acute

<p>Living up to the occasion</p><div></div>

D90 w. Tokina 11-16<div></div>

<p>D90 w. Nikkor 18-200</p><div></div>

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<p>D90</p><div></div>

<p>D90 w. tokina 11-16</p><div></div>

<p>Faces.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for all the replies and suggestions, especially to Michel Latendresse. Your advice was precisely what I was looking for: something from someone who has experienced a similar difficulty. The weather in my town (Miami, Florida) at times renders outdoor photography practically impossible. I've exprienced this often with a variety of equipment from different manufacturers. And as I mentioned in my first post, pre-warming the equipment doesn't solve the problem. It's not the lens that fog up. It's something in the camera: I presume it's the sensor. Thanks again for all the comments. Perhaps, in the future there will be some technology to deal with this issue: at a premium price, no doubt.</p>

<p>I live in a place where the air is humid most of the year. Stepping outdoors from an airconditioned building the equipment fogs up instantly: but even if I wait for my equipment to adjust to the outdoor temperature, the humidity fogs the sensor and every shot is foggy. What can be done? I can use film for backup, since there is no issue with film and humidity but my digital equipment doesn't cope.</p>

<p>Congratulations to both of you. Nice shot.</p>

<p>70-300 VR II on a D90</p><div></div>

<p>I no longer think of photography as "capturing the visual reality". It's much more now about "using the equipment to paint something". That's one thing. And the expectations are different. With film you pretty much took the result for what it was. Now, the result is only the beginning of the process. Now, looking at photographs, I'm not sure how the artist arrived at the final product. Was it blurred? Was it sharpened? Are these the colors that were present? How much of this image is the photograph and how much of it is digital manipulation? And as a result the way you look at a photograph has changed. For me it did.</p>

<p>Did the transition to digital photography change your ovedrall perception of photography? Did your expectations change? The way you look at images? I think for me the answer is yes, to all those and to many other questions. When I look at a photograph (remember film?) I no longer see what I used to see.</p>

<p>Nikon Coolpix</p><div></div>

<p>F Ph:<br>

I sympathize. But what can one do? The industry is changing. In the heydays of film I could not afford medium format equipment. Now, that the price of it has dropped I am not willing to go there knowing that it is a shrinking technology. Sad, but true. Society is changing: the older I get, the more I realize how much.</p>

<p>Do you have to be a paying member to have your work chosen to appear in the "daily photo sampling" linup? I've seen some images shown repeatedly while other never seem to make it.</p>

<p>Moderate adjustment.</p><div></div>

<p>d90 18-200</p><div></div>

<p>Halloween costume.</p><div></div>

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<p>/rant<br>

I think the challenge is the same in any style of photography: one needs to engage the viewer but avoid being boring. Once the viewer is willing to spend some time contemplating the image, the photographer has succeeded. A shocking image will engage the viewer instantly, but the element of shock is not enough to provide content worthy of contemplation. On the other extreme an image might present sufficient content to contemplate, but there might be nothing to draw the viewer initially into the image. A good balance is to have something that captures the attention coupled with something that provides the content. And the content should never be so ample as to lack any central theme. If it is too busy the viewer will never engage the imagination. It is better to present less and allow the imagination to fill in something on its own. Just rambling here, but I think I’m not too far off the mark. And finally: an image should create a reality of its own instead of trying to represent something that the photographer witnessed somewhere. Nobody cares what the photographer had seen: the viewer cares about the image in front of him.<br>

/no rant</p>

Miami from a distance<div></div>

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<p>I think the automatic metering systems are good for taking pictures that make objects photographed recognizable. The instruments measure the darkest and the lightest spots in the viewfinder and set the aperture and the timing to an optimum level based on some preset average.<br>

But producing interesting photographs goes well beyond such calculated measurements. A photographer makes deliberate choices in order to create dramatic effect that an instrument cannot make. In fact, a good photographer uses manual mode a lot more than any other mode, because he wants to accentuate different aspects of the image. It’s all about the deliberate manipulation of light in addition to choosing the subject and the angle of presentation. The camera is like a paint brush in his hands, like an instrument from which he tweaks something dramatic. Generally, the stuff produced by the camera’s own metering system is mediocre and boring.<br>

So the percentage depends on the photographer. He may just leave everything up to the instruments, or he may use his own settings most of the time.</p>