mcgarity

A nice juicy steak I can handle. But I think its ribs tonight which is okay by me. Enjoy the parade. I'll think of you at 3AM in the morning on the way up Mt. Evans to photograph mountain goats.

Can't stand em. You can have mine.

Many years ago I was chatting with a man who had been one of my college professors. We were discussing physics. I wasn't satisfied with the mathematics that explained the subject at hand. I just had to know why the universe operated the way it did. I kept pressing him on that issue and asking "why." He finally got fed up and told me that he could explain who, where, when, what, and how. But there in the final analysis there is seldom if ever a clear cut answer to why.

 

Why do you like red and I like blue? Why do you love liver and I can't stand it? Why does my wife hate Mexican food? Why can't those idiots in the other political party see how wrong they are? Why do some people like jazz and others country music? And last but not least why doesn't someone like my photograph? Because they don't, thats why!!!

I haven't taken anything out of context. I repeat when someone gives you a 1 or a 2 they have already spoken quite clearly and they don't owe you any further explaination. If they choose to give you one thats fine. But you are not entitled to an explaination as a matter of course and I don't think you should be.

 

If you post photos you are going to get extreme ratings that you don't think are fair and don't agree with. It happens to all of us. None of us like it. Personally I KNOW I don't have a single photo listed that is deserving of a 3 in either category but I have plenty of them all the same.

 

Trying to force someone to justify a low rating is really an attempt to engage in a dialog to convince them they are wrong so you can salvage wounded pride. Its not worth the effort or the heartburn. Grab your camera, take some photos, and quite worrying about what someone lacking your impecable sense of taste thinks or why they think it.

I'll take your word on what the stated goal of the site is. Its been a good while since I looked at that section of the site. As far as an individual improving their photography, Photo.net has a number of forums on here that designed to do just that. But if memory serves thats not the stated goal of the what the rating system is all about.

 

In general I think the rating system is useless as far as improving the quality of ones work. As has often been stated in here, its nothing more than a popularity contest. Thoughtful comments may indeed be of some value and I fully support giving them when they are voluntary. But just how helpful do you really think they are going to be if you try to force them?

 

I believe in trying to help out where you can. I have rated about 4000 photos and commented on around 2200 the last time I looked. A good number of those comments included tips and suggestions on how a person could improve their photography. That was done voluntarily. The moment you tell me I have to do so, I will stop entirely.

I will give long odds that neither you nor the many others that complain about this actually leave comments when they themselves give a rating of 3 or lower. No offense to anyone, but I think the idea of requiring comments is silly. And to get outraged that people don't is even sillier.

 

A low rating speaks for itself. If someone rates a photo as a 1, 2, or 3 they have already told you in unmistakeable terms what they think of it. They may be right, they may be wrong but they are entitled to their point of view without having to justify it to you?

David I posted a "nude" today. In some ways its off topic but in some its not. You would have to see it to know what I mean. In about 4 hours its garnered more ratings than most of my images ever get and they range from 1/1 to 7/7 with everything in between, including a 1/7. A few months back I had the same image in my portfolio under pets or some such. In the entire 4 months or so it was in my portfolio it got a grand total of 9 ratings. (None of them a 1/1 or a 7/7 by the way.) The nude category most definately steal the show. No doubt about it.

"They were clearly written by the IRS or CIA."

 

Thats not a fair comparison. Photo.nets official explainations might not be simple, but when it comes to convoluted, they aren't in the same league with the IRS. Its impossible for anything to be as "convoluted and ridiculously complicated" as the tax code.

James wrote "[Not all poor people are stupid and ignorant, but very few rich people are]."

 

 

James have you ever heard Paris Hilton speak? Or Britney Spears? I think either one of those two would prove you wrong.

Another day, another proposed change to fix the ratings system problems. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I have come to believe the only solution worth considering is primal scream therapy. Next time you get low balled give it a shot. Its not going to change a damn thing but it might make you feel better.

I had a 6/2 on a photo once. At the time I thought that was bizarre. But a 1/7 is off the scale of wierdness.

Is an EF 24-70 f2.8L worthy of possessing? Absolutely! It is a very very good lens. Its expensive but well worth it. Its also heavy but after you use it a time or two you probably won't mind the weight.

I believe what you want can be found under the "file" drop down menu at the top left on your screen in the fileviewer utility. If I remember correctly you click on save and then you can select whether to save the embedded jpeg or save the image as a TIFF image.

Off the top of my head I don't know what PE3 is. But if you want to view the embedded jpeg contained in a RAW file you need to extract it using the Canon fileviewer utility. You should have gotten that with your camera. Under the drop down menu it has a provision for extracting the embedded jpeg.

I am curious. Could there possibly be any complaint about the rating system that hasn't been posted 100 times already, complete with at least 10 times that many suggestions for changing it? This whole subject gets to be so depressing that if I were one of the moderators I think I would long since have jumped out the tallest window I could find without a parachute.

 

The rating system has a ton of imperfections and problems. In fact I will admit that I think the best word to describe it is dysfunctional. But truthfully no matter how good a photo may be someone somewhere is not going to like it. That's a fact of life and you are never going to change it. Life gets a whole lot sweeter when you come to the conclusion that the anonymous rater has a right to their opinion and you have a right to ignore it.

Every time I see someone complain about having received a low rating without explaination, I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. The next thing I want to do is ask them how many 3/3 ratings they have given with a verbal reason stating why.

 

If someone leaves you a low rating, the message is pretty clear. They don't like your photograph. What else do you need to know?

 

You are never going to please everyone. Thats guaranteed. No matter how good your photograph is someone is going to dislike it. And the flip side is, now matter how poor it may be someone is going to sing its praises. Thats also pretty much a certainty.

 

I firmly believe you should be your own worst critic and work to please yourself. If you can manage to do that, count your blessings.

"Or in the case of digital, you can use a RAW developer to develop the same frame twice, one darker and one lighter, or you can even merge two shots at different exposure. But that is a bit complicated and would be a lot of work if you need to process many images that way."

 

Two separate shots works better than one RAW image thats decoded twice. And merging the two is not difficult at all. It takes a lot longer to describe the process than it does to actually do it. You can merge two images in about 30 seconds if you do it manually. And with the help of an action or two you can clip a little time off of that.

I have had an FD 35-105mm f3.5 a good long time (and yes it does take a 72mm filter.) I have always been pleased with its sharpness and contrast. In my opinion, its a very good lens.

 

I suppose Canon could have made a version of this lens that didn't take 72mm filters. If they did I am unaware of it.

I wish Photo.net would allow you to edit comments. You spot mangled syntax and grammar immediately after you hit confirm and not a damn thing you can do about it. It is so damn annoying.

There are probably a number of things that can cause what you describe. One that I know will cause it is lens element separation. I have that seen that before with FD wide angle lenses more than 20 years old. Look at the front of the lens and see if you spot anything that looks like bubbles or little white spots on the black paint. If that is your problem it will cost a couple hundred U.S. dollars to get fixed. Thats more than the lens is worth.

I bought the EF-S 10-22mm last December. When I first got it I found it was very difficult to render anything that appeared OUT of focus at 10mm. So I using an excel spreadsheet I did som hyperfocal distance calculations.

 

 

At f4 a 10mm lens on a 1.6 crop factor camera body has a hyperfocal distance of 4.37 feet. At f5.6 its 3.12 feet. At f8 it drops to 2.19 feet. (These were calculated using a COC of 0.01875 mm)

 

The moral of the story is that at 10mm, autofocus is of dubious value to you. The easiest thing is to use manual focus and set the lens to the hyperfocal distance. It's damn difficult to get anything out of focus using that method.

Patricia

 

I am definately not the expert on this. I have been a member of Photo.net for some time and yesterday was the first time I ever tried this. That said here goes nothing.

 

Go to the critique forum page. On the right hand side where it says "Recent(Rate) (List) (Browse)" click on Browse. There are a number of options at the top of the screen for searching. It allows you to search by category, by number of ratings received, and so on. I found it to be pretty nifty. I wish I had made use of this feature long ago.

Thank you Brian.

I have never tried to do a search on "rate recent" until tonight. I

decided to search the landscape category for a photo that I

submitted yesterday. It was easy enough to find but I do not

understand the numbers associated with it. It showed "Rating=

11.67, K=6." This has got me scratching my head.

 

On a scale of 1 to 7 I don't see how you come up with a score of

11.67 so obviously I am missing something. I suppose it could be

the sum of aesthetics and originality rating but thats just a guess

on my part. As to what K=6 means, I don't have a clue.

 

I tried looking in the FAQ to try and gain insight. I could not

find anything that explained these numbers. If someone could or

would educate me about this I would be grateful.

Its the stuff the fungus leaves behind that actually does the damage. Trying to kill the fungus by exposing the lens to light does not address the real problem. Fungal waste products eat the lens coatings. Even if you can shine enough light on the fungus to kill it (which seems somewhat problematic) you still won't have removed the acid etching into the glass that is already present.