qiang_lin

<p>David Hobby had a good post on lighting models with darker skin, and he asked her to wear white!<br>

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2013/08/on-assignment-radiance.html</p>

<p>Mark, I believe the strobe works as focusing assistant when popped up - that's my impression when I was taking pictures in low light situation a couple of days ago. The slow sync mode does a decent job, but only suitable for casual snap shots. That is limited by on camera strobe and color temperature differences. </p>

<p>Well, interesting that as Bruce said, the camera does allow a much tighter AF area when the magnify button is pressed. I tried that and it worked well. So they can definitely make the areas smaller and not adjacent to each other, just like the DSLR style. Actually with smaller areas, the camera doesn't have to search over as many pixels so probably the shutter lag can be improved when the software is written properly.<br>

Did Olympus make the decision because they are also targeting people had only used point and shoots with no concept of focusing? At least that's my guess. It would be nice if they give an option you can use smaller areas simultaneously or just single areas that can be quickly selected. Being an engineer, I figure it's not difficult to change the user interface to something similar to SLRs.</p>

<p>Thanks for your inputs. So I guess that I should set a smaller AF area, the default AF area seems to be too big. I wonder why Olympus made them so big, the (D)SLRs all have much smaller AF areas and they work perfectly. Usually I don't use face detection (I can see the faces, so why ask the camera to guess?), I was just trying it when I had AF issue. Olympus claims it should detect the eyes and lock the focus to the closer eye, but it locked to my son's nose most of the time (no, his nose is normal, there is no high contrast lines on it).</p>

<p>Static, it's not due to the shutter lag. When I review the picture on it, it does show that the focus point was not at the desired place, e.g., on the collar of my son instead of his face (when face detection is enabled).</p>

<p>I just got this e-pl2 recently and I'm having trouble with focusing. On my (D)SLRs and point & shoot cameras, I fixed the focusing area to the center and the cameras work reliably. On point & shoot cameras, I can also use face detection, which also works well. When face detect enabled on e-pl2, it shows a white square around the subject's face, but often a green square (the actual focusing point, I believe) somewhere else.<br>

If I disable face detection, and enable only the center focusing area, it still doesn't give me razor sharp focusing as I get from my other cameras. Well, at least when the green square is almost the same or larger size of the subject. <br>

Does anyone have experience with this? How do you achieve reliable focus with e-pl2?<br>

<br />Thanks.</p>

If your flashes are the same model, you may be able to split quite a lot of times. The trigger on a camera is just to "short circuit" the trigger signal. Modern flashes use low voltage and very lower current on trigger signals, so the camera can short them quite effectively.

 

Personally I'm using ebay RF triggers to avoid cabling trouble.

Take a look at www.strobist.com

 

You can also buy those strobe kits, but they may not be as portable. You need to either use big battery packs or AC to power them out door.

 

For a basic kit, I don't think the difference in cost is significant between strobist and strobe kits.

Not sure whether this is helpful. I drilled a hole on my Sunpak 383 ( I assume the Sync socket is the same), and put a standard socket (the type for stereo headphones) in, which worked pretty well. You can also swap the existing socket, or just tap 2 wires and pull them out of the hole of that socket. Another option will be using a hotshoe PC adapter.

If it has a port for external display, most laptops do, I don't see why you need a docking station.

Hi Steven,

 

I bought the Sunpak recently. It worked pretty well. I didn't experience long cycling time other than the initial charge up, probably because none of the shots fully discharged the flash, and I usually don't shoot like a machine gun.

 

I don't plan to use Canon's fancy master/slave setup, so it is not a issue. If I need multiple lights, I'll do that in manual mode since I have more control. I'm learning that from www.strobist.com now.

 

Regarding focusing assistance, the pattern is slightly above the center focusing sensor when the subject is close. This is because the pattern is not very wide (so it can reach farther), and the flash has some tilt (as with many other flash units) when mounted on the hotshoe. I've heard that other third party flashes also have this problem. This doesn't bother me since I don't shoot in that kind of darkness.

 

Tilt and swivel work great for me that I can almost always find a surface to bounce the light. I also bough a low cost extension cord from B&H so that I can move the light further away from the camera and I can point it to any direction without tilt and swivel.

I have Sunpak 383s. It's about the same as Vivitar, but with swivel.

While I can't say anything about Alienbees, I believe you can find a lot of good information at http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

 

There are good suggestions on how to build a useful (the author is a photo journalist) system at low budget. I'm building my system now. I did not follow the suggestion of getting used hotshoe flash, instead I got 2 new Sunpak 383 super.

Roger,

Since both tif and png are lossless formats, the image itself should be the same. However, the extra information such as gamma, etc. might have different implementation in different systems. Therefore, I don't think you will see difference in terms of sharpness. Give it a try, if you don't see difference in color, it should be fine.

Thank you for your responses. Actually I'm pretty familiar with compression algorithms as a communication/signal processing engineer. My question was: with similar or smaller file size and support on many platforms, how come png is not as popular as tif?

 

I guess it is because png is relatively new compare to tif, thus not well supported by photo finishing equipments. I read that there are some annoying bugs in implementations of web browsers despite the fact png was designed for web applications in the beginning.

 

Thank you all for your time and input.

Hello,

 

I understand that png was designed to replace gif to avoid patent issues, thus

it was not optimized for photos. Since it is lossless format, I gave it a try

days ago. Compare to the same images saved as tif with or without compression,

the png files were smaller.

 

My question is, if png has smaller file size, preserve the same information as

tif (at least the image itself), and is widely support on many platforms compare

to jpeg2000, why most people use tif as the standard lossless format (e.g. photo

finish, etc.)?

Hi,

 

When I was using my Elan 7E, I enabled eye control, so that the camera could

focus on the objects that I wanted it to focus on. However, there is no eye

control on my new 40D, a lot time it just picked some objects with sharp edges

in the frame, which results in out of focus pictures. I wonder what other people

do in this situation, assuming we only use auto focusing.

 

Another question is how to achieve very high accuracy focusing. I see a lot of

photos here shot with extremely shallow DOF. For example some portraits with

only one eye in focus, and the character's nose is out of focus. When I used eye

controlled 7E, it seems that off center sensors did not always achieve such

accuracy. But if those photos were focused by using the center sensor, then

recomposed, doesn't recomposition affect focusing since the DOF is so shallow?

 

Thanks,

Qiang

If you happen to live in Orange County, California, I recommend ProPhoto Connection (http://www.prophotoirvine.com/pages/processing.htm). I pay $2.5 for a roll of C-41 and $4.5 for a roll of E-6. Staffs are friendly. Not sure if they accept mail order

I was in market for a 30D, then I decided to wait for 40D for its larger viewfinder, better auto focusing, auto ISO. I don't care about higher number of pixels, and dislike the heavier weight. Had I got the 30D already, I wouldn't upgrade till 50D or 6D is out.

Thank you all for the great information. I'd love to get a FF body to use all my lenses as they were designed for, if 5D weren't that expensive/heavy/chunky.

 

What seems strange here is that since lenses at normal focal length are easy to make, there is no company trying to make a 50mm f1.8 equivalent in size, weight and price for crop bodies. Sigma 30mm f1.4 is very expensive as a normal lens, well, unless you are using Leica or Zeiss. I know that they all want higher profit, but 50mm f1.8 is cheap even if you double the price. Is that because people like us wanting a normal lens are just rare animals?

Thanks Peter. I really like the light weight and small size of the 35mm f2, but it seems a little bit long (56mm equivalent vs 44.8mm equivalent). Is the focusing much slower than 50mm f1.8? I don't mind the noise when focusing, and the focusing speed of the 50mm f1.8 is tolerable for me, although I desire something faster.

Thanks Danny. Actually I'm more concerned about image quality since I already know it is huge. But the price is much lower and my 50mm also only has f1.8, which I'm pretty happy with.

Danny, is there any reason that you are in favor of 30mm 1.4 than 28mm f1.8 other than it is faster?

I love my 50mm f1.8 on Elan 7E, and I am looking for something similar to buy

with a 1.6 crop body. Of course it is difficult to find a lens as

good/cheap/light as the 50mm f1.8.

 

I was looking at Canon 35mm f2 and Sigma 30mm f1.4, then came across this Sigma

28mm f1.8 on B&H's website. It is bulky and heavy compare to 50mm f1.8 and 35mm

f2, but much cheaper than Canon 28mm f1.8 and Sigma 30mm f1.4. Optical

performance wise, is it reasonable enough to be used as 50mm substitute? Does

anyone have experience with this lens?

 

Thanks for your advice.

Let me make it clear. I just liked the viewfinder on D80, but I'm not going back to Nikon from Canon because of that. I'm not just shopping for one body, I'm looking at the system. I already have some decent Canon lenses at reasonable price, and I really enjoy using them. This is not another Nikon vs Canon question. I just hope that one day, Canon will improve their viewfinders for lower end and middle range cameras, so we can enjoy their products more.