Photography Thread !!!

[darius]

Mainly because I find them fascinating little helicopters with personality!! Well and I have them at my feeder and fail to stop the wing action in motion. My conclusion is I can't walk on air so all shots end up shooting into the sun and the flash required to overcome that is not going to happen. Feeder is on the deck and I need to be shooting from the other direction not into the sun. I have few but mostly stills.

Yes I quickly learned not to shoot with too much sky even with clouds. Sometimes the silhouette effect looks cool though.

 

[FinalImpact]

Honestly they crack me up - while on the deck doing BBQ they come to me and hover about 8" from my nose while I flip the grub. It doesn't bother a couple of them that I move about. Being the meanie I am, I move the feeder left and right / up and down and when they zoom in from the ground below and up to the 2nd floor deck, they prepare to DOCK where the feeder WAS and then hover going WTF!!!!! GONE! , pivot as needed pin-pointing new location and proceed to dock! :thumbup:
But ya, Crazy how the shutter freaks them out but they hover all around me while cooking. One came in the house last year. Funny as hell. Found his way right back out too in the same exact pattern he followed coming in.

 

[darius]

Honestly they crack me up - while on the deck doing BBQ they come to me and hover about 8" from my nose while I flip the grub. It doesn't bother a couple of them that I move about. Being the meanie I am, I move the feeder left and right / up and down and when they zoom in from the ground below and up to the 2nd floor deck, they prepare to DOCK where the feeder WAS and then hover going WTF!!!!! GONE! , pivot as needed pin-pointing new location and proceed to dock! :thumbup:
But ya, Crazy how the shutter freaks them out but they hover all around me while cooking. One came in the house last year. Funny as hell. Found his way right back out too in the same exact pattern he followed coming in.

Funny stuff. I like the little things, too. We must be in slow motion to them zipping about and all around. I like their colors and that they allow you to get so close to them around the feeders.

I only just got my Nikon D3100 so still seeing what it can do. Took it to Powell Butte today and going through the shots now. Shot raw for the first time and can see how it allows for more options editing.

This one came out great w/o editing:

 

[darius]

The original looked pretty good, but still a bit washed out. It was missing color and contrast. Here's my first attempt at retouching a RAW file to improve the shot.

Some of the image compression is showing with the lower res and there's only so much color that can be brought out in this late autumn shot. The full resolution edited shot looks a lot better than the original washed out jpeg. I'm using Nikon's ViewNX 2 software.

Edit: I was trying to figure out why the uploaded pics looked so lossy w/ obvious compression vs. the pics on my hard drive of the same resolution. Apparently photobucket is adding extra compression and reducing the image quality.

So now my new DSLR pics look like my old point and shoot when I put them online. :shakehead:

Pic deleted. See later post.

 

[Erci]

Edit: I was trying to figure out why the uploaded pics looked so lossy w/ obvious compression vs. the pics on my hard drive of the same resolution. Apparently photobucket is adding extra compression and reducing the image quality.

Try imageshack.us

I'm curious if it'll look any better.

 

[Humperdinkel]

Try imageshack.us

I'm curious if it'll look any better.

I use photobucket & yes they reduce the quality by HEAPS :spank: :spank: I'm not familiar with imageshack but I have been told the flickr is the best :thumbup: :don'tknow:

 

[darius]

I use photobucket & yes they reduce the quality by HEAPS :spank: :spank: I'm not familiar with imageshack but I have been told the flickr is the best :thumbup: :don'tknow:

Thanks. Yes, it is annoying. Why don't they specify a file size limit, under which they won't zap the image quality?

I just did a test w/ this forum's upload feature. It has a jpg file size limit of 5.72 MB and I want to upload a 0.34 MB file and it still adds extra compression.

 

[Sawblade]

Try 500px. There's a weekly upload limit if you don't pay, but the quality is as high as you want it.

 

[darius]

I signed up with 500px. They don't appear to be hotlink friendly, but I'm trying to make it work anyway.

This tests good on my machine, but I'm logged in so let me know if they don't display.

 

[Erci]

I signed up with 500px. They don't appear to be hotlink friendly, but I'm trying to make it work anyway.

This tests good on my machine, but I'm logged in so let me know if they don't display.

Looks very good :thumbup:

 

[darius]

Looks very good :thumbup:

Thanks. :thumbup:


My quick take on 500px.net:

Pros:
Image quality not reduced
Easy to sign up for free

Cons:
Hassle to hotlink
Images are reduced to 900x600px (unmentioned)
10 image upload limit per week
Site has a sleazy flickr clone vibe to it with bots that "like" and comment on photos

 

[FinalImpact]

The original looked pretty good, but still a bit washed out. It was missing color and contrast. Here's my first attempt at retouching a RAW file to improve the shot.

Some of the image compression is showing with the lower res and there's only so much color that can be brought out in this late autumn shot. The full resolution edited shot looks a lot better than the original washed out jpeg. I'm using Nikon's ViewNX 2 software.

Edit: I was trying to figure out why the uploaded pics looked so lossy w/ obvious compression vs. the pics on my hard drive of the same resolution. Apparently photobucket is adding extra compression and reducing the image quality.

So now my new DSLR pics look like my old point and shoot when I put them online. :shakehead:

Pic deleted. See later post.

I just don't have enough time to tinker in that realm (raw) but have always favored my old Canon over my (way back then) fancy Nikon because the colors just don't pop. I've tried everything on the nikon for in camera processing and IMO it doesn't compare to Canon. I need LightRoom and then shot some RAW I guess. Although I do have PS7.

Good Work!

As for P-bucket, if you get too many downloads mbs per month), it blocks the content. Be warned!

 

[darius]

I just don't have enough time to tinker in that realm (raw) but have always favored my old Canon over my (way back then) fancy Nikon because the colors just don't pop. I've tried everything on the nikon for in camera processing and IMO it doesn't compare to Canon. I need LightRoom and then shot some RAW I guess. Although I do have PS7.

Good Work!

As for P-bucket, if you get too many downloads mbs per month), it blocks the content. Be warned!

Yeah I've heard the the Canons produce more vibrant pics. I went with Nikon because folks at my work swear by them. I do like the vibration reduction built into the lenses. All my shots have been w/o a tripod.

The Nikon software I'm using makes it really easy to work with and preserve the RAW files as digital negatives. They can be batch converted to jpg at desired resolutions.

Saving to RAW and JPG at the same time from the camera (if yours has that feature) makes it easy to sift through the images and decide which are the keepers.

 

[FinalImpact]

Case in point: a pic in early Nov I thought would be very colorful, but its just washed out. Just a few leaves on my last ride out to work!

Caught one of my critters. The in flight shots are to blurry to post. . . this is 2012-12-03

 

[FinalImpact]

 

[darius]

Great shots, Randy. In the cold and rain today, a male allowed me real close for a portrait (crop) shot under the shelter of my front porch.

I shot it with the kit 55mm lens w/ 2.5x telephoto adapter. That's all I have to work with until I get a new tele lens for Xmas.

 

[darius]

Randy, what time of day did you take those flash shots? They're awesome. The flash is stopping the motion and blacking out the background. Great effect. I'll have to try that.

 

[Sawblade]

It's all about lighting to get really vibrant color that doesn't look fake. Try shooting that same scene an hour before sunset and those warm colors will pop like crazy regardless what camera you're using.

 

[FinalImpact]

Great shots, Randy. In the cold and rain today, a male allowed me real close for a portrait (crop) shot under the shelter of my front porch.

I shot it with the kit 55mm lens w/ 2.5x telephoto adapter. That's all I have to work with until I get a new tele lens for Xmas.

Nice close up! :thumbup:
Oddly enough it was just today hours before dusk. It sure the hell wasn't black out as the picture might lead one to believe! Nikon D80 18-135 lens, manual focus and that first shot was at full zoom. Those guys can hear the flash charge and hightail it! Also I shot them raw only to find I lost the plugin for PS7 to convert NEF. . . Thankfully jpg too! I don't know how you caught those in flight - Way to fast for me!

As for the Fall tree picture, I ran out at lunch between rain storms so thats all the light there was!

 

[darius]

Nice close up! :thumbup:
Oddly enough it was just today hours before dusk. It sure the hell wasn't black out as the picture might lead one to believe! Nikon D80 18-135 lens, manual focus and that first shot was at full zoom. Those guys can hear the flash charge and hightail it! Also I shot them raw only to find I lost the plugin for PS7 to convert NEF. . . Thankfully jpg too! I don't know how you caught those in flight - Way to fast for me!

As for the Fall tree picture, I ran out at lunch between rain storms so thats all the light there was!

Good info. Yes, difficult to get them moving and in focus. Even more difficult to get 2 of them in a single shot. Here's a male and female before they fight over the feeder today.

Not the best of shots but something of an achievement getting them both in the frame.