dave_raines

This is sort of a technical question, I guess, so bear with me as I try to

express what I'm really asking.

 

I shoot with a Nikon D50, but I don't think it matters. And the reason I'm

asking the question is for shooting panoramas to stitch together, how do I get

the color/luminosity to exactly match up (in .jpg)? If I set the camera in

manual, with the same exposure, same (non auto) contrast, saturation, Hue

adjustment settings, should this mean that the color (say, the same spot in the

sky) match up exactly?

 

On a technical level, how does the contrast done in camera really work? If it's

on "normal (0)" contrast, does it apply a curve that will take each pixel

brightness to another brightness based only on that pixel only, or does the

brightness level it's taken to depend on that pixel and on the rest of image?

The same (approximate) question could be asked for saturation.

 

I hope this question made sense, because it's something that I've been trying to

figure out for a while.

And before anyone says it, yes, I know I could shoot in raw and do it all

manually on the computer.

Thanks a lot everyone for the responses!

 

Lots of information and points of view for me to think about and sort through and think about.

 

One last question, totally unrelated, is it a reasonable thing to do to order a couple lenses (from amazon, or whomever), try them for a few days and return one or both? I feel like I need to really shoot with them for a bit to decide if it's going to work for me, but is this the best way to do it? practically, ethically, whatever?

My advice is to just drive. Don't think in terms of the final destination just try to plan a nice scenic route. If you're willing to camp, you can do a vacation for cheap anywhere. Your biggest expense will be gas, which of course depends on your car. it's about 12 cents a mile for me.

You're in Seattle, so you've got some good options. You just gotta figure out what you want to see. Take US 2 east for some awesome flat, desolate farmland. US30 east out of portland is a great drive along the columbia, and the view back from the mountains (just east of Pendleton) is a great one. (I drove all of US 30, followed by US2 a few years ago, and the oregon/washington stretch is one of my favorites)

Beyond that, you can go anywhere and probably not go wrong. Tough to lose in Utah, or idaho. I'd recommend spending some time on google earth, see where you can go, browse some of the embedded pictures to give yourself a flavor of what there is.

This is my idea of what a trip should be, and have never really thought in terms of great places to go and stay a while photographing. So I guess I can't actually answer your question...

"30mm could be a bit limiting, if aesthetically sort of noble in a spartan/purist kinda way."

 

I think you nailed it exactly, Eric. A part of me just thinks it would be noble and romantic to travel with nothing but a single prime. Like Henri Cartier-Bresson. I know it's silly and I usually scoff at thinking like that, but it's a thought I can't quite shake.

Ok, so the 16-85 VR costs (on amazon) $428 more than the 18-55 VR.

Any think they can convince that the 16-85vr is going to be worth $428 more to me than the 18-55vr? Or, to make it more concrete, anyone think they can convince me that I would rather have the 16-85vr than the 18-55vr and enough money to spend an extra month living on a beach in Bali?

I have a D50, but have been using old lenses from the film days (28-80, 70-300,

50mm 1.8). What can I say, I'm cheap. The lenses obviously each have their

limitations, but I've used them a lot, and work around them pretty well.

 

But I'm going on a trip, a rather long, large, varied trip. (russia, china, SE

asia, india, nepal, europe, etc.) I'm packing light, and I'm not going to bring

a bunch of lenses, and I'm certainly not going to bring a tripod. I've been

thinking about getting a new lens for the trip, and I've more or less narrowed

it down to choosing between the 18-55 VR nikon and the sigma 30mm f1.4. There

are advantages to each 18-55 is cheaper, zoom, much wider. The sigma is faster

and from what I can tell has better image quality.

 

I guess my question is part technical and part philosophical. If you were

traveling around the world with one lens, would you want the 18-55 VR or the

30mm f1.4? Will the VR help enough to allow me to shoot at night and indoors

without a tripod? I feel like I'll want something wider than the 30, but it's

been 5 years (last foray with film), since I've shot with anything wider, and

very rarely miss it. Is the image quality going to be that much better on the prime?

 

My normal philosophy is to just wait till you feel like you need something to do

a specific thing before I buy it, but in this case, it would be a bit late to

buy something when that happens. I can obviously afford to buy both, but I've

never understood why people set out a budget to buy things, it's always just a

matter of getting the best product for the money for what I'm going to do with it.

 

Any thoughts?

Eric, of course you're right, in some sense. Of my D50's 40,000 shots, a heck of a lot of them should never have been taken. But of all those shots that shouldn't have been taken, I'm awfully glad I have a lot of them. To me, it's really nice not only to have the good shots (the kind I took when I used film), but having thousands of pictures that are simply memory joggers is really cool and wonderful to me. I guarantee you I have at least 7-8k of pictures out of moving cars. Some of them are genuinely good shots, some are just funny goofy shots of people walking down the street, some don't get deleted simply because I can go through that road trip and know exactly where I was at every given moment, and can actually experience it again in a way that I can't going through the 'good pictures' of trips from the film days.

 

Of course, that rant is just my personal quirks of using my camera. The real advantage, and the one that led to probably 25k of my 40k pictures, is taking candid pictures of people doing things. I work as a photographer at a youth camp in the summer. I've taken 1,000 pictures in 2 hours, just looking for that one picture of the exact right group of kids doing the exact right thing with the exact right look on their face. Stuff that's not worth it if you're paying 30 cents a shot.

I just crossed 40k on my D50 a couple weeks ago, and was just wondering the same thing. I did a little research on it, and saw a lot of numbers thrown around as to how many are expected (anywhere between 30-100k). What I was really looking for was an actual story from someone who actually had their d50 fail after a large number of photos. Never did though.

The mirror on mine has started sticking occasionally (it's happened 3 times), but I always manage to get it back just by turning it on and off and taking a few pictures. Worries me every time.

 

But in the end, I don't know why I even bother worrying or looking into it. Given how cheap I am, and how crazy I am, I'm much more likely to drop it into a crevasse than I am to buying a new camera because I'm worried my D50 will fail. I love my D50 like a son, and I'm sticking with him until the wheels fall off (or whatever the camera equivalent of wheels falling off is).

I haven't tried it, but I noticed that adoramapix.com added it as an option. I'll definitely get a few to try next time I order some prints.

For the last few years, I've spent my summers working at a youth camp as

photographer (not my only responsibility there, I'm also the general tech

support). My usual day I shoot anywhere from 100-1000 pictures, depending on

what's going on. These are nearly all candid shots of kids, and going through my

pictures at the end of the day I delete about 70% of the pictures immediately. I

do a bit of quick processing and put some pictures up on the web, but mostly

leave my pictures unedited and send them to our designer/publisher at the end of

the summer to make our brochure and whatnot.

 

The last couple of summers I've used Picasa to go through my pictures and do the

quick edits. I've tried a few things, and some have features I like better than

Picasa (dual monitor support is something I love), but for my job, speed is the

overwhelmingly most important factor. I use Picasa because it's the fastest way

I've found to go through pictures and cull out the bad ones. I don't love

Picasa, but at least I'm used to it, and it's fast.

 

Summer is coming up and, as every year, I'm going on my quest to find something

better to use. I'd prefer something free, but if someone could convince me, I

could probably get my boss to buy something. What do people use for photo

management? I'm basically looking for something with the good qualities of

picasa, where I can go through pictures quickly, do some quick edits, resize.

Things I don't like about picasa and wish I could improve: hard to sort folders

(have to go to windows explorer to create), no dual monitor support (this would

be huge for me), bad raw support (yes, I can view, but not very well). I don't

usually shoot in raw for time reasons, but would like to have it be a better

option. Could also use something more flexible on the editing front (I use gimp

for detailed stuff, but would like something somewhere in between).

Any suggestions for what I could try? I've never used Lightroom, is it worth

looking into? Thanks!

Michael, if you're the sort of person who can have a 'monthly' folder for images, you're almost certainly not shooting enough pictures to have to shoot in JPEG.

 

In my mind, you should be shooting RAW unless you have a reason not to (as Marc mentions above). But, in the end, switching to JPEG (even just Large/Normal), you don't lose enough to justify shooting RAW if it means you're going to miss shots because of the buffer, or if it means you're going to start losing sleep because of the added processing time.

 

For me, it's not a one time choice. If I can, I shoot RAW, if I can't I don't worry about it and shoot jpeg.

I've always used adoramapix.com in the US, they have a good selection of sizes and papers and are pretty cheap.

I've been living in the UK this year, and have tried 4 or 5 places here and they never have any decent paper or size options, and they've totally ruined half the prints by oversaturating them.

I don't know how adorama compares to some of the higher end places, but they've always been very reliable and I've always been happy with every print they've ever made me.

Definitely good advice. I'd never really thought about dust before. Probably not something most people think about until they have a problem with it (and traveling in asia is not when you want that to be). At least a blower in my kit seems like a good preventative step. Thanks Bruce!

It's hard coming up with a budget for this sort of thing because it's combined with so many other things I need to buy, e.g. I could get a more expensive lens, but then I'd have to get a cheaper mp3 player, or that sort of thing.

 

Do you guys really think that dust in the camera is a problem? I've had my camera for years and changed lenses hundreds of times and can't see any dust on pictures (the mirror, of course, is covered in dust). I know dust will be even worse while I'm traveling, but is this something I should be concerned about?

First the question, then the background, then the question restated.

 

I'm going to be traveling all of next year (Russia, China, SE Asia, India [if I

don't get too distracted before then]), and I'm trying to decide what lens(if

any) I should buy.

 

A bit about me: I'm about as cheap as a photographer can get. I have a Nikon

D50, which I use mostly with my old Nikon 28-80 G (the old cheapest kit lens

from the film days), not very wide or fast, but it's always worked well enough

for me. I also have the 50mm f1.8.

I've basically always refused to buy lenses unless I they clearly let me do

something I couldn't before. (wouldn't even spring for the 18-55 digital kit

lens with my d50). I work in the summers as the photographer at a youth camp,

that's most of my photography, and taking pictures of kids I never really miss

not having anything wide. I finally bought the 50mm because it let me shoot

indoors, it's a bad length, but with practice you can work around it.

 

So real question is, do you think it's worthwhile for me to buy a lens before my

trip, something wider (maybe the nikon 18-55VR, or the 3rd party wide angle

zooms (the nikon 12-24 is out of my reach), or maybe just a fast prime that's

wider than the 50mm (sigma 30mm 1.4, nikon 24 2.8, nikon 35 2, whatever). My

friend who I'm traveling with has the nikon kit 18-55 and 55-200. So I feel no

need to have lenses to cover a range, that's his job. What I'm really looking

for is a good walk around lens for traveling (and I'm going light, so I'm kind

of looking for something that will be the only lens I'm going to take).

 

Anyone who's traveled more than me have a suggestion as to what I'm really going

to want out there? Should I get something new and good, or just stick with my

old reliable, cheapo combo?