sarah_fox

<p>I admit the whole kernels are more visually grabbing! ;-)</p> <p>For the purpose of my photo, I think it would be good if everything weren't so new and fresh -- if it were a working mill with at least a few years of use on it and without a spanking clean floor. However, I just interpret the photo as the miller inspecting his finished mill sometime before the first harvest and dreaming of all the flour he's going to grind with it! It really is almost that, except that this may never become a working mill.</p>

<p>Charles, I was thinking of a Renaissance painting as well! I might have gotten away with magical light in a painting, but not in a photo. ;-) I like that you added the product coming out the chute! Nice PP on that detail, but... and I hate to say it... but it should be flour or cornmeal coming out, not the whole grain! ;-)</p> <p>Bill, hard to believe indeed! I think he worked on it for a couple of years. He started with the gear assembly, and we would see its progress everyday as we took walks by his house. His son helped a lot, and eventually their Boy Scout troop got involved. Of course we all know how that goes -- 99% of the work was still his. He and his son occasionally showcase the windmill at various events. His son's costume is a small version of his -- miller and apprentice. Mom was the seamstress and did a marvelous job.</p>

<p>Thanks, Igor! I've gotten the same comment from someone else, and I think I agree with the two of you. What seems unnatural is the light not spilling all the way through the doorway to the floor. I basically opened up that part of the mask, while keeping the background woodwork darkened. What do you think?</p> <p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17934289-lg.jpg" alt="" width="467" height="700" /></p> <p>By the way, the oversaturated wood tones in the background result from all the lighting being indirect. The walls themselves do have a somewhat red tone. The sunlight hits the wall behind the camera, casting bright reddish light against the reddish woodwork on the opposite wall. The further-reddened red tones thus become quite vivid.</p>

<p>Michael, your rendering has somewhat of a wood block quality to it that's rather interesting!</p> <p>Glen, like you and Michael, I'm also drawn to monochrome versions of this sort of subject matter. However, my "personal" goal with this particular photograph (and with candids in general) is to develop my techniques working with color. I'm trying to break out of my monochrome rut. ;-)</p> <p>I, too, like the combined image and wish I'd thought of it! I think if the shaft were tweaked over to the left a bit (would take a bit of cloning work), it would be perfect. I might do that yet with the original image! I could have shot this image with a wider lens on my 5D, but the 18-55IS on my 40D was all I had with me when I ran into my neighbor showing off his creation. ;-)</p> <p>Rick, the kaleidoscope is pretty cool, but I think I would enjoy seeing your attempt at the 17th century tardis!</p> <p>This is my own attempt at making this image work:</p> <p>First I broke the image into hue, saturation, and lightness channels. Then I applied a curve to the saturation channel to limit the wild saturation levels in the woodwork, bringing them all more in line, and then I recombined the channels. Next, I created a duplicate layer, masked off my neighbor, applied two different contrast curves to the neighbor layer and the underlying creation layer. My goal was to make the wood all less vivid and to make this more of a candid portrait of my neighbor in the context of his windmill.</p><div></div>

<p>By the way, check out this guy's workmanship! Wow!</p><div></div>

<p>Here's a larger version</p><div></div>

<p>Hi everyone,</p> <p>A little bit early, but...</p> <p>Here's a photo I took with my very own camera. The subject is my very own neighbor, who built this magnificent windmill for historic Yorktown, VA. I watched him build the thing in his garage and driveway in major sections that were assembled on site. Quite a project!</p> <p>This is the completely unedited, unadjusted, unsharpened version. I think it will give people an opportunity to play with color. In particular, notice that the color temp is very different on each side of the man's face -- cool daylight through the doorway from camera right, vs. warm reflections off of the woodwork from camera left.</p> <p>Have fun!<br> Sarah</p> <p> </p><div></div>

<p>The biggest problem with old, manual lenses on a modern camera is not the lack of AF and/or the lack of decent manual focusing aids (e.g. a split prism finder). Rather, it's the lack of automatic diaphragm. To focus precisely, you must:</p> <ol> <li>Open up the aperture to its maximum.</li> <li>Focus -- usually without the benefit of a microprism or split prism.</li> <li>Instruct your subject to hold very still while you fiddle with your camera.</li> <li>Stop the lens down to the aperture you want to use.</li> <li>Shoot.</li> </ol> <p>This is not so horrible if you are shooting a landscape with your camera on a tripod. However, it gets old very fast for just about any subject that moves or for many shots that you would want to take handheld. In the good old days, your camera would automatically stop down your lens for you, but you can forget that automatic feature now.</p> <p>Don't fear the modern lenses. You'll likely find them better than the ones you have, although you might not be as satisfied by their "feel." I, too, have a small collection of old Takumars -- the SMC M42 variety that I used on my H1 and Spotmatic F. However, I love my Canon AF lenses even more than my old Takumars. I do still use my Takumars from time to time. They fit very nicely on my Canon bodies with an adapter. (Canon, BTW, is about the most universal recipient of old manual lenses that you'll find, provided you pair them with the appropriate cheap adapter from ebay.) However, I could simply not function without modern lenses native to my modern camera.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I have a photos folder with one major folder containing original (mostly raw) images, organized in multitudes of subfolders by year and date. And then I have another major folder called "final" in the photos folder, containing subfolders for various projects and subfolders within the subfolders. Eventually every final image gets its own folder, containing a copy of the original image, working files, a final edited image, a watermarked jpeg for web use, and any notes.</p>

<p>Probably a few hundred $$$ to repair -- not the end of the world. Stuff like that happens, and Canon can fix it up like new for you.</p>

<p>Gup, I will mention this in case you don't already know it: Be very careful about data usage on cellular networks. Some plans have unlimited data usage, but most don't. And when you go over your allotted monthly usage, your bill can become astronomical -- even a couple thousand dollars or more! To further complicate matters, there's a difference between using unlimited data on a portable device (tablet, phone) and using that device to tether a device such as a computer. According to most fine print, tethered data usage is limited, even when untethered data is unlimited.</p> <p>There is a trick you can use that gets you unlimited data usage when a computer is tethered to a mobile device. At least it works that way with Android phones. You can use June Fabrics (yes, dumb name) PdaNet software to do the tethering through a USB debugging connection. It works, and you won't be charged ridiculous sums of money for going over any data usage limit.</p> <p>The trick is often finding an unlimited data plan on a good network that provides coverage out in the sticks. We still have our unlimited 3G plan from Verizon, as much as they keep trying to move us to a new, 4G, limited plan. Our old phones are still hanging in there. We may lose our last 3G tower soon, but so far we still have unlimited internet when we need it. (Our cellular data connection is our backup if/when cable goes out, as well as our connection to the world when we travel.)</p> <p>If I lived in such a remote place that cable service weren't available, I'd probably get DSL. If DSL weren't available, I'd consider satellite, which imposes data limits. I think cellular would be my last choice.</p>

<p>You don't NEED a star filter to get a star effect. You can also shoot with a very small aperture. You'll get a star effect off the aperture blades. The flatter and fewer the blades, the better the star pattern. I would think someone has also figured out how to create star patterns off of bright highlights in post. If you can achieve the effect you're after without a star filter, you're better off doing so, IMO. Star filters tend to create a diffused haze over the entire photo that I find less than desirable. Even diffusion from a tiny aperture seems less problematic to my eye, especially since small-aperture diffusion responds very well to sharpening.</p>

<p>I've always called it "photo editing," which I cram together into the term "photoediting." "Editing" is something done to raw footage in the motion picture industry. Why not also with still images? I, too, dislike the term "postprocessing" and consider what I'm doing more akin to "processing." But maybe that's because of my postmodernist leanings.</p>

<p>Thanks, Glenn. I actually copied a large pile of historic images from a collection in Louisville, KY and bought usage rights for incorporating them into my project. It will take quite a bit more study to find modern-day settings for the composite photos.</p>

<p>Nice photo, Glenn!</p> <p>I'd eventually like doing a "then and now" series, mixing people's images from long ago with the relics they left behind -- photos like this, but probably with more of an emphasis of architecture. This isn't a "ghost" picture, per se. (I don't believe in them.) Rather, it's a reminder that this rusted heap was once someone's baby. Here's Dad polishing the windshield for a Sunday drive in the country. I didn't do anything particularly heroic -- adjusted the levels a bit, dug up a historical image, fit it using the free transform tool, adjusted opacity, made the mirror image, and there it is. ;-)</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks, but my question wasn't really about RAW conversion or even whether RAW data are good for a true 16 bits of color depth. My question was more to do with whether one is forced into 8 bit processing and must suffer the rounding errors you mention. Restated, I would ask this: Assuming you generate a 16 bit tiff from whatever your preferred software might be (even if some of those 16 bits might be superfluous), and assuming you open that 16 bit tiff in PSP for editing, are you forced to drop the color depth to 8 bits before you can conduct operations like cloning, dodging, burning, etc." Or has Corel FINALLY implemented those tools in 16 bit?</p>

<p>Quite a lively discussion about color temp! I wonder whether either of you could tell me/us whether PSP has finally developed a full complement of 16 bit tools, or whether operations like cloning, dodging, softening, etc. can be done only after converting a 16 bit image to 8 bit. I would go to Corel's promotional literature for answers, but they've lied before (and wasted quite a bit of my time and money). I'm also reluctant to install such a huge program just to find out for myself. </p> <p>Thanks for your help!</p>

<p>^^^^ Embedded jpeg.... Makes sense! Thanks, Rob.</p>

<p>I've not been conscious of them in my own Canon cameras (10D, 5D, 40D, G11). However, I did have some appear as my first gen Olympus P&S 1.3 MP camera got some age on it. But in general, I would say they are uncommon.</p> <p>That said, I started another thread (http://www.photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00czPF) with regard to some hot pixels from a client's camera. His is a 5DIII, and he experienced these hot pixels during 30 sec exposures at ISO 800 and 1000.</p>

<p>Thanks Rick! I didn't see your response until now. (I've been out of town for a few days)</p> <p>I'm using DPP for the conversion. The hot pixels might glow a bit when panning around in magnified view, but they're still there when I stop panning. The same hot pixels are also evident in the TIF conversions provided by the client. Here's a collection of them, taken from a very dark part of the frame, with the exception of one that was taken from the dusk sky.</p><div></div>

<p>A priest, a rabbi, and a televangelist walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some sort of joke?"</p>

<p>So a guy takes his dog into a bar. The bartender says, "Get that mangy dog out of my bar!" The guy says, "No, you don't understand. This isn't just any dog. He's intelligent like you and me. Watch this: Ernie, how does sandpaper feel?" The dog responds, "Rough!" "Good Ernie," says the man. "Now what do you find on the top of a house?" "Roof," responds the dog. "Good Ernie! Now who was the greatest baseball player of all time?" "Ruth," says the dog. Now incensed, the bartender grabs both of them and throws them out the door. "Don't ever walk into my bar again!"</p> <p>The dog turns to the man and says, "You think I should have said Joe DiMaggio?"</p> <p>... barump bump..... ching...</p>

<p>This dog reminds me of a guy at a bar...</p> <p>(Pardon the meatball editing!)</p><div></div>

<p>Bill, there are differences in perceptual and cognitive styles that derive from differences in brain organization. Female brains are more integrative and male brains more compartmentalized. But how that would relate to monochrome vs. color preference is something I'd find it difficult even to speculate about.</p>