Not much activity here, but let me throw in some observations stemming from the last few days use of the equipment. I realize that my original question was almost impossible to reply to. <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' /> The only way to get familiar with all the adjustsments of a modern DSLR when coming from film is to shoot all the pictures you can with the different lenses and try to analyze the results in order to acquire the know how necessary to really use the stuff and get the most out of it. I am amazed at the sensor of the D300! I like visiting old monuments and the ability to shoot pictures with seemingly no light and get more than usable results at 3200 ISO is completely new to me. The second observation is that I now almost regret having gotten all the different lenses right away. I wish I had bought one or two, maybe the 16-85 and one prime and really gotten to know the limits of those before buying more. The third observation is that I find that I shoot 90% A mode. With the right WB and ISO Auto, I find the reults are surprisingly good right off the bat. I have tried P mode and find it also really good, but find I can adjust faster for the wanted result if I am in A mode. In spite of what I said about buying many lenses right away, I am very happy with what I got; the Sigma 10-20 is amazing and much more adaptable than I thought it would be. I can obviously get good interior shots and landscapes, but also produce reasonable portraits. The Sigma 50mm 2,8 macro is super for macro and also for portraits, with good bouqué. The 16-85 is very, very good at all apertures and faster than I thought it would be as well as very adaptive for most occasions. A little hard to find good bouqué for portraits, but I guess that is not what it is meant for. No regrets that I did not get the Sigma 17-50 2,8 though. I have not really tried the new Tamron 70-300, but will very soon. I hope I will not regret it. I might have wanted the Nikon 80-200, but I have not yet shot with a tripod and may change my mind when I use it more. The last observation is that I am surprised at how well I can shoot hand held macro pics with this equipment and still get good results. Stars to the NIKON in camera PP <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I think I will select some of the shots and dare show the forum my decidedly amateur shots over the WE. Finally, let me ask you all; how many of you always carry a monopod or a tripod whan you are out shooting?
[quote name='Vieux loup' timestamp='1284805769' post='2889']
Not much activity here, but let me throw in some observations stemming from the last few days use of the equipment. I realize that my original question was almost impossible to reply to. <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> The only way to get familiar with all the adjustsments of a modern DSLR when coming from film is to shoot all the pictures you can with the different lenses and try to analyze the results in order to acquire the know how necessary to really use the stuff and get the most out of it. I am amazed at the sensor of the D300! I like visiting old monuments and the ability to shoot pictures with seemingly no light and get more than usable results at 3200 ISO is completely new to me. The second observation is that I now almost regret having gotten all the different lenses right away. I wish I had bought one or two, maybe the 16-85 and one prime and really gotten to know the limits of those before buying more. The third observation is that I find that I shoot 90% A mode. With the right WB and ISO Auto, I find the reults are surprisingly good right off the bat. I have tried P mode and find it also really good, but find I can adjust faster for the wanted result if I am in A mode. In spite of what I said about buying many lenses right away, I am very happy with what I got; the Sigma 10-20 is amazing and much more adaptable than I thought it would be. I can obviously get good interior shots and landscapes, but also produce reasonable portraits. The Sigma 50mm 2,8 macro is super for macro and also for portraits, with good bouqué. The 16-85 is very, very good at all apertures and faster than I thought it would be as well as very adaptive for most occasions. A little hard to find good bouqué for portraits, but I guess that is not what it is meant for. No regrets that I did not get the Sigma 17-50 2,8 though. I have not really tried the new Tamron 70-300, but will very soon. I hope I will not regret it. I might have wanted the Nikon 80-200, but I have not yet shot with a tripod and may change my mind when I use it more. The last observation is that I am surprised at how well I can shoot hand held macro pics with this equipment and still get good results. Stars to the NIKON in camera PP <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' /> I think I will select some of the shots and dare show the forum my decidedly amateur shots over the WE. Finally, let me ask you all; how many of you always carry a monopod or a tripod whan you are out shooting?
[/quote]
One thing, it is "bokeh", nothing to do with french <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />. Just a word coming from Japan.
And I shoot all my macro handheld <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='  ' />
I only take a light tripod compact with me when I plan something strange, like shooting a panorama in 3 dimensions.
Thanks B! I will immediately change the spelling <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I took the Tamron out for a walk today, but the rain cut my plans short <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/angry.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I must say that I find it heavy and long and the hood almost doubles the length of the lens. Obviously a lens for specific use only, allthough I do not doubt that you can get good portraits from it. The AF was "gearing" a little too much for my liking, never seemed to be able to make up its mind. There is an animal park not far and I will try to make a visit tomorrow or Monday. Must say I find the 16-85 excellent as an everyday use lense.
When you say that you shoot all macro handheld, what kind of sharpness do you expect or get? I seem to be able to crop 100% and still have good sharpness, but it disappears quickly when you move towards 200% Is this normal? I must say the 85mm or 105 mm Nikons with VR sound tempting! Wim, you shoot landscapes all the time. Do you also mostly shoot handheld? I wish you all a nice Sunday's shooting. Kindly Loup d'Azur!
[quote name='Vieux loup' timestamp='1284820833' post='2894']
Thanks B! I will immediately change the spelling <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I took the Tamron out for a walk today, but the rain cut my plans short <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/angry.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I must say that I find it heavy and long and the hood almost doubles the length of the lens. Obviously a lens for specific use only, allthough I do not doubt that you can get good portraits from it. The AF was "gearing" a little too much for my liking, never seemed to be able to make up its mind. There is an animal park not far and I will try to make a visit tomorrow or Monday. Must say I find the 16-85 excellent as an everyday use lense.
When you say that you shoot all macro handheld, what kind of sharpness do you expect or get? I seem to be able to crop 100% and still have good sharpness, but it disappears quickly when you move towards 200% Is this normal? I must say the 85mm or 105 mm Nikons with VR sound tempting! Wim, you shoot landscapes all the time. Do you also mostly shoot handheld? I wish you all a nice Sunday's shooting. Kindly Loup d'Azur!
[/quote]
200% does not make much sense, in my opinion. Photos need to be viewed in normal ways.
VR does not do much at macro, your back and forth movement is more than any vertical or horizontal movement. WIth a 105 or 85mm VR you will at most gain 1 stop, if that. The Canon 100mm f2.8 L IS macro in combination with a 7D is a little bit better in that respect, as it has a hybrid IS system which corrects more than one type of movement, and it can also (in connection with continuous AF) correct you moving front and back. But that is not all that important, as hand held macro is what it is and can be done without any VR.
The normal rule of thumb about hand held exposure times is 1/focal length exposure time. So, 50mm -> 1/50th sec, 200mm -> 1/200th sec.
With macro that does not really apply, as the close distance also magnifies the camera shake.
Sharpness I get from handheld macro usually is fine. But I must also note that with my photography sharpness is not paramount, my work is more creative than purely documenting a bug with the biggest DOF and the best sharpness.
What people who do obsess about sharpness and big DOF often use is flash to keep the exposure speed down. I find flash use less attractive, so I do not use it.
For me, light, colour and composition, atmosphere, are more important than "critical sharpness".
About the 80-200mm you mentioned... you already find the 70-300 tamron to be heavy and big. That 80-200 is more than twice as heavy, and bigger... and has no VR. Get used to this tele lens, I would say, like you should get sued to your 50mm macro and your 16-85. In time you will find out what you miss or don't miss on your current set up, and when you have put your finger on things you want to do but can't (like maybe a good blur and bokeh at portrait focal lengths) you will know what to change or what to add to your set up.
Not surprised... D90 has an 12 bit A/D converter. The sensor resolution is the same but I believe the trick is in the 14bit A/D converter of D300s.
Serkan
09-19-2010, 08:15 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-19-2010, 08:16 PM by wim.)
Hi Wolf,
[quote name='Vieux loup' timestamp='1284820833' post='2894']
Thanks B! I will immediately change the spelling <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />[/quote]
Funny, I saw it too, but I just read an article by one of the people who originally defined the word, saying that it shouldn't matter as a bouquet is nice to look at, and that languages change all the time. He was specifically referring to the French bouquet, BTW. He also mentioned that the word bokeh is partly a word derived from English anyway, as in, it was taken over by the Japanaese from the English, and now it comes back with another part added in a new meaning <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />. Quote: I took the Tamron out for a walk today, but the rain cut my plans short <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/angry.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> I must say that I find it heavy and long and the hood almost doubles the length of the lens. Obviously a lens for specific use only, allthough I do not doubt that you can get good portraits from it. The AF was "gearing" a little too much for my liking, never seemed to be able to make up its mind. There is an animal park not far and I will try to make a visit tomorrow or Monday.
That would make excellent use of its possibilities.
Quote: Must say I find the 16-85 excellent as an everyday use lense.
When you say that you shoot all macro handheld, what kind of sharpness do you expect or get?
Provided you get fast enough shutter speeds, i.e., approximately 1 / ( (FL * cropfactor) * (1 + macro magnification factor) ), or use a flash. And all this as long as you don't move out of DoF when taking the picture. Considering a human body sways easily an inch each way between AF or MF and actually pressing the shutter button, it requires very good technique to get a lot of keepers with handheld macro, even when using a flash.
Quote: I seem to be able to crop 100% and still have good sharpness, but it disappears quickly when you move towards 200% Is this normal?
Yes. You are enlarging each pixel to 4X its size that way, or something like 5 by 3 20 inch screens stacked next and above each other for the whoel picture. That will affect apparent sharpness, certainly when looking at it from average screen viewing distances. In short, nothing to worry about. Personally, I think you shouldn't go above 50% to see the impact of an image, higher magnifications are only needed for postprocessing, and even then only rarely.
Quote:I must say the 85mm or 105 mm Nikons with VR sound tempting! Wim, you shoot landscapes all the time. Do you also mostly shoot handheld?
Yes, these days I mostly do. But that is more because I am always in a hurry. When going out for landscapes (or macro) I always have a tripod with me. I have a carry bag for my preferred outdoors tripod, and sling it over my shoulder, head down so it is not in the way (although in that case one needs a bag that ties up the tripod very well indeed, to prevent it from falling out <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />). This tripod in its bag is standard equipement in my car boot, so I can take it out whenever I need it when roaming about.
With longer lenses and in not very bright conditions I always use it, BTW.
Quote: I wish you all a nice Sunday's shooting.
Thank you, and you too!
Quote: Kindly Loup [color="#0000ff"]d'Azur[/color]!
Show off! <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> I hope you are still enjoying your holiday, however <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />.
Warm regards, Wim
Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....
Thanks Wim,
I do enjoy it, but for reasons that shall not be described here I can not be directly in the sun, so it is much for the pleasure of my wife <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> , but it is very nice to wander about and try to get a nice shot somewhere. Lots of nice plants, trees and, if you drive a little, monuments of all kinds. Unfortunately have to go back north tomorrow, but the water is still good for swimming and the sun is hot.
The more I use the equipment, the more I am convinced that for me it would have been a smart thing to start with one or two lenses only and then buy as you really see the need. That being said, what I got is really good. I took some handheld shots with the 70-300 at 300mm across a bay that is 2 km large and the sharpness and detail are amazing.
What do hink of the D7000? I think it shows things to come from Nikon and when the D700 gets the new sensor, there I will be <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' />
So, I will have the courage to show some of my pics when I get home and select a little closer. Until then, kind regards Vieux Loup
I need help! I have gotten my head around my camera and the lenses and am starting to see improvement in my IQ. So I want to participate with the rest of you and show some of my photos. I have looked at MyClub on the Nikon site, Flickr, the Gallery on this site, etc etc. I don't have a super fast internet line, so everything feels slow and difficult. What do you all do? Do you create some site of your own, do you deposit on Flickr (with a limit of 100MB), or what do you do? Do you diminish the image size before you upload to make it faster and more efficient? Please someone show me the way from having the pics without any PP on my harddisc to being able to show my pictures efficiently and be part of the real world. I'm tired of introspection <img src='http://forum.photozone.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=' ' /> , allthough my navel is no uglier than the average one, it is getting boring to watch after a while. Hopeful Vieux Loup
PS. I have Capture NX2 on trial, so at least I have a tool on my PC DS.
09-26-2010, 12:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-26-2010, 12:13 PM by Rainer.)
[quote name='Vieux loup' timestamp='1285500336' post='3245']Please someone show me the way from having the pics without any PP on my harddisc to being able to show my pictures efficiently and be part of the real world.
[/quote]
Ok. We skip the postprocessing itself since PP can mean anything from next to nothing to hours and hours of work. If you just want to show an image (that you have as tif/jpg-file on your harddisk) on the internet, there is not very much to do .. obviously, the keyfactor for both the uploader (you) and the downloader/viewer (me for instance) is the size of the imagefile that is created for this purpose.
The original file from your camera might have a pixelsize of 4500x3000 pixels (just to have some numbers) and the file on disk might (as a jpg-file) have a filesize of 4Mb up to 7Mb. ... obviously, you dont need a file that large (in pixels) to have a nice display on the internet. I usually limit filesize to what a normal display can show ... so I select 1200x800 pixels. This alone wil limit the resulting size in something below 1MB. The next thing is "jpg-quality" ... For the original file, you want this quality very high, but for a file to be displayed, a lower quality can be selected (you usually select this quality when storing an image in jpg-format) ... typical quality numebrs count from 0% bad to 100% good (or from 0 to 10 or 12) depending on the program you are working with. Selecting a quality of 92% rather than 98% can half the filesize of a jpg-file at times.
Reducing filesize by reducing the pixelsize and selecting a lower jpg-quality (which means a higher data-compression) leads to a certain loss in sharpness ... therefore I do a slight resharpening after the reduction in pixelsize. Then my final workflow to convert a file for display is like this:
- reduce number of pixels (but keep aspect ratio)
- resharpen a bit
- store as jpg with a reduced jpg-quality
By this I usually end up with filesizes around 200Kb which can even be transferred over a modem line in a relatively moderate time.
Just a last reminder for this workflow: ALWAYS WORK ON A COPY ... NEVER ON THE ORIGINAL.
In principle, every program that allows image manipulation is likely able to execute the tasks mentioned above ... I typically use IrfanView for this ... it is free, it does all I need, It has a nice batch-processor if I need the work done on a lot of files.
Hope this helps a bit ... Rainer
I use JAlbum... Had no issues so far. I had chosen this because:
- I can add watermarks to images and prevent download of the original image file.
- it seemed that this was the less commercialized tool so far at that time.
- it has both the interface programm and the web upload alternative.
[url="http://jalbum.net/software"]http://jalbum.net/software[/url]
PS: I you have low speed internet, try to find a RAW --> JPEG converter with alternatives like "Save for Web & Devices" of Photoshop. It reduces the file size and keep the IQ in a decent level.
Regards,
Serkan
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