yes, its your monitor. Over the years I have learned that when you get monitors from your vendor or look at images on laptops you tend to get poor reproductions of pictures until you take the same picture to a printer (not the regular ones either) and then see the awe of your shot because of whatever color profile you set at that point. But, lets put that aside and go back to your monitor. The type of monitor used comes with sRGB and Adobe RGB corrections so what you see on the screen may not even be what you shot no matter how much you correct it and keep in mind that the LightRoom or whatever app you're using is correcting it incorrectly if the monitor isn't in the higher 99% bracket and even then there are limitations like black reproduction etc. If you choose to navigate this path you'll end up spending a lot of money and in some cases it will produce the color repro you want without the post-production but I generally find that if you're going to spend that time in post-prod spend more time learning how the lens profiles work and work around the limitations of the lens if your monitor doesn't have the reproduction ability you want it to have. 

So, yes you are being a bit unrealistic in your expectations about pre-processing image expectations but keep in mind that what you see on the camera display vs the monitor display vs print reproduction all have varying levels of reproduction failure with the print repro having the second highest failure due to the fact that its costly to actually reproduce pictures the way you want them to be reproduced. 

Thanks, that's a very well thought out response and it's spot on from the technical point of view. It's also a big reason why I have issues with digital photography in the first place. As you mentioned, in order to see the end result as real life-like as possible, a high end body combined with high end lenses, a dedicated monitor for both reproduction and more accurate post processing, and a dedicated high end printer for finally producing accurate prints are needed (or at least desirable). For just an amateur hobby photographer, it does come across as quite a bit of an overkill. The gear bit is understandable, it always had a role to play, especially lenses as high end ones make a world of difference in film photography too. However, a huge part of the appeal of analogue photography to me is the fact that when you're shooting film, you pretty much get what you see through your viewfinder at the time you push that shutter release button (I'm generalising here, as obviously there's also room for variations based on the type of film you use, the developing/printing process, even the paper used for prints, etc. but you get what I mean) - or at least you should if you did everything right, and when you don't, you figure out where mistakes were made, regardless if it's exposure, composition, focus, metering mode or whatever else and then you learn to correct them the next time you're shooting a similar scene instead of post-processing the crap out of it. I think in the end it's just two different approaches to photo shooting in general, really. To put it simply, I have an EOS 5 which is almost 30 years old (and which I absolutely love). If I put one of my lenses on it, load the film and take some pictures, then get them developed and printed the old fashioned way, I will see the actual image I took and people looking at it will see exactly the same image too, all without me spending a shitload of money on additional stuff. This is kind of what I expected from digital photography originally, but I realise that there's by far more factors involved here, so the two can't be compared really. 

1 hour ago, Mel81x said:

As for gear I am using this is what I have accumulated over two decades of fiddling with cameras and trying my hand at strictly portrait photography haha.

• Canon 1D Mark II (Birthday present from my family when I turned 24)
• Canon 50mm f/1.2 L
• Canon 50mm f/1.8
• Canon EF 100mm f/2.8
• I have some other odd ball lens from Canon and two from Sigma but I like my portrait lens the most and I have a wide-angle lens from the introductory range of Canon lenses too.

Fancy camera there  Also nice, the ones in bold are the ones I own as well  My all time favourite one is probably the Sigma AF 400mm f/5.6 HSM APO Macro though, an old one and limited use due to its focal length (also only works in manual focus mode on DSLRs), but it's absolutely fantastic. It also becomes a whopping 640mm on a APS-C due to the crop factor haha, so perfect for wildlife and moon photography.

[CaaC (John)+]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

I used to develop film at home in a darkroom many years ago, only B&W though as developing color film is a much more complicated process. The excitement while waiting for the results to start showing up used to be unreal.

The photo below in B&W he took 40 odd years ago of our daughter when she was just under a year old, he developed it in his darkroom, the other photo is Dee (Denise) today, how times change.  

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by CaaC (John)

[Viva la FCB+]

I took a night course to refresh years ago now and my teacher at the time recommended light room as well. Do you guys have any tutorials and something to read you would recommend to start with, I have next to 0 experience with this stuff. 

[Mel81x+]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

Fancy camera there  Also nice, the ones in bold are the ones I own as well  My all time favourite one is probably the Sigma AF 400mm f/5.6 HSM APO Macro though, an old one and limited use due to its focal length (also only works in manual focus mode on DSLRs), but it's absolutely fantastic. It also becomes a whopping 640mm on a APS-C due to the crop factor haha, so perfect for wildlife and moon photography.

Far from fancy haha if I had never been given that body as a present I'd have gone with something more midrange later on when I wanted to get into photography more (at 24 I was more interested in what alcoholic beverage was going to take me to xanadu and music than I ever was in photography). It's also the most annoying body to carry around for any kind of trip photography but with the advent of my iPhone 11 Pro Max that has now become a thing of the past. 

I love that Sigma lens you own because I have seen it in action but I just cant find a good use for it which is why I have never really pursued that line of lenses.

[Mel81x+]

21 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

I took a night course to refresh years ago now and my teacher at the time recommended light room as well. Do you guys have any tutorials and something to read you would recommend to start with, I have next to 0 experience with this stuff. 

Have to say with LR the tutorials are really hard to master from any angle (beginner to advanced) just because its such a sadistic application which shows you very little but has so much hidden under the hood. Give this a try to get started then start applying the basics they teach you and if you have questions post them here because I'd like to learn as we solve problems together. For me the learning goes this way.

• Figure out what I want to learn - E.g. Whitebalancing
• Read Adobe materials and forums to know how the tool does it
• Go read articles from anywhere on the internet about how white-balancing works
• Find pic and then play with it to fix problems and learn on the fly. If I run into an issue I just read more until I get to where I need to be.

Try this video too as I think it covers a lot of the basics.

 

[nudge]

4 minutes ago, Viva la FCB said:

I took a night course to refresh years ago now and my teacher at the time recommended light room as well. Do you guys have any tutorials and something to read you would recommend to start with, I have next to 0 experience with this stuff. 

Personally, I just started by fucking around with the sliders and googling things I didn't know  Youtube has a great selection on tutorials. A lot of people swear by Anthony Morganti, you might want to check his videos.

This is more specific for travel photography but the basic principles can be applied to anything anyway... https://erinoutdoors.com/editing-photography-lightroom/

[nudge]

22 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

Far from fancy haha if I had never been given that body as a present I'd have gone with something more midrange later on when I wanted to get into photography more (at 24 I was more interested in what alcoholic beverage was going to take me to xanadu and music than I ever was in photography). It's also the most annoying body to carry around for any kind of trip photography but with the advent of my iPhone 11 Pro Max that has now become a thing of the past. 

I love that Sigma lens you own because I have seen it in action but I just cant find a good use for it which is why I have never really pursued that line of lenses.

Definitely fancy at that time hehe... You don't like the body?  The build of it is similar to my EOS 5 (with a battery pack) and it's one of the reasons I love it... I prefer big sturdy cameras, might be a bit of a headache to carry around sometimes but I feel they are better for avoiding camera shake when shooting handheld on slower shutter speeds...

What kind of things do you generally like to shoot most? Portraits, I'm guessing, based on your choice of lenses? 

I think @Viva la FCB is mostly into nature/landscapes/wildlife, if I'm not mistaken?

[Mel81x+]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

Definitely fancy at that time hehe... You don't like the body?  The build of it is similar to my EOS 5 (with a battery pack) and it's one of the reasons I love it... I prefer big sturdy cameras, might be a bit of a headache to carry around sometimes but I feel they are better for avoiding camera shake when shooting handheld on slower shutter speeds...

What kind of things do you generally like to shoot most? Portraits, I'm guessing, based on your choice of lenses? 

I think @Viva la FCB is mostly into nature/landscapes/wildlife, if I'm not mistaken?

Yeah it was fancy at the time haha for sure. I do like the body but I use it very sparringly these days as I spend more time just pulling my phone out and shooting the pic unless I really get the bug to take it out and use it. I do prefer portrait photography and I am slowly trying to learn to shoot rooms and closed spaces.

[Viva la FCB+]

I will check these out at home, thanks guys!

34 minutes ago, nudge said:

I think @Viva la FCB is mostly into nature/landscapes/wildlife, if I'm not mistaken?

Yes exactly that! maybe I just dont like people  I definitely marvel at some of the portrait shots people get, just not up my alley 

[nudge]

Just now, Viva la FCB said:

I will check these out at home, thanks guys!

Yes exactly that! maybe I just dont like people  I definitely marvel at some of the portrait shots people get, just not up my alley 

I'm exactly the same  My dad tought me the basics years ago so when I was learning from him, he never missed a chance to mention how including people into your shots supposedly makes them more interesting. Thanks but no thanks, dad. Why ruin a perfectly fine scene by including people in it  That said, I also find some portraits absolutely fascinating, usually the ones where you can read different emotions in their faces. I also love street photography, but I don't think I could ever pull it off myself...

[Viva la FCB+]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

I'm exactly the same  My dad tought me the basics years ago so when I was learning from him, he never missed a chance to mention how including people into your shots supposedly makes them more interesting. Thanks but no thanks, dad. Why ruin a perfectly fine scene by including people in it  That said, I also find some portraits absolutely fascinating, usually the ones where you can read different emotions in their faces. I also love street photography, but I don't think I could ever pull it off myself...

Absolutely. Where the emotions and the face tell a story, so intriguing. Thats funny my old man was very much the same, him and my better half would always bug me about how I wasnt interested in taking pictures of or with them in the frames. 

[Mel81x+]

Its also annoying when you go on group trips and someone sees a nice camera in your hand and say shit like "Oh this will look so nice on my Facebook profile". Yes, that's exactly why I brought my camera on this trip ...