adzy

Coupel of things-

1. if you camera has a mirror lock up feature, remember to use that.

2. If your tripod allows it, hang your camera bag for added stability

3. I have seen only a couple of images with HDR. If lighting situation is such that you have high contrat (bright and shadow areas), consider exposure bracketing and merging them for HDR.

4. I remember reading this tip somehwere. If you throw up a handful of sand into the light shafts, they will show up better.

Enjoy and share your photos with us!

Thank you everyone for the replies.

I do check Strobist from time to time. They dont have any suggestions other light science and magic whcih I already have.

I'll take a look at the Kodak book.

Azi

hello everyone, I was wondering if you could suggest a good book on Product

Lighting. I do already have the bible- 'Light, Science and Magic'. I was

wondering if there was any other book you could suggest.

I am looking for something similar to Chris Grey's book on portrait

photography. Actual on-hand tips (ex. white card behind bottle to give it a

glow), examples, lighting schemes.

In terms of skill, i would rate myself as an advanced amateur. You can see some

of my photos at http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=218002 if you care.

Thanks,

Azi

No, its not, because you are doing the compression in teh software layer, not the hardware.

The picture taking proces sis the same for both 12/6 meg scenarios. Its the jpeg-compression process that decides how much to compress it by. In fact because you are using more compression, you might end up with more noise.

BTW, the G9 is not an EOS.

Let me see if I can explain this-

1. camera's do not have filter sizes, lenses do. The filter size of a lens is determined by the size of the front element- the part of the lens which is furthest from the camera when attached to the camera.

So as you change lenses the filter size requirement may change.

2. You wanted to know if you can fit the 77mm filter on to the "58mm filter camera". I assuem you meant fitting the 77mm onto a 58mm lens front. The answer is to use stepping ring as others have suggested. Will it cause vignetting ? No if teh filter size is more than the lens filter size- it should not.

However you will find it problematic attaching teh lens cap during storage if you use the stepping rings. If it bothers you- get a 58mm size filter instead.

2.

I assume a high key background is marketed for high key photos.

In which case you dont really need a special one- you could just get a gray background and turn it any colour by gelling the light and controlling the light intensity- even white.

Is there a specific reason you are looking for this particular one ?

Remember that for shooting buildings- you can always take 2 or more shots and stitch them together.

I find that 80% of my shots are within the 24-100 mm range. So depending on how frequesntly you plan to use a telephoto you could rent or buy.

A prime would be cheaper but not as useful as a zoom for certain events- weddings etc.

I would suggest trying out 3rd party lenses too- sometimes you get rather good quality at a lower price than Canon.

Thought I would write in about my recent service experience with canon which

went great.

I was having problems with my canon 5D shuuter- white streaks in the middle of

the photo. Canon had asked me to mail one of my lenses with the camera. So I

sent in the 50/1.4 which had autofocus problems- and they not only repaired teh

camera, but the lens too for free (lens was not under warranty) !

1. People were rather friendly and helpful. Wait times on the phone was

minimal.

2. repair got done in around 5 business days- so thats was good.

On the cons side-

1. The web site doesnt reflect teh repair statuses. I asked about this and was

told that they were having a problem with teh web page. I didnt receive any

email confirmation either.

To sum up, I would suggest that if you send in something for repair, call them

often to find out about the status. (I called them up to find out thaat they

were waiting for some info from me, though nobody had contacted me.

Overall good job, i am happy to get the camera back so fast and th elens

repaired for free!

FYI, I didnt get around to finally shooting these. But if I do, i will let you guys know. Thanks for all the answers.

Azi

Scott, mine is connected thru a USB cord to a Windows XP machine. If the device driver is not correctly set up or if windows does not recognize the tablet, the button does not glow.

So, check that you have installed teh drivers correctly (they are there on the wacom site). Else, the wacom might be a broeken one.

Application: Photoshop CS2

Short description: Similar to how levels can change luminosity range, is there

somthing for color hues ?

Long description:

I am trying to correct an image which has the subject's face on it. The problem

is that the foundation application was splotchy and different areas have

different color (It really as not bad as it sounds, but when you print it at

8X10 zommed in, it shows). I tried different techniques (duplicate layer-blur

and then mask , also tried duplicate layer-noise scratch filter-gaussian blur-

mask), but I am losing the skin texture.

So what I am thinking is that if I can contain the colors on the face, have the

entire range vary within 2 different color hues which are close.

To use the luminosity example, I can use the levels slider or curves to change

the luminosity levels so that tones come closer to each other. Can I do

something similar with the colors on the face ? The range of colors on the face

is not much, all i want to do is map it to a smaller color range, so that the

variations are less.

Thanks in advance. This is a long post, so for people with ADD (like me!) I put

in teh shorter question above.

Azi

This was the effect I was hoping to achieve.

http://www.photo.net/photo/3456073

i am looking to get a self-portrait done with my face covered in red mud. I am

hoping that I can get this effect with pottery clay. Anybody know of a large

chain that I can buy it at ?

Any other ideas as substitute for clay?

Thanks in advance.

Azi

As Ryan said, distance and modifiers are your friends. Keep a few basic rule sin mind and you will be ok.

Light falls off as the square of the distance. So try to poistion your main light as close to the subject as possible.

try to keep as far from the background as possible. You want separate control on each.

Use flags or scrims to block the mainlight from falling on the background.

Yes, you can always do it in Photoshop. But if you are like me and want to save yourself the work of retouching, get in right during the shoot.

Azi

There is nothing special about the combo that makes it any different from any camera.

You will use the PC-sync cord connection on the side. Canon cameras usually have a max sync voltage rating for each camera. If the alien bee is higher than that or if you are concerned about the well being of your camera- you can use an adaptor to dial-down the sync voltage. Soem of these adapters go into the camera hot shoe and are connected to the camera. This is why you might have read reports of the hot-shoe connection.

Hope that helps.

Azi

You have to decide how much you want to spend. If your budget is lesser, get a coupel of flashes- but you will miss not having enough power and modelling lights.

If you can afford it, get strobes. Here in the US, you cant beat performance/price of alien bees.

OK, so you want 2 things here-

1. underexpose the sky

2. expose subject correct

Your main bottleneck is the sync speed of 1/200.

So, first lets get the background right, so at ISO 100 (100 is cleaner than ISO 50 on the 5d), we meter the sky for 2 stops underexposure at 1/200, this gives us lets say f/16.

So, now you need to set up the strobes so that you get f/16 on the subject. This depends on how powerful your strobes are. If they are- go get your shot, if not maybe one of the alternatives below will work for you.

Alternate option is shoot 2 exposures, one for the sky (preferably with subject totally underexposed to black, so that it can be used as mask), and immediately one more with the flash properly exposed for the subject and merge the two with photoshop.

Your photo shows hard lighting on the subject, so you ahve to be careful with multiple lights, sicne the shadows will cross each other. However, you could experiment to see if multipel lights work for you- placed far enough to appear as one source.

Alternately, use more than one mirror to bounce back sunlight onto subject- however the shadows may become muddy with this.

Does it have to a blue sky, can you shoot at evening when the light intensity is much lower ? You can get by with a less powerful strobe.

Leaf shutters are great to work with, but given the advantages of digital, there is no reason it cant be done.

The 50/1.4 is actually well-known to suffer from this problem- google and you shall know.

I have a 50/1.4 which decided to behave this way too. It occasionally autofocuses, never sent it in for repait though. If you get an estimate, do let us know.

Azi

harry,

I use the ABs inside for single portaits and find the 400 perfect with no light modifiers or with umbrellas. With litepanels and softboxes, the 1600 would be good to have but the 800 would be fine.

I would say its mostly too much power for me, and I end up dialing down the lights.

You should install the 30d device driver before you plug in the camera thru the usb cable. Did you do in this order ? If you dont, then Windows tries to install its own driver and screws up.

If it still doesnt work, it woudl because the unistall feature did not remove the driver cleanly.

Ales, the card reader is not going to work, since Clint needs teh remote capture feature to work.

Louise, working in manual mode with flash is very different from taking photos in usual daylight and there is some learning involved.

Firstly, in manual mode, the meter doesnt show exposure compensation, but tells you whther the image will be underexposed or overexposed, basically it just works as a meter. This works when you are taking a photo without a flash, however, when you are taking photos with a flash, this is no longer relevant. This is because, while metering the flash does not fire, it fires only when taking the shot. so, disregard the meter reading in manual mode if you are taking photo with flash (unless you want background illuminated by ambient light, but lets not make it complicated).

When you are taking photos with a flash, make sure the shutter speed is set right(depends on what the synch speeed is for your camera, ususally 1/200 or less). Then experiment with different apertures (if you had a flash meter, it would calculate it for you).

BTW, this has got nothing to with Canon or Nikon, fundamentally this is how all cameras work with flash in manual mode.

Couple of questions that would help peopel identify the problem-

Is the enclosed image a crop or is 100% as shot ?

Did you shoot raw or jpeg ?

What ISO, shutter speed, aperture where you shooting at ?

Thank you for all the replies guy. I finally got myself a used L-558 at a great price! If you guys hadnt recommended it, I wouuldnt have gone looking.

Azi