PeterKrenek

It is a pity indeed. In the old times, Photos of the Week were a great feature and a place for discussion.

Hello, I see a bug, when I click an image in Trending photos and then return back to the thumbnails, I do not get the same set of thumbnails, i.e. another page opens. This is quite annoying because it happens when you have not yet looked at all the thumbnails from the original page. The same happens if you refresh the page with thumbnails. Could you do something about it, please?

Hello everyone, I have a few suggestions for the new rating system. I believe that the new rating system:

 

1) should be easy: four categories (Aesthetics...) to judge for the rater are too much. One category (1-7 like in the old site) or just Admire/Skip should be enough. Furthermore, it is difficult to judge Postprocessing for many people as they might not know how much PP is behind the image.

 

2) should be as objective - fair as possible - best anonymous (double blind) the rater should not know the identity of the rated photographer and vice versa

 

3) should be effective in helping to create the order of photos in the Trending Photos page, views should not matter, as they, at present, can be easily manipulated by simply pressing "Refresh" in the browser, even by the photographs authors themselves. Currently, the Trending photos are not in an ideal state, some good photograps get very few views, while some average ones get a lot of them. May be just my opinion, though.

 

4) it would be good to stimulate users to rate - one e.g. could earn points, may seem silly for some, but many people like games and it works on other sites and I think that this way others could see who is active and helps the site to be run. I leave this up to the admins whether some distinctions/benefits for active raters/critiquers could be created. The higher number of ratings per photo, the more objective its placement in the Trending photos.

 

5) there should be a kind of a "rating room" where the rater is viewing only a single image at a time, with no scrolling elements in the visual interface and being able to select a category to rate, and having the Rate 1-7 (or Admire/Skip) + Report button, and a Critique/Comment box. Nothing else. Upon rating, another image would be displayed. This is something that was there already in the previous version of PN. The rating would remain anonymous, the comment not. The list of Critiques as it is now makes it difficult to rate a higher number of photos.

Michael, yes, the system implies that if you do not give an "Admire", then you select "not admire/Ignore, skip". What I suggest is to have a place for rating, viewing a sequence of photos one after another with nothing else displayed than the photo and controls of "Admire, Skip". The way thing are now, you have to open each photo's page to "Admire" it. It takes time and people do not have the time nowadays. The site has needed to increase the evaluation of photos (even in the old version), so that the users opinions on a photo are more reliably reflected in the order of Trending photos. Look at todays Trending photos, three photos of Franz Weber are on the top, with no "Admires", just many views - and not unique views, another problem I have written about in my post. If Admires are a way to showcase the best photos in the Trending photos, then there would need to be at least 10 Admires for a photo to make things meaningful and separate the chaff from the grain. IMHO

Glenn, good to see that you are listening.

1) I would suggest that only "unique views" are counted in their order in the Trending photos. If I display my own image several times, the number of views increases. This should not be the case because one (or with the help of friends) could easily cheat to and make the photo go up in the Trending photos.

2) Furthermore, I miss some form of rating. "Admires" is ok, but one has to open the image and "admire". I suggest that you create something similar to the old rating system with no graded response, with only the image displayed and only two buttons "Admire/Skip (or Not Admire)" and a Report button for offensive images.

At 1x.com they did that well, the images the users evaluate are anonymous to the rater and one has to wait for three seconds to be allowed to rate ("Publish/Not Publish") and then another image is automatically displayed to be rated. The users also earn points for their rating activity and comments (which may seem pointless, yet it may stimulate some to be active).

3) The Trending Photos do not seem to reflect the quality of images as much as the Top Rated Photos did in the old system (perhaps it is only my opinion, take it with a grain of salt). How is the order of photos determined?

4) I believe it should be possible to filter the Trending Photos using photo categories, like in the old system.

5) "Your activity" should contain a "Follow-up on comments"

Best regards. Peter

<p>Hi Steve,<br>

it is a matter of color management by browsers. I had this problem some time ago, our PN colleague <a href="/photo/13298873">Jan Matussik resolved this for me in this thread</a>. For viewing images I now use Firefox with the settings suggested by Jan. Let me know if it worked for you.<br>

Best regards.<br>

Peter</p>

<p>Bob, I had exactly the same problem, here is the solution:<br>

Novoflex 1/4"-20 Female / 1/4"-20 Female Threaded Adapter<br>

<a href="https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=NOSCX&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&typedValue=&Top+Nav-Search=">https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=NOSCX&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&typedValue=&Top+Nav-Search=</a><br>

<br />Hope this helps.<br>

Best regards,<br>

Peter</p>

<p>Hi Benjamin, I did a lot of star trails with film (Velvia 100F) with a 35mm camera and Pentax 67II (which has a special mode for long exposures that do not drain the battery). If you wish to have some blue color in the sky with star trails, then start your exposure about an hour after the sunset, at the onset of nautical twilight. If you wish to have a dark sky, then you shall have to wait. I always used f/4 or f/5.6 focused at infinity and exposed for a maximum of one hour, but as mentioned above, if the sky is dark and there are no near light sources then you practically cannot overexpose even if you make a several hour exposure. The best way is to make a test yourself. A good idea is also look up how lightpaint some foreground for your star trails (<a href="/photo/13530112&size=lg">example</a>). Good luck!<br>

Best regards.<br>

Peter</p>

<p>Hi, I had a Pentax 67II with AE prism, 45mm f/4; 105mm f2.4 and 200mm f/4 lenses that I bought on e-bay back in 2009 and I only sold it last year. I did not have a single issue with the gear and was very satisfied with it. The camera had all the features that I needed, it was easy to use (just like an advanced film 35mm camera) except that it was better to shoot from a tripod, it was heavy (but so are many other MF cameras). No battery drain with long exposures (it has a special feature for that) was crucial for long nighttime exposures. I loved it, but went digital which gives me more flexibility.</p>

<p>I owned the Pentax 67II with 45mm f/4, 105mm f/2.4 and 200mm f/4 lenses, and it was a wonderful camera. A strong build, very reliable operation, very good metering with the automatic exposure prism, very little battery consumption on very long exposures. I have just sold it because I would like to invest more in my lenses for my digital camera. And it is difficult to find labs that develop film and it takes very long to do so. But if this is not a problem for you, just buy one, you shall not be dissapointed. The only limitation that I noticed is that with long lenses, the movement of large focal plane shutter creates vibrations that blur the image at speeds approx. between 1/60 and 1/2s.</p>

<p>And the larger image that did not fit the 700px inline limit.</p><div></div>

<p>Hi Karl, why not, here is the image ! I have to say, though, that the white bacgkround here does not do darker picture justice.<br /> Best regards,<br /> Peter</p><div></div>

<p>Hi Karl, why not, here is the image !<br>

Best regards,<br>

Peter</p>

<p>Here is the file.</p><div></div>

<p>Hi Karl, here is my try at the original file. I was tempted to go black and white, but kept the colour at the end.</p>

<p>John, I made several MF format stitches, one of eight 6x7 frames (<a href="/photo/11133241&size=lg">here</a>), some even more - 18 (<a href="/photo/11750584&size=lg">here</a>). Before having gone going digital, I had a transition period where I treated film captures as if I they were digital, using it for panoramas. I had the advantage that a good friend of mine scanned my slides on a Nikon CoolScan 9000 ED for free. A very good scanner. Drum scan has a slight edge, but not as much as is the difference in price for the scans. You can easily stitch MF scans provided you had the same exposure on all frames to be stitched. The biggest challenge I faced with the night panorama was the slight vignetting, I had to adjust this in each individual frame separately before stitching. You can experiment with smaller versions of the files.</p>

<p>Pentax 67II, SMC Pentax 67 45 mm. Velvia 100F. Two exposures blended in PS: one at f/4, 45 minutes focused at infinity, about an hour after sunset; second for the foreground, 3 minutes at f/8 focused at 3 m, multiple flashes. This is the only image I made using medium format in 2011. I enjoyed this shooting occasion very much.</p><div></div>

<p>Perspective is not DOF, but I tried to achieve<a href="../photo/14225718"> large DOF by focus bracketing</a> with a 100 mm lens on a crop body and the effect is similar. I do not know whether this is what you are after.</p>

<p>Another vote for Canon 550D (Rebel T2i) or 600D (T3i).</p>

<p>Josh, currently, 336 of my photos have attracted 1787 comments. Though the workspace loads faster and I believe it is an improvement, I suggest that not all photos that attracted comments should immediately appear when I wish to see just the recent ones. You could perhaps add a feature when you are one click away from seeing recent comments and this page could contain a link to see the rest. Would it not reduce the database requests better than immediately showing all the 336 photos that attracted comments ?</p>

<p>I choose film when making very long exposures, such as star trails, avoiding the problems with noise encountered with digital cameras. I also choose film when I want to record smooth gradations of tones, film records the scene a bit differently than digital sensors. I like the look of film. I use medium format for its high resolution (6x7 film has 4 x the area of a full frame sensor), shallow depth of field with longer lenses (good for portraits). Shooting digital is enjoyable, but I learned hard whatever I know from trial and error with film, which was costly, but worth it. Cost makes you think twice before you press the shutter. Hastiness is not a photographer's friend.</p>

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<p>For macro, I can only recommend the 100 mm f/2.8L IS USM. Razor sharp, nice bokeh. Diffraction is not an issue until f/32 when the image becomes just slightly softer. I love this lens.</p>

<p>Pentax 67II with AE prism has 6-zone matrix, center-average or spot metering. I am very satisfied, finding myself using the matrix option most of the time. Sometimes you have to compensate the exposure, but this is not different from the "imperfections" of metering systems in 35 mm SLRs.</p>