petemillis

Roman, he was joking - a "border" goes around a picture. A "boarder" is something completely different.

 

Jeremy, don't be so mean!

5 second google.... http://www.dustylens.com/creating_a_fog_effect.htm

JDM, I hope you weren't joking - I just gave your fact to my daughter to use in an essay at school!

 

Seriously though, from reading my local paper I'd say that far more than half achieved below average grades at school.

Tommy, something else....try low ISO (100 or less), underexpose by a couple of stops or more in very low light, then bring the exposure up in post processing to the level you want and then apply noise reduction, you can get rid of a lot of detail giving a chalky/painty feel. Then adjust WB to tungsten and you're probably about there. I've done this with quite a few pictures, but used much longer exposure times and got a heap more noise.

Mind you, I think there is more going on and am not entirely sure about the "no manipulation" part as the detail looks a lot flatter than I would expect.

Tommy, read the details he puts with the photos - the second one you link to: "A620, Raynox wide adaptor, ISO-50, f8 @1/10 sec., in-camera incandescent WB to get blue colorcast. Manipulation: None." He also explains that he shot this in early morning - like is different early in the morning. Perhaps you ought to get out of bed early and experiment :)

Mark, I just played with curves - bottom end boost and top end cut on combined RGB (opposite s curve almost),

then slight top end boost on red channel to warm the highlights a little, and same on blue to give the sky a bit more,

and a slight cut on green low down to take some of the "over greenness" out of the grass and trees which happened

after bottom end boost and increase in saturation). Didn't do anything else apart from very slight sharpen to crisp it.<div></div>

<div></div>

<div></div>

<div></div>

<div></div>

What I like about these charts is that I can see I've calibrated my IBM LCD monitor spot on using just "Quickgamma" and the brightness buttons.

What would piss me off more is if I was one of the people in the pictures and I was "anti McCain" (whoever he is), and all my friends and family thought I was supporting him..

It's a documentary type picture - with the facts being shown it has no story and is pointless. Free speech and all that, there is no reason why you can't display it in full. If you've cloned out some bits, then how do I know you've not added in the sign and made it all up?

<div></div>

Who is telling you that your pictures are too bright? Is it people who have done some calibration, or is it the typical PC user who just whacks the brightness right up?

 

How about posting a couple of your "too bright" pictures here?

Kathy and Keith

Sitting on a log

Oh my God

They're having a snog ;))

 

Only kidding in a bored moment between backing up some pictures!

 

Seriously though....I've found it really helpful in Canon DPP to save "recipes". I save a recipe for the first part of an adjustment, then save it under a different name as I go along and do more adjustments. I can then apply these to RAW files when I am working on getting other pictures with a similar feel. It works well, and saves a lot of time having to do everything from scratch again. Because I save different stages of the recipes I can start from different points.

Of course, if you fancy spending a few thousand dollar more then the Zeiss Diarange would be a good choice.

Matthijs, I'm afraid the American Bokeh test chart will be o no use to me. I take photographs mainly in the Europe (UK specifically) and the difference in fuel costs causes a significant difference between the American and European Bokeh test results. The difference cannot be entirely attributed to mis-use of the charts (as Mr Laur has implied).

 

Geoff, the best lens for shooting test charts is probably the Bushnell Laser Riflescope, available for under $700 from Cabelas.

Alfred, how do you know the monitor now has too much contrast and saturation? Are you comparing by looking at the photographs you had worked on before calibrating the monitor? It would well be that the photographs themselves were too contrasty and saturated, yet this was not showing on your uncalibrated monitor. Just a thought. It is quite possible that the brightness level of your monitor was previously too high which would lead to lower contrast and saturation and brighter blacks.

Ivan, this is a separate issue....why are your TIFFs converted from JPEG? I don't get the logic.Isn't it better to shoot in RAW and produce TIFFs and JPEGs from that?

I'd go straight to Pentax K20D and a whole load of Pentax lenses.

<div></div>

Doesn't sound that fishy - I often keep lenses in socks. Might sound cheesy, but certainly not fishy.

<div></div>