jim schwaiger

Chantal,

 

I agree with most of the advice, but let me make a few comments. I bought the N65 and a 50mm 2 years ago, so I was in your shoes not too long ago.

 

David is right that the 50mm is a great way to learn (it is how I learned). It can be used for everything from portraits to landscapes to low-light scenes and it forces you to consider where you are standing, how to compose an image you want to capture, etc. Iwould definately recommend spending a lot of time learning how to use it. The 28-80mm is much easier to use, so you may have to leave it at home or in the car so you won't be tempted to use it.

 

I wouldn't sell the 28-80mm lens just yet though. For one thing, it is a relatively cheap, ubiquitous lens and basically you can't get much for them. There are just too many people trying to get rid of them. I would recommend that you keep it and use it to learn what focal lengths are useful to you. If you find yourself at the 28mm lens most of the time, you might consider buying a 28mm or 24mm prime lens in the future. If you find the 80mm end more appealing, you might want to get an 85mm or a 105mm prime lens.

 

Just understand that the 28-80mm is not a high quality lens. It is fine at small print sizes like 4x6, but you may find yourself wanting better glass in the form of better quality zooms or prime lenses. Let me stress that the 28-80mm isn't junk, it could easily suit your needs for many years to come. It is an easy lens to use and probably 90% of your photography will be in this focal range.

 

I agree with the suggestion to get a tripod and cable release as well, except that the N65 has no place for a cable release. You have to get a remote to do what a cable release does. Study up on tripods and try to decide what is important to you. If you like to take long hikes, you may want something lightweight. Skip the Wal-mart tripods and look for something at least in the $100 range which will eliminate a huge percentage of the crappy tripods.

 

The N75 is a nice body, but don't even think about a better body just yet. The N65 is a very competent camera and it's possible that you will never need anything more. After two years of using it, I am even more convinced that a better body isn't what will improve my photographic skills.

 

Again, once you master the equipment you have, you will know if your body and lenses are limiting. More likely you will find that technique and composition are the things you really need to work on. In other words, try to impress people with your photographs, not your equipment.

If you are using 35mm and you want something better than web-quality images, a dedicated film scanner is the way to go. The Nikon, Canon, and Minolta scanners have good reputations in general and the Dimage series is an economical way to get very good 35mm scans.

 

The other consideration is that the automatic settings aren't worth anything for astrophotography -- auto exposure and color corrections need to be off while scanning. You may also benefit from noise reduction techniques available in Hamrick's Vuescan which works with most film scanners. Random CCD noise could easily look like a faint objects, so scanning 16 times and letting the software combine the results could make a huge difference in your images.

The standard advice is to shelve the cheap zoom lens and learn to use the 50mm over the next several months. Others will tell you to experiement with the zoom a while to see what focal lengths are most important to your style.

 

Basically, you could spend a couple of years or so learning to use the lenses you have now. You might eventually want something longer (ie 200mm-300mm) or something wider (ie 20mm), but the focal lengths you already have are great for most types of photography.

 

The first critical steps are to learn to use the camera, learn how to expose properly in normal and difficult lighting. Learn to use the amnual mode (the only way to get center-weighted metering on the N65). Learn the basic rules of composition and when it's okay to break them. Learn the limits of the film you choose, and learn why your prints don't look right sometimes -- it isn't necessarily your fault.

 

Concentrate on the learning process and the creative process and forget about getting better equipment until you have explored the limits of what you have.

A 2 or 3 stop soft edge ND grad filter would have worked well here. These are common for nature photographers, but they are useful for shots like this as well. Consider a square filter holder so you can move the edge of the transition up and down.

Anywhere in the 35mm to 50mm range will work. 35mm is probably more common, but the 50mm lens is significantly cheaper and faster to boot. An easy solution is to start with the 50mm f/1.8 and use it. If you want a wider angle, then go to the more expensive 35mm lens later on.

 

If the price and speed of the 35mm are okay with you, by all means try it out as well, but you really can't go wrong with the inexpensive 50/1.8.

An off-camera flash would be ideal here to freeze the movements and avoid flat lighting. You can also stop down a few stops to get a sharper bee with a flash.

The camera should have come with some software that converts from RAW to some standard format (ie TIFF). RAW is not a standard image format - each mfg and camera may have a different data format.

For a class, I'd also have to agree that the N65 is preferred. If memory serves, the N55 doesn't allow fully manual operation (manual focus and manual exposure settings) which are often desirable in a classroom setting.

 

I would also disagree with the lens choice you are thinking about. The traditional learner lens is a nice, fast, inexpensive 50mm f/1.8 lens. But, if you really want flexability, a 28-105mm zoom is a great all-purpose lens. It's wide enough to capture landscapes and long enough to do portraits. If image quality is a minor thing, there are even zooms in the 24-200mm range that let you learn which focal lengths are great for your type of shooting.

 

If you do get serious, you'll eventually want some quality zoom lenses, prime lenses, and eventually a better body. The N65 has a lot fewer limitations than the N55, so you will be able to use it for years, even if you get into some pretty serious photography. The only things I want that the N65 is lacking is a spot meter and exposure lock. The center-weighted meter and manual modes can be used to overcome these things most of the time, but getting a shot can take a little more patience.

 

 

I have an N65, a 50 f/1.8, a 28-105mm, and an older 75-300mm. I plan to buy a few primes before upgrading the body to an N80 or better. I have purposely avoided zooms that magnify more than about 4X, cheap G lenses, and the kit lenses because I want quality stuff that will last for years and hold some of their value. I may also buy an all manual camera so I want compatible lenses for it as well (this means no G lenses for me).

In a word, PERSPECTIVE.

 

Taking a head shot of someone with a 28mm requires that you be very close, at 135mm, you have to be farther away which gives a very different perspective. Getting close causes faces to look distorted - the nose will appear too large, and the face will appear much wider than at "normal" viewing distances.

 

So,, different focal lengths require different distances to shoot the same subject which inherently gives a different perspective.

 

Note that this doesn't mean that you can't use a wide angle lens to make an effective portrait. It is simply more difficult to create a portrait image that works well with wide angle lens. Care must be taken to manage the distortions, or use them in a creative way.

It sounded like diffraction initially, but this would be visible on the film (with a loupe). If there were a light source behind the tree, diffraction could cause this, but without an example image, I can't say for sure.

 

If the photoshop sharpened those images, it could be halos cause by too much unsharp masking as well. These are pretty common in the digital world, but I don't know how often they occur otherwise.

Luca, I have the 28-105mm and I find that it is very sharp and low distortion compared to cheaper zooms. But without knowing what you are doing, it is hard to guess what difference it will make.

 

Indeed there are a lot of things that can affect quality of the print. Try some experiments to see how sharp the lens can be. Try a decent tripod with slow film (ISO 50 or 100), try a few processing labs, try using smaller apertures.

 

If you are getting 4x6 prints, even the cheap lens should make good prints (with good technique). You need to find how slow you can handhold the camera (rule of thumb is 1/focal length, so at ISO 100, you should not handhold slower than about 1/125 sec). Most zooms are not sharp at the maximum aperture, so stop down 1 or 2 stops and see if that helps. The lab can also make a big difference. Find an image that you like and have it printed at a better lab and see if it makes a significant difference.

 

If you plan to do significant enlargements, the better lens will be worth the price. A prime lens will do even better, but I have to admit that I keep the 28-105mm on when I need an all-purpose lens.

In my experience, USB 1 starts bogging down around 600dpi.

Around that point, the scanner starts pausing to wait for the data

to get to the computer.

 

So, if you do a lot of high res scans, use the fastest interface

possible. If you are scanning prints, 600dpi should be more than

enough and a faster interface will not make as much of a

difference. YMMV

I have a 28-105 AF-D that is very nice for travel. The Non-G lenses will work on manual bodies, but the short throw of the AF lens makes focusing accurately a pain.

 

Let me also suggest selling all the bodies except the FM2 and buy an F100 which will allow metering with the MF lenses. If you want the benefits of both MF and AF, the F100 and the FM2 would make a great combo.

The fixed width pages need to go. The Gallery is down to 2 columns of

images and about 40% of my screen is unused. Bring back the variable

width pages so those of us with big screens can see a bunch of

thumbnails at once.

You have to ensure that the camera is focused on the subject in the viewfinder before pressing the shutter. And you have to ensure that the shutter speed is fast enough for the lens you are using (assumes you aren't using a tripod).

 

Is the camera set to Manual focus mode? If the focusing motor doesn't whir when you press halfway down, you probably have the AF off. What mode are you using (program?), what lighting conditions, and how are you focusing? Is anything in focus?

yup

Glancing at Bob's Comments on Photodb, it appears that 4 of his 6 comments are shorter than 25 words. That means that he is "simply not qualified to offer an opinion and/or you simply haven't given that matter any thought" by his own standards. Now let's look at someone who has actually spent a lot of time Rating and Commenting on images.

 

Marc G. has given 5322 ratings and 4842 comments. A quick look at his comments shows that he often writes long, detailed comments. But even Marc has quite a few short comments. 3 of his last 5 were under 25 words and only one was over 50 words (barely). Probably 25 to 30% of Marc's comments are under the 25 word limit. Does that mean that Marc is unqualified or that those short comments are useless? Some of those short comments are actually helpful suggestions or deserved praise.

 

And a lot of the one-word comments exist solely because people are forced to comment in the first place. They are basically saying the same thing with the comment as they say with the rating: "7/7 -- Wow, Great, Wonderful". If they could leave a 7/7 without comment, I think most people would stop wasting that space.

 

If we require 25 word comments on the low and high ratings, what will the result be? Will members actually start giving more thoughtful comments? Or will they simply shy away from the 1, 2, and 7's? Will the mate-raters give up? Or will they simply take a minute to write some meaningless dribble that meets the word limit?

 

My guess is that this hindrance will affect the honest raters much more than the mate-raters and essentially give them more weight. On the other hand if we make the ratings system easier to use then the honest members have a chance at overwhelming the mate-raters. I think it is a move in the wrong direction. Photo's with 10 mate-rates can be brought down if 100 honest ratings are given, but the number of ratings per photo is too low right now. We need to limit submissions and/or encourage ratings/commenting much more than we do now.

The camera's meter will overexpose a mostly dark scene and underexpose a bright scene. To compensate, you tell the camera to underexpose the dark scene and overexpose the bright scene.

 

A snow scene is bright, so using the meter's suggested exposure will be too dark (snow will be gray). Telling the camera to overexpose a stop or two gives a good exposure. If you go to 3 or 4 stops over, the snow will be pure white and everything will start to get overexposed. .

While long thoughtful comments are nice, I know several members who can express their thoughts and/or provide advice in less than 25 words. Forcing a minimum comment size will have more of a negative impact than I think you guys realize. I wish I knew the statistics, but my guess is that a large number of comments are relatively short. But my primary objection is that you are making it harder for a lot of honest, sincere members to comment if you force a minimum comment length.

 

I disagree with Marc about limiting which ratings are available without comment as well. The first 5 ratings could be mate-raters and that would force others to comment before giving their honest rating. Again, it could easily encumber those who are honest and sincere. And I think Marc knows that there are many images that are 2 points overrated.

 

Marc, the 8 would simply be the top end of the scale from that point on. Obviously members can go back and re-rate any photo they think is deserving. Suddenly limiting 7's would not be fair to new photos as they could never approach the highest rating as many images now do.

 

Bob, Obviously there are some terrible images on photo.net, but tell me what benefit anyone gets from a 1 or 2 rating? My only point was that we could make one rating for all the below average photos. That means that a dishonest 3 has less effect on the good images and the fact that it is not a good image is still conveyed. My proposal gets rid of the numbers altogether, and makes a broad "Poor" rating to do this same thing.

 

Eliminating 1 & 2 is a quick fix, but I think it would help minimize some of the abuses and make things easier for the management who have to police the abusive low ratings. The numbers are arbitrary anyway, so why would a 3-8 scale be any worse than 1-10 or 1-7? The numbers on the rating interface could also be eliminated and the scoring scale could still be 1-7 or any other scale you like.

 

I'm with Bob about keeping the system unrestrictive. But I think that forcing comments in the first place and forcing a certain length comment are the type of restrictions that will run members away. People who are commenting to be helpful should not be restricted at all on the site. And people who are commenting because they are forced to are likely to not be helpful in their comments anyway.

 

Ultimately I think we have to have a system that simply has enough participants that the mate-raters become insignificant. The limits Bob is talking about will discourage participation. If rating and commenting are strongly encouraged we get more active members and with other needed changes, more subscribers.

To respond to the original question and Garry Edwards, there are many reasons that no uploads are required to rate/comment. First and most obvious is that good photography skills and good critiquing ability don't always correlate. A great photographer can be a poor judge of others' work and a poor photographer can be a great judge. Second, many members simply do not have the right equipment to digitize their work. For example, someone who shoots slides needs a decent film scanner to present a good image. And finally, some people just don't want to take the risk of their web quality images being stolen.

 

Let me also go ahead and say that I am totally against requiring comments along with any of the ratings. I understand the intent, but in practice, it simply doesn't work. It doesn't take much experience here to realize that forcing comments just doesn't do what it was intended to do. I've gotten things like "???" myself and it really just wastes space and everyone's time. Likewise, highest ratings often get comments like "Great" and "Wonderful" which really aren't any more informative than the rating itself. Why would someone give 7/7 if they didn't think those things.

 

Forcing the comments to a minimum length might discourage some of the low ratings, but at the same time it will punish those who are helpful and concise. A comment like "Nice try, but lighting is way too harsh. Try late evening or an overcast day." would not meet the minimum 25 words that Bob suggests, yet "a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a" would. While that is obvious, a member could simply come up with a 25 word sentence that they paste into the comment box of all images that require a comment.

 

I think you can build a better scale, but the numbers and the "Very Bad" rating need to go. Noone wants to receive those kind of ratings, they serve no purpose and provide no benefit to anyone. A quick fix would be to eliminate 1 & 2 altogether and make the scale go from 3-7 where 3 means "below average" or more simply "poor".

 

Limiting how often the highest rating can be given has some merit. For example, we could give one 7/7 per week to those who rate 50 or more images in that week. That means that any one member can only give a 7/7 2% of the time. In an entire year they get to give 52 7/7 ratings maximum and even then must give 2600 other ratings. If this were implemented, the existing photos would have to be adjusted somehow to account for the fact that 7/7 are currently unlimited. One simple method would be to simply add a new rating of "8" that is the new highest rating possible. Then the existing ratings could be left alone.

 

I think we haev to keep the system as open and free as possible. I think raters would bear a system where they can earn the usage of the highest rating, but I think requiring comments or certain comment lenghts will indeed run people away. Especially those of us who generally try to be helpful and concise with our comments.

 

Make a system that is friendly to honest members, not limiting based on the dishonesty of a few. I think we can eventually get to a point where we have so many honest users that the efforts of the abusers are neglegible.

Marc pointed out this thread to me so I thought I might drop in a few suggestions.

 

It looks like incremental changes are the best we might hope for, so let me start with a few relatively simple ideas (simpler that startng from scratch at least).

 

1) Drop Originality/Aesthetics and make it one simple rating for each image. This has been discussed to death and it seems there is a consensus that they aren't used consistantly enough to be used for scoring. Instead, just ask "how good" the image is on the scale.

 

2) Make subscribing much more valuable.

 

2a) Limit storage space based on subscriber status. Lets say that non-subscribers get 1 or 2MB of storage (enough for 10 or 20 images) and subscibers get 10 or 20MB (10 times as much). You could even sell more storage in 10MB increments to those who wish to have large portfolios on the site.

 

Along with this you could also strictly limit image sizes to 100kB for non-subscribers and 200kB for subscribers. That way those who wish to be allowed better quality JPEGs will be pleased as well. At the same time, members who compress to a reasonable quality will inherently be allowed more images than those who always use maximum quality.

 

2b) Another annoyance is the "Medium" image size. A resaved JPEG at 75% is the first impression people get of our images. A better solution is to simply force the desired file size and pixel dimensions to start with. If you want 600x600 images less than 80kB, then specify that and show the original image that we upload.

 

And why not enforce some limits on pixel dimensions. To keep it simple, just set a limit on height+width. And maybe make it different for subscibers. So, let's say non-subscibers get 1000 pixels (500x500) and subscibers get 1600 (800x800). This allows for panoramics as well.

 

If an image is outside the pixel dimensions or the image size limits, either reject it during the upload process or tell the member that you have to resize it to meet the limits. For those of us who abide by the rules and try our best to submit a nice looking JPEG, let the others see what we actually submitted.

 

The result would be that people would take more care in compressing their photos to a reasonable size so they can upload more images and at the same time, the value of subscribing would be much greater (10 times more images instead of 2 times more). And, subscibers would be allowed to have larger, better quality photos on the site.

 

2c) Make uploading and submitting photos separate actions. Let us upload and delete images in our portfolios without ever automatically submitting any of them to be rated (no New Uploads page). Then allow members to submit any image from their portfolio into a Ratings Gallery (see below) for comment and critique. Non-subscibers may get to submit 1 or 2 images a week while subscibers may get 1 per day. These might go to a "New Submissions" page which would replace the "New Uploads" page, but it would have much fewer images.

 

3) Create Rating Galleries

 

Portfolio images would be submitted into a Ratings Gallery, much like the existing Categories. The difference is that the score from within a category is kept separate from other ratings. So, one image may be submitted into multiple galleries and receive different scores from each. A landscape-portrait photo may be a great portrait, but a mediocre landscape image, so it might get 6/7 from the Portrait Gallery and only 4/7 from the Landscape Gallery.

 

Galleries could be anything at all, specific or general, and it they could be added as we go along. So, we could have general categories like: "General Photography", "Snapshots", "B&W", "Landscapes"; and at the same time have specific ones like: "B&W Baby Portraits", "Bird Photography", and "Beach Sunsets". One image could be submitted to the "B&W" gallery one day and then submitted to the "B&W Portraits" gallery the next day. Scores could be kept for up to 5 or so categories for each image and maybe a non-Gallery score and a "Total Score" could be calculated as well.

 

Rating would occur inside the Galleries, so in the "B&W" gallery you are simply rating how good the image is as a "B&W" photo. The best of each Gallery could be displayed on a page and the a couple of images from each could be placed on the "Top Photos" page. If you get a lot of categories, you could simply use statistics to determine which photo's make the Top Photo page.

 

This does a few things that would help the site. It vastly reduces the visibility of non-submitted photos and limits the number of submissions per member. Rating from a portfolio page (where mate-raters live) would be a non-Gallery rating, so it would not count towards the Gallery Ratings at all, even though it could affect the total image score. It also spreads out the competition quite a bit. Instead of only one Top Photo page, there is one for each Gallery and only an image or two from each will make the "Top Photos" page.

 

The existing scores can be kept as the initial non-Gallery rating and we all start from scratch with the Gallery Ratings.

 

4) Comment Galleries

 

It also might be nice to have a few comment Galleries for people who have real questions about improving their skills. Maybe a "Beginner" gallery, a "Lighting" Gallery, a "Composition" gallery, etc. Members would not be able to rate anything in the "Comment Galleries".

 

------------------------------------

 

I know that even those ideas would take some effort, but much less than what I proposed before and they can be added to the existing system without big changes.

 

Carlos, consider the ubiquitous 50mm f/1.8 lens. It's fast, sharp, and cheap. A 35mm or 28mm prime could be useful as well, but are probably more expensive than the 50mm.

 

Then consider fast negative film, 800 to 1600 in color or B&W (like Fuji NPZ 800, Fuji Press 1600, Fuji Neopan 1600, etc.) Try to avoid pushing the film unless there's no other way to get the shots.

 

Be careful out there, those anti-war people are dangerous you know...

Terri, whoever is doing the site obviously doesn't know how to resize your images properly. On the page you listed, there is a JPEG (virgil.jpg) that is almost 400kb. That is about 10 times what it needs to be. Likewise, the thumbnails on the calendar page are way to large (30 to 40kb) when they could be around 4kb.

 

It looks like the creator is using the "width" tag to force the 1650x1200 pixel image to be 352 pixels wide and the 400x300 pixel thumbnals to be about 150 wide. This is a tremedous waste of bandwidth. Your site really takes about 10 times too long to view. I suffered through those 2 pages with my 56k modem and it took several minutes to get it all downloaded.

 

It's fine to scan the image at a high resolution, but resixe them to the proper sizes at which they will be viewed. The entire point to making thumbnails is that the viewer can see a small, fast version of the images. Most people still have modems and the large file sizes make your site almost unbearable to them.

 

One other thing I just thought of is a polarizer. It will reduce a lot of the reflections you are seeing, but they can dim the scene about 1 to 2 stops depending on the amount you select by rotating the filter.

If you really want to do it right, make sure the camera has manual focus.

With manual focus and SLR lenses, there is a distance scale on the lens. You simply align "20 feet" with the a white line on the lens. You can also use AF and focus on an object at the distance you want and while holding the shutter halfway, pan the camera to the desired spot (this can be a little tricky with some cameras).

 

With P&S cameras, this may not be possible. Which digital do you have?