garydem

November 18, 2009

i have 4 gb ram on my pc anfd i sometimes get the same message. i was using photoshop elements 7. the image was a 450+mb tiff. it simply means that the pc when trying to do the conversion runs out of resources, and this case that is ram. what i did is use a trick that i found works. save the image as a tiff first. then open irfanview(if you ha ven't got it, get it it is free) and use that program to save the tiff as a jpeg at max quality. my conclusion is that it takes irfanview less resources to run as opposed to photoshop.

November 17, 2009

if you are doing any graphics work on a computer, and that includes photography, you should be using a properly calibrated monitor. the reason is simple- the only way the colors are going to accurate is if the monitor is set at a certain brightness level. the calibration does that. also, the color red should appear as a certain version of red. the only way to ensure that the red you see is a standard red is really the standard red is to calibrate the reds and the rest of the colors. i had the spyder calibrator still do, but have since got the eyeone display2, works great. one thing about calibrator, it should have the ability the adjust the RGB values on the montor before the brightness is adjusted. otherwise you are wasting your time. i had the spyder and could not adjust the RGB so i had to get the eyeone display2. make sure you check to see if the eyeone works with a mac. not all the spyders can adjust the RGB. if you cannot adjust the RGB then the calibration if going to be off no matter what you do. last, not all monitors can adjust the RGB values in the menus, i hope yours does.

November 17, 2009

2 items. for your normal calibration tests make sure the white sheild is OFF the metering hardware, and the meter is resting on the center of the screen. next, check your RGB values on your monitor. the values control the brightness BEFORE the brightness setting touches the monitor. for the first time with the eyeone display2, which i have and am very pleased, you should be running the calibration software in the advanced mode. this mode lets you adjust the RGB values as part of the calibration process. the easy mode does not.

you should be doing the calibration in the same lighting that you normally run the monitor. i ALWAYS have the overhead room lights on if i am using the pc, so that is the way the calibration for me was run. alos make sure that no direct sunlight or lights are shining on the monitor.

November 14, 2009

to all-me, i cannot be bothered to waste my time taking pics of test charts. or taking pics of anything, and examinimng them with 1000% magnification. either to me is time wasting, and takes away from the purpose of a camera:taking pics.

i would much rather be simply taking pictures.

November 13, 2009

with a film slr the lens mm is that number of mm. with dslr you have to mulitpy the lens mm by the cxrop factor of the dslr's sensor to get the EFFECTIVE lens mm. the reason that there is a crop factor at all is the sensor in the dslr is not the same size as the 24x36mm film. it is equal to(no crop factor) or smaller(a crop factor). for example in the nikon or pentax dslrs the crop factor is 1.5. this means that ANY lens that is mounted on a nikon/pentax dslr is going to end up with a lens that acts as though it is 1.5 times longer in mm. this means that a 50mm lens will act as though it is a 75mm lens. other dslrs can have a crop factor of 1.6, 1.3, 1.2, or 2.0 depending on who the maker is.

November 13, 2009

melinda- for the ontario shot that was a popup flash. but note where ontario's attention was. it was not at me with the camera; he was looking at my wife off to the side. this means that he did not have his eyes straight on to the flash, which would give a cat's version of redeye. i do have some cat shots with a ext flash in bounce mode. note that if bounce is used the flash's light hitting the wall/ceiling will pickup the CEILING'S/WALL'S COLOR, even though the flash's light is a balanced white prior to it reaching the ceiling or the wall. this is precisley why for true accurate color and is what is desired for a cat's wonderfull fur you want to use a diffuser with the flash, or be very carefull of the ceiling/wall color. it should be white or an off white. this gives the same light as a bounce but without any problems with wall color. also, since the diffuser is part of the flash it is carried with you. bounce flash also runs into problems with high ceilings. this comes into play in weddings where the reception hall ceiling could be a 10 footer. stofen makes the omnibounce; it is $20. there are others by other makers. thye all work well.

November 12, 2009

melinda g- note the effect the distance separation has with the background and the cat. you can clearly see the cat and cloth it is lying on, BUT the background( the redish/brownish stuff is now out side the fielkd of focus) and is separated. this ben g's pic i am refering to.

your pic with the cookies is fine. ytou got the idea. but as you can see the light levels is just too low. this forces you to use a iso of 800 and a 1/6 shutter speed. this last is just bad news.

also, note the following-DOGS HAVE OWNERS, CATS HAVE A STAFF.<div></div>

November 12, 2009

melinda g- a few thoughts. to start with the 1/13 sec for a shutter speed is just too slow. not only will that sspeed not stop the cat's movements but it will not stop yours either. think of a shutter speed of 1/60 or faster. even then the 1/60 will stop the cat only if he does not move too much. a shutter speed of a 1/13 is fine for a tripod but not handheld. your fstop of 2.2 is very low. it gives very little dof. i woulod suggest a fstop of 2.8-4.0 either would cutout the background. you also have a problem with the background, yours is simply too close to the cat. background is background, it is not part of the scene that you are shooting. and this implys that there is a distance between the background and the subject. this distance separation using the right fstop is what is throwing the background out of focus. in your scene the background and the subject, the cat, is the same thing. there is no distance separation to take advantage of with the correct fstop.

my suggestion is to wait for a day in which you have sunshine and the light levels are higher. this would let you use a sspeed that is higher and a more suitable fstop. also the need for such a high iso woulod be lessened. aslo, checkout this website. you can put in your fstop and lens and distance and find out exactly what dof you are getting.http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

a pic of one of our 4 cats.<div></div>

November 10, 2009

try greenfield village/henry ford museum in dearborn michigan. it is the museum that you want. try google.

November 10, 2009

harry j-you are trying to capture a scene that has too high of a dr for the recording medium. this is going to true no matter if you use film or digital. for your info- ngative has a dr of about 8-9 stops, film slides has a dr of 4+ stops, raw has a dr of 8-9 stops, and jpeg has a dr of about 6 stops. if you shoot sa scene thay has a dr of 10stops or more you are dead with your method no matter what you do. therefore the photographer has to decide what is the subject and shoot the exposure for THAT, or shoot for the highlights and let the rest of the scene fall where it may in exposure. if the latter some effort and success can be made in pping to get some of those shadows back. also, generally shooting for the highlights is what most shooters do. your dslr and its exposure was set for the general scene. this means that you lost it on both the highlights and the shadows. it is up to the shooter to know when the camera is yellking for help in the exposure and to provide that help. in your pics this could have been done with exposure compensation(EC) in a negative direction. this would have preserved the highlifghts. a dslr is not a p&s, the user must provide the decision making that the camera asks for under certain conditions. a p&s will genewrally provide a pretty good pic left to its own, but a dslr will not do this.

consider that you said go back to film. i shot slides for 32yrs and had only 4+stops of dr to use. now with digital, raw or jpeg, there is more.

November 6, 2009

ry garafoli-in the camera, your d80, put the sharpening at neutral or on ly the very first click up. plan on doing any other sharpening in your pp process as the last step before you save as.

November 6, 2009

you have to realize that you move closer to a subject, at a given fstop you decrease the dof. add to this that when you move really close and are increasing the magnification you decrease the dof. what happens is that whenb you approach a 1: ratio of magnification in macro photography you also are dealing with very small dofs. the answer of is to increase the fstop in use to compensate. however, because of something called diffraction this leads to distorsion as the fstop increases. diffraction distorsion on a c sensor dslr is starting at about f11.0. diffraction is what happens to light when it passes through a small hole, it diffracts and distorts. i try not to use any fstop over f11.0 if i can possibly help it. for macro, and i use a sigma 105mm macro lens, i simply set the fstop to f11.0 and shoot, making sure that the shutter speed in adequate if not i up the iso.

November 6, 2009

the simple answer-you sharpen just before you save as. it is the last step. if jpeg you open in your pp program, do your pp, do any noise reduction, sharpen, save as. the raw would be the same except you open in the converter first convert, then open in your pp program and do the rest.

one other point. it is important that if shoot jpeg you do not sharpen to the full extent in the camera. if you do then if/when you do any sharpening later in the pp program, then you will have oversharpened and with get halos and artifacts on you image from the oversharpening. i have my dslrs set to give the a very slight amount of sharpening in the dslr, and do the rest as the last step in the pp process.

November 6, 2009

a f2.8 70-200mm. you are not going to gain any IQ with a 85mm, but loose a very great amount of vertatility. not to mention that for proper framing and composition the 70-200 aloows you to vary the framing while the 85 does not. this would be an extreme help in concerts with the shooter sitting at various distances, while the 85 is really only good for one distance.

November 5, 2009

dan south- the sunny 16 rule if shooting the moon becomes what some have called the looney 11. this gets the extra stop of light and gets rid of the grey moon. the moon with looney 11 becomes a nice bright image but still not overexposed.

November 4, 2009

to take a picture of the moon you need- long lens 1000mm(35mm equivelent) about. high iso(800?) to force afaster shutter speed.

exposure-the moon, odd as it sounds is hign noon sunlit. just like noon on earth. we are 240000 miles to moon, BUT earth or moon is 93000000 miles to sun. that determines exposure. use sunny 16 rule. that is for a full moon 1/iso at f16. some use a sunny 11 rule for moon. This is called the loony noon rule. then bracket like crazy. shoot a very hign shutter speed to start, take more than 1 shot at each shutter speed(3) then go down to about 1/30sec.

use stong tripod.

use cable shutter release or self timer. if self timer this will take a while, and you will have to keep adjusting moon in viewfinder.

Use mirror lockup if your camera has it.

Turn IS,VR,SR off, your camera is on a tripod.

DO NOT TRUST LIGHT METER IN CAMERA. it is being fooled by all the black sky. even spot meter, if available will not help, it won't go small enough to get moon only. moon is only 1/2degree wide, smaller than any spot meter.

get away from city. turbulence and lights are bad news. if 1000mm or so not available, use biggest available. crop in post-processing. not as good as big lens but will work. shoot many pics, you can always delete later. happy moon pics. good luck. also- sunny 16 rule- i/iso is shutter speed. if iso is 100 then shutter speed is 1/100about. fstop is 16.0.

the f stop is f16. this a starting point. any lens is not at max sharpness at f16, so adjust fstop to f8 or f11, and move shutter acccordingly.

check moonrise times in your area. you want about 3 hours after moonrise to start your pic taking. this gives the moon time to get far enough above the horizon to clear the horizontal atmosphere and turbelance.

you also need crystal clear skys. NO rpt NO haze, clouds, or humidity. humidity is noticable if you have corana around the moon, this could also be haze. in which case shoot on another night.

happy moon pics. gary second reply- on the subject of lenses-

i use the bigma(sigma50-500+1.4converter). a smaller lenses will work, you just have to crop. but, if cropping heavily do not expect a lot of detail, you just won't get it. though remember any lens is multiplied by the crop factor. so your 135 becomes about 200-205mm.

i shoot at iso800 and at f8.0 end up at about200th-400th of a sec. when start taking the shot i start at 1/1000 and go down to about a 1/30. i also shoot three shots at each shutter speed, thus increasing the odds of getting a good one somewhere in the bunch. i expect to hit the good shots as stated at about 200th-400th.

do not shoot if high humidity or haze or any kind of atmosspheric turbelence. it just is a waste of memory and time. i shot originally in a park in Detroit michigan on what i thought was a clear night, forget it. i actually got some good pics 200 miles north on the shore of Lake Huron. much better.

0ne thought, if available you can try putting a 2X converter on the lens, that would get to over 400mm. there are also several moon pic takers that use more than i converter. 2 2Xs or a 2X and a 1.4. it sound odd but the results are worth it. they are better than the crop heavy method.

do not underestimate how bright a 3/4 or just under full is in terms of brightness. it equal to highnoon on a cloudless day in the summer.

focus-

put lens on manual focus. then put it on infinity(assuming lens does not focus past infinity,some do) or manual focus.

f16.0 comes from the rule of 16. it is the starting point. if you want f8.0, as i use, then you move the shutter speed accordingly to get back to the EV. it is 1/iso for shutter speed under rule of 16. for f8.0 and iso500, for example, you move 2stops or 1/125. at iso500 the shutter speed is 1/500.

by the way, the above set of instructions work, i just got back from oscoda michigan, i live in detroit, used the same instructions, it worked.

also, with my setup: pentax *istD, bigma50-500 at 500, 2x converter, this gives 35mm equiv of 1500mm. the moon's size is almost exactly 1/2 of the short side of the frame. in other words, you need all the telephoto power you can get.

November 4, 2009

same image as above but noise reduction applied by noise ninja, no other pp done. the image was taken in 1980.<div>

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November 4, 2009

steven s- the following image is a scanned in slide totally untouched. it was simply scanned in. the noise level reading by noise ninja is 93. the 93 would be considered medium to heavy noise.<div>

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November 4, 2009

if you have to take a shot indoors in a darkish setting and the popflash is what you have, then you are going to use it. the alternative is not to take the picture.

November 4, 2009