seanb

<I>How about a tagging system for posts - we can then create our own views however we see fit - kind of like virtual forums. This is probably much the same as you envisage Phil, but seems a simple way to think of it.</I>

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I like that idea - somewhat like gmail's use of labels rather than folders for email.

<I>A chat room, eh? What if we renamed "General (Not Archived)" to "Casual Conversations"?</I>

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<P>Sure, why not? The UK magazine Amateur Photographer has a forum on <a href="http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/forums/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0">their site</A> called "The Lounge" which is for general chat, as well as forums for various technical categories, and it works quite well.

One other idea: many sites with technical forums do allow at least one totally offtopic forum for general chat amongst the members. Maybe this is an option for Photo.net if the specific forums become more focussed on their technical remit?

First of all, thank you for responding.

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<I>I don't know what the direction of the site was for the last six years. Can you point me to a document that explains what you and your fellows were trying to achieve?</I>

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There is obviously no document as such - the culture of the site has gradually evolved into what it is today, and the only way to absorb that culture is to spend time here. It is no doubt some way removed from the original purpose of the site, but for many of us you and your original aims were a historical curiosity - a name that appears on old threads from time to time.

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...<I>they would not leave the site saying "I got a good answer to my question".</I>

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I don't own a Leica, but I enjoy reading many of the threads there for entertainment. However, if the sole purpose of the site is now to be a learning tool, fair enough, the Leica forum is an anomaly.

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(Eric ~: just to clarify - I was not advocating that the Leica forum be brought into line - I enjoy reading it. I was just wondering what the policy would be towards it as it was the best example of a forum not strictly devoted to learning. Clearly from Phil's response, liberating the other forums is not an option!)

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Finally the survey. The questions presuppose answers that support the way you want to run the site. For example "What do you hope to accomplish at photo.net?". The options are to learn, get shopping advice and share/critique photos. Where's the option to discuss photography with fellow enthusiasts? Not to learn, but to share ideas. Where does the philosophy of photography forum fit into these options?

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As others have said, though, maybe the best thing to do is wait and see.

Following on from the recent thread deletions and discussions regarding the

future of the site, I think it would be useful for the site management to

provide some answers regarding the future direction of the site. Various hints

have been made in threads, but it would be useful to have these brought together

in one place (which hopefully will not be deleted - if necessary, by locking the

thread if the software allows it)

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The questions I have are as follows:

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<li>Many members, myself included, have joined Photo.net based on the way the

community has operated in the last few years. The current direction, while it

may be in line with the original site goals, seems opposed to this. Will the

opinions of the current membership count for anything in the new direction of

the site?

<li>Do you feel that it is valid or fair to take a community site and change its

direction by edict when it has evolved into its current incarnation?

<li>Certain forums, such as the Leica forum, have always been allowed more

freedom than the rest of the site - will this continue, or will they be brought

into line?

<li>How do you feel about the W/NW threads and will this kind of informal

sharing be allowed to continue?

<li>Is there a definitive position regarding paid membership, and how do you

intend to deal with members whose memberships do not expire for several years?

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I appreciate that the site is a commercial venture, and that it is also yours to

do with what you will. However, when I signed up to Photo.net I did so in good

faith expecting the site to continue along broadly similar lines.

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I think I'm not alone in feeling like someone who has signed up for a movie

channel on satellite, only to discover that the owners now want to stop showing

movies and turn it into a home shopping channel (and yes, I am aware that this

is a hyperbolic analogy, but hopefully it illustrates my point).

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<I>We're also eliminating the subscription system, so don't feel bad about not subscribing!</I>

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Since my subscription runs until March 2008, I will look forward to my partial refund when you do eliminate the system. Or is that not what you had in mind?

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24mm isn't that wide on the D200 - equivalent to 36mm in film terms.

 

If you want wide angle I'd look at the 18-70, maybe the 18-200VR if you can find one, or wait a while - I think Nikon are bringing out an 18-135. Sigma make an 18-125, which is OK as a snapshot lens; good range (like the old 28-200), fairly sharp, but quite bad for distortion (which can be corrected in Photoshop if necessary).

<I>While I certainly assume that there are many photographs here that have nudity as content, I think that categorizing the site as such is more justified for places like www.onemodelplace.com or similar.</I>

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But then what happens when someone at a site using securecomputing stumbles across a nude? They complain to securecomputing and get the site added back, I would imagine.

Like yourself, and probably most amateurs, my own stuff is mainly landscape and travel, and I have some books along those lines; from Ansel Adams to Joe Cornish.

 

Overall, though, my bookcase leans more towards street and documentary - emphasis on the documentary. The kind of work that Diane Arbus, say, or Mary Ellen Mark do is hard to do as an amateur; a pro will have a target market which gives them an reason for the work, even if it's just fine art sales. As an amateur, you are much less likely to gain access to the right subjects or have the time to spare for them.

 

I also have some books by the likes of Bob Carlos Clarke and others of that ilk, which is another avenue I have yet to pursue myself (although I am working on it).

 

I'd love to be able to shoot good street photos, but I don't really have the right stuff for it - too self conscious, mainly.

Lulworth cove, I presume?

 

Let's see a 100% crop then... maybe of the biggest boat?

"Some nudes I understand. But this?"

 

I'm interested to know why you've singled that particular image out. How is it worse than others in his portfolio? You say you understand some nudes - which ones? And how do they differ from this one? I'm genuinely intrigued as to how you reached the conclusion that this particular shot has crossed a line that the others haven't.

 

For what it's worth, I think it's great work and would be delighted if my efforts were half as good (got some, but not posted any here yet).

<I>I went there after work for the sunset</I>

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After work? <I><B>After work???</B></I>. You've just made me very, very jealous!

Oops - sorry Ilkka, not Illka - my typo!

Actually Illka I quite like your typo; "refocompose" should become the new term for recomposing after focussing!

Shooting RAW + JPEG at least gives you a file you can use straight from the camera, which is handy if you shoot a lot. The downside is storage - a 1GB card can store 44 RAW + highest quality large jpegs.

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As an alternative you could shoot RAW + small low quality jpeg, and use the JPEG as a handy thumbnail for deciding which shots are worth processing as RAW. For some shoots, large/fine JPEG might suffice - shooting an event, for example, where you might want high volumes of files and not want to spend hours post processing.

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If you shoot RAW you can ignore in-camera colour modes, white balance, sharpening and so on - you set colour mode and white balance in the convertor and leave sharpening to Photoshop (note that Adobe's RAW convertor applies sharpening by default - switch it off if you want to do sharpening later).

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Standard advice is to leave all sharpening to the very end and keep a copy without sharpening. This is because the amount of sharpening you apply will depend on the output device. There is a more sophisticated workflow that involves three stage sharpening (input device dependent capture sharpening, image dependent local sharpening and finally output device dependent sharpening - you can find an article <A href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html">here</A>).

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I'm still working on my D200 workflow, so hopefully I'll also pick up some tips from this thread!

The D200 has a reputation for under exposing - or to be more accurate, for maintaining highlight detail at all costs; so it will underexpose rather than allow highlights to burn out. This is fine as far as it goes , but even a small highlight that you may not want to preserve can cause the whole scene to underexpose.

 

The answer is that it is really something you need to get used to - a quirk of the metering system. Just be careful when scenes contain bright highlights - take a spot reading from a neutral area. You can also apply settings to compensate (I think you can even upload a custom curve to apply to all shots). It shouldn't be a problem when shooting RAW, and in fact may be an advantage as you will almost never get highlights clipping with the D200.

I'd agree with the post above about build quality. The D50 won't feel anything like as solid as your F100 - it's quite cheap and plasticy. Of course, a small and light camera isn't a bad thing for travel...

 

If you want the digital equivalent to your F100, you really need to be looking at the D200.

 

However, if you haven't used digital before, the D50 would make a great introduction at an affordable price. It will give you much better results than any digital compact, as well as usability that's close to film SLRs.

I went into an actual Jessops store today, and the staff could not tell me how long it would be before the D200 would be available - they looked it up on their stock computer and thought it would be weeks. A few hours later I see this thread! Typical Jessops...

Back to lead times; I was at Focus on Imaging in Birmingham yesterday and all of the dealers were quoting no less than two weeks on the D200, and longer - maybe more than a month - on the 18-200VR. The main thing that struck me was the uncertainty - noone could give me definitive answers.

 

Nikon had the biggest show stand of all of the major brands, and the D200 was a major part of it. It seemed a bit shortsighted not to ensure that there was a decent stock to actually buy! In contrast, Canon were not even in attendance, but you could buy all of their current range and most of their lenses. There were some good end of line deals on the 20D in anticipation of the 30D replacing it.

The 18-35 is a great lens, but you will probably be frustrated with it on the D70 unless you mainly shoot wide angle. The 18-70 is equivalent to 28-105 (the lens I use on my film SLR), and this is a great everyday range.

 

Bearing in mind the problems with sensor dust, you will probably want to change lenses as little as possible. With that in mind, I'd say go for the 18-70. I have the 18-35, but I'm planning to get the 18-70 kit when I get a DSLR because otherwise I feel I'll constant be switching between my 18-35 and 28-105.

 

On the other hand, the 18-35 will give you an added dimension for film.

 

It really depends on how soon you're going to get a DSLR and whether you have a need for wider than 28mm (on 35mm film).

<I>I want to find a program that will burn CDs so the viewer can't copy them or take them in </I>

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If the viewer can open the pictures to view them, they can copy them. Yes, you can encrypt a CD so they can't take the images off of it, but then how would they view them? The computer has to be able to read the data from the CD in order to display it on screen. If you can see it on screen, you can copy it.

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The only way you'll stop them using the proofs is to put a watermark across the centre of the image; it will hinder their viewing of the image, but that's the only way you can stop them printing it. Hopefully it won't degrade it so much that they can't see what it would look like without the watermark.

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I would also suggest that your CD proofs should be low resolution, suitable for screen viewing only, but sadly I doubt if that would stop some people from printing them anyway regardless of the quality.

The biggest problem I had with my Stylus Epic (or Mju, as it's known in the UK) is that it doesn't remember settings when switched off. I was constantly having to remember to switch the flash off every time I switched the camera on. This is also a problem with lots of small digital P&S models. Since the flash can fire when you least expect it (not just when it's dark, as you often get fill flash in bright light), this is a real nuisance for discreet street photography.

 

I ended up with a Ricoh GR1v. Excellent camera if you can find one (no longer made new); the only limitation is that the 28mm lens is a bit wide for everyday use.

You may be interested in <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html">this article</a> which suggests a three phase approach to sharpening.

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Firstly a small amount to overcome the limitations of the input device (scanner or camera). The amount will depend on the device, almost regardless of the image content or output size.

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Secondly, any image specific sharpening for creative purposes (e.g. the eyes in a portrait).

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Finally, output specific sharpening, which will depend on final image size and output device (screen, inkjet or whatever).

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The article goes into it in more detail. As a general rule though, if you only sharpen once, do it at the end and to a copy of your image.

<I>With the color image, I added a little saturation before doing Save for Web to normalize the Save for Web color loss:</I>

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The colour loss might be down to the profile. If you're editing the image in Adobe 1998, try converting to SRGB before saving for web - this should give you the same colours on the web copy as the normal version. Don't save the changes to the original, though - leave it as Adobe 1998. The conversion to SRGB is only for the benefit of the web version.

Have you tried logging out and logging back in again? I had those symptoms and Brian suggested that it might be a stale cookie. Once I'd logged out and back in, the problem went away.