mike butler

Let me throw this out...

It's fine to use photography as self-therapy. It's fine to use writing or painting or

scrapbooking as self-therapy. It's cool to use photography or writing (or journaling) or

scrapbooking or painting as education and enlightenment for the uneducated and

unenlightened.

But that ain't art.

Art trancends. Art lifts. It's not about me or you. It's about us and the human

condition.

Set shutter speed and f stop on the camera, yes. Your camera body and flash will talk to

each other and know what's going on. Your flash may be manually adjustable to control

it's beam spread. For example, it will know that you have a 50mm lens, say, and set itself

to that focal length. But you may be able to adjust for wider or narrower. The flash may

also let you compensate its output power by plus or minus 2 f stops to fine-tune

exposure.

You may not want to go there, though, at this stage.

For bounce flash, rubberband a piece of white card to the top of your flash so that it

extends a couple of inches past the flash tube. Aim your flash up at about a 45-degree

angle. The light will bounce off the card and toward your subject. Works pretty good in a

pinch.

Have fun.

Don't be intimidated. Practice at home in manual mode before you go to the store, if you can,

and you'll begin to see how it works. Keep it simple and set the shutter speed at 1/60 or

1/125. Use the histogram and the rgb screen on the back for feedback on whether you need

to increase or decrease your f stops.

Hi Carolyn,

You'll love it.

Avoid playing something like "House of Flying Daggers" on it. You'll really be done for

then.

Anymore it pains me to come in to work and have to look at this dreary Sony CRT in front

of me.

I didn't expect my post would be at the top of philosophy after all this time. Things have a

way of disappearing on pnet, don't they?

Anyway, I appreciate the discussion.

Thomas, I think you got to the heart of the matter, as usual. Your "Taco Bell Sunrise," and I

think you should call it that, was very existential--artistic even.

Allow me to wish blessings this week on all of you who shoot and share, and think and

care.

Just to reiterate.

The Canon ef 400/5.6L mm is one the few bargains Canon gives you in long teles. On a 20d,

that's a 640mm, if my math is right. What the heck do you need a 500mm prime for, and all

the hoops you have to jump through to do it in MF?

Fred Miranda has a Velvia plug-in, too, or at least he did the last time I looked a couple of

weeks ago.

Why not get the Canon 400mm and the 1.4? You're looking at a lot of reach for maybe

$1,400 there.

It's a bit of a pain, but you could use Elements as a raw converter, then switch over to CS1.

That would give you Bridge, too.

Alternatively, you could use something like Canon's DPP or Capture One light.

See how they print. If you're very lucky, they'll print Ok at longer exposures with a low

filter (or no filter at all).

As last resort you could dunk the roll in reducer. Post a new question on that if you get to

that point.

Best of luck.

Paper makes a difference. Try some Velvet Fine Art and you'll see why.

Persons who have done window tests over in the yahoo forums say enhanced matte is prone

to yellowing and fading, but it's price and tonal response make it an excellent proofing paper

for many other popular brands of premium rag papers.

Hope that helps a little.

Some of it has to do with image and getting respect.

A pro could take a perfectly good shot with Alien Bees and a Canon, but he has to show up

with Hasselblads and Broncolors.

You can build a dynamite portfolio mid-tier equipment, but when the agency calls, have

your Amex ready.

;-)

Thomas,

I'm glad you picked that one. I was hoping that some philosophy forumers might read

those two pieces, reflect, and maype posit some questions of their own.

But let's branch off into cynicism in this thread...

I liked that essay.

It scares me to think that someone might be scared off from taking a picture because he

or she goes on the internet too much and hears "that's been done before."

It occurs to me that people have had sex before, too, but that doesn't doesn't stop them

from dabbling in it again from time to time.

Maybe we should recognize that photography is an experience...and an art?

That link could cause a little confusion, sorry. These will get you right there:

http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1106/dm1106-1.html

http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1006/gt1006-1.html

Gads. I should have proofread the confirm window a little more carefully. Sorry.

Magazine publishers wouldn't be very happy either if they had to junk all their G4s and G5s.

Hi all,

I haven't been to this site in a while:

http://www.naturephotographers.net

But this month features a fascinating piece by Guy Tal on cynicism and another one on existentialism and

photography.

Thought you might be interested.

But what I really wanted to ask is what you all thought about this digital thing? Do you think it'll catch on?

;-)

If your present setup works great, there's no compelling reason you need to upgrade for a

year, maybe two. CS2 is still a very powerful tool. But the handwriting is on the wall for power

pc macs, just as they replaced the 68xxx chips. I would think CS3 would require an intel chip.

I'd go with the hassy, too. It's been handling studio lights quite well for about 50 years. My

preference would be FP4 for portraits. Wouldn't use expired slide film. Why go through all

that to risk film failure or funky color shifts? That'll really make you look like a beginner. I

wouldn't use Velvia. Try Astia. Some of the negative color films like Portra are lovely and give

you a little more tolerance with exposures that are slightly off the mark.

Best of luck--and have fun.

Rajat,

You've received some good answers here. But to simplify, in a low light situation you

probably want the flash to be the main source of light. In Tv or Av mode, the camera and

flash want to expose the ambient situation and add flash as fill. To have the flash be the

main source of light, you need to be in manual mode (or program mode, which isn't all

that bad, really, for metering's sake). That's maybe 1/90 or 1/60 at f/4 or so. Season to

taste.

I still use a 420ex that I bought with my Elan 7 with a 5D. You can further control the 420

by dialing in minus or plus flash compensation. Practice. Practice.

Elements was slow, but I wouldn't say painfully slow on my intel iMac. (I'm using CS2 now,

and it isn't all that bad for a plodding, low-production guy such as myself.) One of the

best parts about elements without PS is Bridge. But the latest version of iphoto isn't really

all that bad either. And You may not have to wait that long. We're all hoping adobe

upgrades next spring.

Well, I'm at work now with CS. At home, I set the preferences in Bridge so that it allows the

cache to travel with files (outside of bridge). This is useful in another way because it

retains the way you want photos ordered on a CD (for slideshows and such).

The trouble here might be that your friend didn't have her preference set that way so the

cache didn't move with the transfer to the CD and your computer.

I could give you a more detailed answer in a few hours, unless someone else can jump in.

It could be you just need to reset bridge cache preference. If it's set to bridge-only, then

data won't travel well to other computers/media.

Hope that helps a little.

You might try getting a print or two made at west coast imaging.

http://www.westcoastimaging.com/

They've got an Epson 9800 set up with Photo Black and offer Crane Museo Silver Rag.

You can upload your own files (still not that cheap) or send them raw files (very

expensive). But the quality difference from mpix will astound you.

Best of luck.

Dan,

You are most generous. Can you get it to me before I have to shoot a wedding Saturday?

(should I shoot that in jpeg or raw?)

;-)