lee_kee

<p>hi folks i just found this awesome photo on the net with kick ass lighting effects, two questions: A) what exactly is the reflection i have circled called? is it "birefringence"? and B) how do i get that kind of effect?</p>

<p><a href="http://i35.tinypic.com/344w4dw.jpg" alt="" />Image</a><P>

<I>Moderator's note: Photo has been removed and link provided in keeping with Photo.net policy - Do not post photos which you have not taken yourself.</I>

<p><img src="http://i34.tinypic.com/qwzt39.jpg" alt="" width="425" height="308" /></p>

<p>the artifact they're talking about is most likely what i've circled, that is a problem with Jpeg compression. If they're talking about the red line between the roof of the white house and its walls, that's chromatic abberation, that's something form the lens. you can remove it by using Adobe Light room or adobe photoshop CS5. select "lens profile", select your lens and the algorithm would try to correct it as much as possible. if your lens happens to be not in the preloaded lens profiles you can build a lens profile yourself by following their instructions... google custom lens profile adobe...</p>

<p>thanks for the responses :). I just tried with the smallest aperture and there was a vast improvement, thanks for the advice.<br>

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the differences between background and object sharpness still exist though, although now its it's barely perceptible... so i am not going to worry about it :)<br>

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p.s. i don't think it's a problem with haze, the background IS less sharp because of haze, howeever even so i can always turn the fucus ring just a tiny tiny bit to make the background sharper at the expense of making the thing i was focus on less sharp. </p>

<p>I don't have great landscapes around where i live so for the most part i've been shooting at little bugs indoors. Today i decided to learn a bit about shooting outdoors (with some extremely boring, but far away scenery as subject.)<br>

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well i seem to have hit a wall... i can't figure out how to "focus to infinity". I'm using a canon 50mm 1.8 mk II lens. which i think is capable of focusing on infinity. But no matter how i turn the focus ring, it seems that i can never point at a far away object and have everything behind the object sharply in focus. i mean i CAN keep everything after a particular distance in _relatively_ sharp focus, but it's seems impossible to keep everything super sharp. <br>

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is that natural? I read that the hyperfocal distance of my lens is about 100m. and i'm sure that the boring old tree that i was focusing on is further than 100m.</p>

<p>i have just asked for advice about macro lenses a few threads down (the thread about macro bellow), you might want to take a look at that.<br>

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my personal opinion is that it's best to buy old, super high optical quality macro lenses without all the bells and whistles and join them together with your DSLR with adopters. bellows etc and then use the rest of the money to buy flashes, rails, tripods, things of the sort. you can get an old, very high optical quality macro lenses with an absurdly low price right now.<br>

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imo for macro lenses glass quality is pretty much all that matters, you don't really need the automatic stuff when shooting macros (they dont work well anyway), case point, the Canon 65mm macro lens, which is generally recognized as the best macro lens in the market right now, is entirely manual, except for electronic aperture control. there is no auto focus, no image stabilization, none of that...</p>

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<p>yeah, if your settings are the same then file size has to do with the distrubution of colors patterns, for example suppose you have a very even patch of pure, wash out white in a part of the picture. In a lossless file format, the data may say something like "pixel 1 is white, pixel 2 is white, pixel 3 is white, pixel 4 is white, pixel 5 is white... pixel 1000 is white" that would require something like20000 letters to describe 1000 pixels;<br>

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now in a compressed format, the data will simply say "pixel 1-1000 is white", and that's only 22 letters to describe the colors of 1000 pixels. of course real compression is a lot more complicated than that but that's pretty much the idea</p>

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<p>thanks Dave i will get exactly you prescribed >.> costs around a hundred bucks total, if i'm lucky :)<br>

at this moment i don't know yet what kind of magnification i want, however i do know that i want quite a bit :) i took my first macro shot a few days ago with a 3 bucks screw on 10x macro filter + my 18-55mm kit lens extended @ 55mm and this is what i get<br>

<img src="http://i29.tinypic.com/5cyd1t.jpg" alt="" /><br>

with some cropping and sharpening zooming i got something like this<br>

<img src="http://i25.tinypic.com/29dbrko.jpg" alt="" /><br>

the spider is about 1/4 of a postage stamp big, and i'm hoping to magnfication similar to the bottom picture, without zooming.. no idea how much magnification that is but i think it's probably quite a lot?</p>

<p>thank dave, actually i am merely on the planning stage right now, so i don't have a 28mm lens yet<br>

if it is really that much trouble to get a 28mm i think i'd go with the easier (and cheaper) 50mm FD macro option. I am, after all, just a hobbyist and hence quite cheap:) <br>

By the way, what's the deal with the double release cable? i'm under the impression that for manual lenses, the diaphragm is adjusted with an aperture ring? all you have to do is turn the ring and the aperture just stay at whatever size you turn it to and doesn't move when the camera takes a picture?</p>

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<p>@stephen, thanks i will check it out for sure<br>

@walter, actually i plan on shooting dead insects most, they generally don't run away :)</p>

<p>thanks for all the response, just asking for clarification, Dave Sims, are you suggesting that i a combination like: 28mm FD lens [|] reverse FD adopter [|] FD:EOS adaptor [|] Bellow [|] Camera, like that? actually having the lense BOTH reversed AND on a bellow?<br>

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by the way, can someone tell me which lens works well reversed? from my online research i found that "symmetrical" lens works best with reverse couplers, however, i can't seem to find which lens, exactly are the "symmetrical" ones.. </p>

<p>in my mind bellows are sooo 19th century, and i'm surpised to find that people actually make those things DSLR's (with no electric contact, cept for one that costs more than a macro lens)<br>

my question is...<br>

1. in terms of image quality, do they work (well) with every lens? i'm thinking about getting a manual focus/aperture 28mm FD lens, a FD/EOS converter, and a bellow. and use that on the DSLR is there a problem with that set up? will i get vignetting? or some other problems of a similar sort? <br>

2. seems like (no-electric contact) macro extension tubes are far, far more popular on ebay amazon etc than macro bellows. (extension tubes generally have a gallion reviews, bellows, two reviews) why is that? i assume the market will always favors the best product, so there probably is some major drawback to bellows causing people to favor extension tubes? <br>

3. just out of curiousity, how much extension can you put between a lens and a camera and still get pictures? 300mm? 200mm? </p>

<p>Personality rights is a legal gray area, filled with words like "reasonable person", "easily identifiable", "public figure" etc.<br>

i think using people's image in a commercial context without release is always a violation of their personality rights IN THEORY. (but only if a "reasonable person" finds the image of the subject to be "easily identifiable" in an image, and only if a "reasonable person" sees the image as a form of endorsement.)<br>

but in practice, no one ever sues, especially not an orchestra. (it's not rich enough for people to sue them, if you're doing work for McDonald or Coca Cola that's another story) and if they do sue, the judge will most likely throw the case out of court unless the person suing is a "public figure"</p>

<p>mmm jessica i don't know how much this helps, i've only being holding a dslr for no more than 48 hours, so i'm not really that qualified for giving advice...<br>

but in my search for sharpness i just discovered something pretty counterinuitive. shooting at the best quality (Raw) is actually LESS sharp than JPEG because JPEG files comes with some post processing tricks that makes the image look sharper than it really is. <br>

this probably sounds pretty trivial to the pros, but assuming you're a newbie like me you probably turn all the quality dial way up just to see how much your shiny new camera can do and end up disappointed,if that's the case just turn the quality dials down, lower quality (still 15 MB) jpeg image actually looks sharper, has more contrast, etc than the ultra high quality unprocessed raw images.</p>

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<p>i too have a pretty difficult time trying to get things into focus. my newbie solution is to let the camera stand on a tripod, connect the thing via USB to a computer, and adjust the focus while looking at a huge computer screen, works well indoors but would be impossible outdoors<br>

does anyone have a better solution for us 4 eyed monkeys?</p>

<p>yes lex i think they are stuck pixels, they behave exactly as you described, same position every exposure, single distinct pixels, etc.<br>

my camera is refurbished and was pretty cheap for a t1i so i guess i get what i paid for, :) come to think of it, it's not THAT bad, they only show up prominently when i take pictures with the lens cap on... not exactly a scenario i'd be too worried about </p>

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<p>thank you all for the response, i tried taking a few pictures with the lens cap on, with different settings. adjusting ISO setting doesnt seem to make the little dots go away, but they do disappear with shorter exposures<br>

btw. i don't think they are noise, there are only a total of 17 of them, noise would be all over the picture right?<br>

craig is right, they are pretty easy to edit out, since they're pretty easy to spot. but they're supremely annoying :(</p>

<p>hello masters :)<br>

very newbie question here: i just bought my very first DSLR (Canon T1i) today and already I have some problems. i was taking random pickture using manual mode during the night to familiarize myself with all the wonderful little dials and wheels and stuff that i can't name yet, and i noticed that in one of my very underexposed picture (which was pretty much all black) there are all these annoying little dots that's all pure red, green, and blue in color. are those caused by dusts on the sensor? i tried using the camera's shake off the dust function repeatedly and it doesn't seem to help.</p>

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