tom_anderson9

Jeff,

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It's difficult to tell what you're actually seeing, without seeing what you're seeing. If you're using a Windows PC, download Irfanview (if you don't already have it) and open your photo with it. Irfanview is a free image viewing program that also does some limited editing. It's fast and very popular. Anyway...Open your image in Irfanview, and press "L" or "R", which will rotate your image left or right 90 degrees. This is rotating your image without changing the aspect ratio or perspective. Your photos will be fine as they rotate around. Next, adjust your other editing program to do this.

Lynn,

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Awesome that you've found something that makes your images better for you. I like raw myself.

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Rest,

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All digital cameras shoot in RAW. That is, the CCD or CMOS sensor is just that, a sensor. The difference is using the in camera software, or PC based software to convert from RAW to JPG or TIFF. Some cameras will let you do both. Some people find the camera's built in conversion more convenient, and acceptable for their purposes. Other people would rather have the flexibility, user interface, and often finer control and quality of conversion available in a PC solution. Some people claim a difference can't be seen in where the conversions are done, but that's largely a subjective evaluation that's highly dependent on the equipment involved, and really only relevant to someone's personal choice. Or, do you like smooth or crunchy peanut butter?

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In the context of a beginner forum, converting from RAW to JPG or TIFF on the computer separates capturing the image from processing the image. It gives the photographer the ability to more easily see the difference that white balance makes, as well as contrast and saturation and other controls. It's the equivalent of having someone shoot an image on 6 or 12 different kinds of film, then looking at the results afterward. Remember the days of picking color negative film, or Kodachrome or Velvia before a shoot, and wondering if that was the best choice? Today, you can "shoot in raw", and decide most or all of these things later. In this sense, I don't believe it's a crutch or a safety net at all, but rather a tool that facilitates learning and experimenting, and thus, better images and happier photographers.

2nd the suggestion for printing on the CD's. A less expensive alternative may be a cd/dvd burner that does 'light scribe', or something like that, where it burns text on the CD. Not sure if they still make those. Labels are bad for the reasons pointed out above.

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As far as 'photography' vs 'photographer', if it's just you, and that's the service you perform, 'photographer' sounds fine. If you're going to have other shooters or partners, then 'photography' makes more sense, because you represent the business, but aren't always doing the shooting. 'Photographer' sounds higher end to me, but is more limiting because it implies just you...but you could always change it later if you add people.

Love the 1911 shot - works perfect with her look, hard light, and b&w. Could be a poster for a remake of "White Heat".

What I want would be easy to do, but they'll never do it. I want the exact opposite of a modern p&s digital, in digital:<p>

The size of a minox or smaller<br>

No LCD at all, small viewfinder<br>

12x18mm sensor, 3mp or so, optimized for high ISO<br>

No zoom - fixed focal length lens around 35mm eq<br>

Either a setting for 'hyperfocal' with fixed aperture and focus, or fixed focus/aperture<br>

No flash, or detachable flash<p>

Basically, something I can carry that will be tiny for snapshots. There is a market for this, as demonstrated by cell phone cameras. You don't need zoom and autofocus for a point and shoot camera, and number of pixels is far down the list of desired features, especially compared to low light performance.

Reminds me of an old saying: "Think you don't have any friends? Buy a pickup truck."

Lex -That's the best 'keeping a club together' advice that I've ever read. OK, it is in fact the only advice on keeping a club together that I've ever read, but it's still good.

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I'd vote for a group of loners activity. People who are good at working with things or art aren't always great at working with people, and vice-versa.

Carl,<p>

When I switched from 35mm to digital, I had some old manual focus lenses that would work on the new digital camera, Nikon in my case. Except for the macros, I really don't use the manual focus lenses anymore. Like mine, yours are OK, but not worth basing a camera decision on, in my opinion.

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As far as picking your camera brand, I'd suggest taking a look at what lenses are available in Nikon, Canon, and others, and taking a look at the cameras themselves. There's not enough cost difference between any of them to matter more than what you like, again just in my opinion.

If you have a problem with light polution, you're not in a remote enough location. I'd suggest Indian Lake, NY. <p> Take a look at www.blue-marble.de, at night, to give yourself an idea of just how dark northern NY can be at night. The only part of the eastern US as dark is northern Maine.

Jerry, <p>

Pick the range of 70-200/80-200 vs 50-150 on what will best suit your shooting, not price. Spending $1k on a lens, you want to get the right one. As far as Sigma vs Nikon goes, both companies make some lenses that aren't really great, but both the current 70-200/2.8 Sigma HSM and the 80-200/2.8ED two-touch Nikon are neck and neck in terms of optical performance, based on the reviews at photozone.de. From various sites that talk about Sigma, the 70-200 is one of their best lenses, and it will focus faster than the Nikon.<p>

If you buy used, I would suggest b&h, only, based on my own experience buying used from them, and reviews of others experience from other places.

Karan,<p>

 

Garry and Tom know more about this than I ever will, and have good suggestions. <p>

 

I'm just popping in because of the Interfit mention. The kit Garry describes as "least bad" is Interfit's low end, and based on what I've read I wouldn't recommend it, either. I have, however, a 300Ws Interfit Stellar X light, and it's well built, recycles quickly, and uses a standard Bowens fitting. It's an improvement over their old Stellar series, with better mechanical hardware and build quality. If someone has been burned in the past by previous Interfit equipment, I can understand having a dim view of them, but I believe they have it right with the X series.

2nd the suggestion for the 70-200/2.8 Sigma HSM. Huge advantage over the 6.3, hard to believe you can shoot sports indoors at all with that. In 35mm eq, that's about a 100-300mm, which is a great range for a lot of sports. With your existing camera, that will be a great combination.

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I was selling my D80 on craigs list and guy sent me check for 1500 even though the price was 600 so just be careful and just delete emails from that person.

these days you have to have eyes in the back of your head otherwise there is always someone trying to scamm you.</blockquote>

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This one can easily fool people, if they're greedy and think the person just made a mistake. Either a regular or cashier's check can be a forgery. This can be found after the check clears, in which case (at least in the U.S.) you're out the money. This is why I like postal money orders, both for sending and receiving. You don't want to send a check, because that gives an unknown person your account and routing number. Yes, in some ways sad times we live in.

One thing to keep in mind with older flash units is that some of them have a higher voltage on their sync terminal than some cameras can handle. What that means is that you may damage your camera if you directly connect the camera to the flash with a sync cord. This is another reason why using a radio slave, or a cheap hotshoe flash as a trigger, are better choices.

This defines scam. I mean, it's so much of a textbook case that it could actually be an experiment to see how many people fall for it.<p>

The signs:<br>

1. Third party transaction. Never ever good.<br>

2. Offering more for something than you ask. Real people don't do this.<br>

3. Explaining or excusing why they're doing something unusual. <br>

4. Asking for information from you that has nothing to do with the product itself in the initial email. (paypal email)<br>

5. Rushing. (please reply fast)<br>

6. Not asking for any information about the product. <br>

7. Not even mentioning the item in the email.<br>

8. Poor English.<p>

A normal response for an item for sale is to ask about the item, its availability, price, and/or condition. Questions about how you would ship it, what the shipping costs would be, what forms of payment you would accept, etc. are also normal responses. Any of the first 5 above are an indication that you should prepare to be ripped off. <p>

Two thoughts, which may not be of any use:<p>

 

If you have a video card that lets you adjust the output curve, change it from the normal "bottom, left to top, right" direction to "top, left to bottom, right". If it works, that should make everything on the screen reversed.

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If you can use video, figure out how to make the source video a streaming avi source, then feed this into the free video editing program "virtual dub", with it configured with a negative filter. This is beyond my ability, but if you can get it to stream, virtual dub can do it - it can do just about anything.

The folks are right, if one was reversed you'd have all the batteries except one trying to charge the reversed one, which isn't good.

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Did you throw away the lithiums? The Everedy AA lithiums used to have a thermal fuse to protect the battery from catching fire, that automatically reset itself. After the battery cools off, it can be used again.

I apologize in advance for being off-topic, but I have to ask: Why would any photographer do this? The effort/reward ratio sounds terrible, and the concept sounds like the photographer's version of suicide girls.

Alex,

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What kind of concert, and how close can you get to the stage?

Malinda,

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First, congratulations, and I mean this seriously, on being able to see what you want! A lot of people, myself included, can deal with the technical things but have trouble having any vision or creativity, in terms of what they want to do. Sounds to me like you just have a technical problem, and those are almost always solvable.

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Next, Rob above describes a way to capture what you're probably seeing. As he explains, your eyes are much better than any camera, in adjusting to both bright and dim light in the same image. They're also better than most cameras in low light. So you need a little tripod, to hold the camera still, and some way of manually adjusting the camera exposure. You take two or more pictures, one for the bright area, one for the dark, and them combine them later. This isn't "basic" photography, but I'm sure it's something you can achieve. You do need a camera that can be adjusted manually, though.

"I'm sorry, I won't be able to attend your event myself, but I will be sending my robot."

Here's a trick - if you want the background to have no color cast, use the background to set the camera's custom white balance. Even if the background isn't pure white, the camera will make it so, that's how a custom white balance works. Normally you want use pure white or grey to set the balance, but in this case you want the background to be white, even if it really isn't. If the background then comes out grey, you have an exposure issue, not white balance.

Darren,

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As someone that turned their hobby (not photography) into a career, I have a couple of suggestions:

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First, these guys posting suggestions above are sharp, they've given good advice.

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Second, don't hurt your day job. Can't stress this one enough. In these times, you don't want to do things like miss work to take a second job, or work on your second job during your primary job. Goes along the lines of the fable of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

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Third, you can't compete with walmart or sears. You need to have higher quality, higher price, and probably a niche of some sort.

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Fourth, keep your overhead low. Recurring monthly expenses and interest kill a lot of new businesses.

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The advantage that you have is time. You can make decisions based on what will improve your skill and quality now, you don't have to worry about trying to make a profit. That's a huge advantage. Trade time for knowledge, figure out how to get better at whatever you do, every time you do it.

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Final thought - Give some consideration to the concept that you may end up destroying your hobby to make a new career for yourself. I'm happy with the decision I made, but not everyone has the same fortune. Best of luck!

The blown background and tonal ranges aren't right, either, and there's not enough detail left in the black shirt to bring that back. The facial lighting would still be flat, too. I'm no expert at lighting, but I think you might be better off with some reflectors with grids at a distance, a model with a more interesting face, side lighting, and letting the shadows fall where they may on the background. If you're really going for the Blade Runner effect, it would probably work better in something other than a plain studio, too. The hair's good, though!

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All in all, I'd suggest something simpler if you're going for a cinema look. Blade Runner would be tough to try to emulate, BAFTA Best Cinematography award, and about a half dozen Oscar nominations as well, I believe.

As A describes, that's just what it is. It's a mild difuser that gives you wider coverage. I have a 622, which I like, too, and a similar filter. If your 544 has a zoom head, you may find that the filter evens out the light, that may be slightly uneven because of artifacts of the flashes fresnel zoom lenses. Try shooting a picture outdoors at night of a large plain area, like a lawn, to see how the flash pattern looks with a wide angle lense. The filter will cut down on the light a bit, but the 544 probably has a lot of power, so this shouldn't be a big problem. Contrats on the new flash!