Looking for some guidance

[richard_lyman]

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie looking for some guidance. I've been taking photos for years with

SLR's but have no formal education or training in photography.I do have a degree

in fine art which helps compositionally but doesn't help with technical aspects.

I taught myself by reading books and have improved a lot, but I want to get

better. After looking at the work on the gallery here I was blown away!

I have an Olympus E-500 with kit lenses, and no PS just Olympus Master that

came with the camera. At first I thought I need a new camera or better lenses,

but after reading here I determined that I probably need to learn to use the

camera I have better. Is it possible to take professional level photos with this

equipment? It seems that most of work I see here that is so inspiring and

incredible to me is done out of camera. I believe I have a decent grasp of the

basics of exposure and composition, but is photoshop necessary to achieve the

level of work here? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks...

Richard

[mendonphoto]

<p><i>Is it possible to take professional level photos with this equipment?</i></p>

<p>Olympus would be my last choice for a DSLR setup, but I do believe you can still get excellent results with it. Like you say, knowing how to use your equipment is more important than the equipment you use.</p>

<p><i>but is photoshop necessary to achieve the level of work here?</i></p>

<p>It depends on what pictures you consider good, but probably so. However, there are some less expensive programs (like Elements) that will get you pretty far.</p>

<p>Maybe you could link to a few pictures that you are wondering about and we can give you our thoughts. Or, you could even ask the photographer.</p>

[shannonholm]

IMO, very few images that are posted on here have been posted with out at least a

slight tweaking in an editing program. many of them a lot more than a tweak.....

Photoshop won't make a bad shot great, but it can certainly make a good shot pop a

little more.

[richsimmons]

I have the same kit. I've been very happy with it. Comparatively, the kit lenses that come with the Olympus are better than most. The professional look comes from setting up a proper shot and usually there is some photoshop involved to get things to pop. People love to kick Olympus around, but it really is a good camera and they have enough lenses to cover an array of shooting. This model is not the best in low light though. What kind of photos are you interested in taking? That will determine the path and equipment you may want to look at. But like Aaron said, you can download a trial version of Photoshop to try it, but you may just need Photoshop Elements to get started , which is about $99. Olympus Master is slow and cumbersome. I only use it for firmware updates.

[gordonjb]

I have seen amazing work done with pinhole cameras, Holgas, Hasselblads, 8X10 view cameras etc. The issue is not so much what the equipment is, as how well you understand the equipment and how good you are at getting what you want out of it. There is absolutely no reason why you cannot produce amazing work with the gear you have. Will you eventually outgrow it ?, perhaps but that won't make the images you do produce with it now any better or worse.

 

 

As for photo shop; you need to have some sort of editing program in order to make basic adjustments such as white balance, exposure, cropping and such. I hope you do not need to heavily process images in order to create quality work since I deliberately avoid most of the advanced compositing and other PP that are now commonplace. Possessing those skills is to your advantage and I firmly believe all knowledge is beneficial ( well maybe not all ) but you do not need to be a PS whiz to create excellent quality images. You do however need to understand your equipment, if you hope to get the most out of it.

[matthew_newton]

I'd agree 100% with Gordon. I won't claim that I have many excellent images, but I certainly have at least a few that are quite good (of course not all of them make it on here as I shot film and hate scanning). I don't touch a dark room, though I know how to do at least basic development and printing for B&W (through a HS class). I also don't edit my images one bit, even the scanned ones other then sometimes a touch of noise reduction and scratch/spot removal from the scans (I use a crappy flat bed for my scanning and have to scan the prints).

 

I have a long way to go before making publish level pictures with all but a very tiny number of my pictures (and even those would not be any kind of major publication, pretty minor in fact). I am improving and working on it, but I still don't touch PS other then to touch up scans a bit.

[richard_lyman]

Thanks everyone,

Funny I was relatively happy with my equipment until I came here and viewed some of the work in the galleries. I just have never come close to getting that kind of edge to edge sharpness, clarity, or color saturation. For example a photo by Ronald Capasso entitled "Life is Good". If I was there standing next to him with my stuff and took a hundred pictures with all different exposures I don't think I could get even remotely close to that. He mentions a lot of pp which got me thinking. When I was in art school that was kind of frowned upon as "cheating", but that was a long time ago, I was a painting major, and times have changed.

I primarily do landscapes and macro, a lot of b&w but not exclusively. I got into photography as a way to inform paintings but it turned into a passion in it's own right. I learned on a 35mm and all the automated functions on my DSLR have made me lazy. I'm going to work on manual for awhile and refresh my basic skills. What I don't like about my equipment is things like telephone lines or the tips of tree branches tend to get jagged and blocky. There is a noticeable amount of lens distortion and flare, and all kinds of problems in low light, mostly with noise and inability to lock focus with AF.

Here is one I like but I'm not sure whats wrong with it. Not sure about the composition or exposure. Maybe I'll put one up to be critiqued as this isn't the forum for that.

[richsimmons]

Put a UV filter on the lenses to compensate for the flares. You might want to consider the 50mm or the 35 mm macro lens as well. I have the 35mm (example at the bottom of my portfolio with the triptych flowers) and I like it a lot. you might want to consider Adobe Lightroom too for developing. Maybe moving up to the 14-54mm could help too. For macro, you might want to consider a flash/diffuser set or even a lighting set up.

 

Check out this site of 4/3 photos to see what people are doing.

 

http://www.myfourthirds.com/

[mendonphoto]

<p><i>Put a UV filter on the lenses to compensate for the flares.</i></p>

<p>General consensus is that the only good thing a UV filter does is physically protect the front element of your lens. Very optimistic people believe that it adds a little bit contrast to and reduces the bluish tint in the background. It certainly will not reduce flare. In fact, in some situations, it will add flare.</p>