Hi all,

Since a few months I (Eva) started with photography and decided to buy myself my first DSLR.
For now I'm exploring my cam and what all the different lenses and settings do.
Watching tuto's, reading forums... And decided to sign up here!

To get some inspiration, talks, critics and comments on my work and hopefully be helpful to other people too :)

I live close to Lake Geneva in Switzerland and that's therefore a spot where I'm taking a lot of pics at the moment.
Landscape, animals, city...

Thanks for reading and maybe we'll talk to each other later.

I damaged my car today. My pretty much new 2012 Prius V :(. I was backing out of the parking space and I was next to a big pick up and a curb. Since I know there was nobody was parking in the handicapped spot, I went back straight instead. I didn't see the pole :(. Who is retarded? Me or the architect of the parking lot?

Just got a 4 way focusing rail slider with fine adjustment, and a reverse macro adaptor for my camera.
Camera is a Sony a65 24MP, lens was a reversed Tamron 17-50mm F2.8.

These are two insects I found dead in a mud wasp nest, I managed to prop them up on a needle and took 10 x 4 sec exposure shots at F32, ISO 100, each shot was advanced 0.05mm and then focus stacked in Photoshop.

Please tell me what you think. C&C


1. Ant 4mm long.





2. Jumping spider 3mm long

Celestron 2000mm, using Field Flattener 0.63 (effectively a 1400mm f/6.3) Nikon D600, 17 images processed, then stacked.




ETA: FYI, this is what a 1400mm on a full-frame sensor does...no cropping is involved.

I was asked to take a picture for a banner for my sons baseball team. It was raining that day so the coach wanted to take it inside... afterwards he asked if I was able to photoshop a background...some kind of baseball field or something. Is this possible, and if so what program would be used?
Thanks!

Hi.. I am totally new to this forum. I really need a help with lighting things as i am feeling so frustrated now.

anyway, the thing is, i have bought a pair of strobe (150w each) with umbrella and 2 light stands. Problem is - i was trying to take some pictures using one of this strobe. but all pics were underexposed.

my camera setting was 1/60 - 1/90 and f5.7 .....

is anything wrong with my strobe? i am so upset .. i cant afford to buy anything else.. i have money problem. i started to think that i have wasted my money already.

can anyone help me pls by pointing out what is wrong and how to fix it?

thank you so much...

playing with the new d600!


DSC_9541 by capturedbybc, on Flickr

i'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but i looked around and couldn't see a for sure right place. has anyone ever bought used lenses from amazon.com vendors? i see what look like good deals on there, but i am skeptical and afraid i will be scammed. advice please. thanks.

7D with Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm

i'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but i looked around and couldn't see a for sure right place. has anyone ever bought used lenses from amazon.com vendors? i see what look like good deals on there, but i am skeptical and afraid i will be scammed. advice please. thanks.

I am looking at images of 8mm film frames, made in 1963 with a color 8mm camera and 9-27mm lens. The lens was set to 27mm (max, telephoto) which sets the maximum exit window. The images show the frames with intersprocket area, and not just the part corresponding the standard size. For example,

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/z218.jpg

I noticed that the area that corresponds to standard frame, which is about 3/4 of the frame width measured from the right side, shows consistent distances. However, the last 1/4 of the frame on the left side, corresponding to intersprocket area, shows distances widened. You can even notice by the faces wider than they should be. Is it expected for telephoto lens on the peripheries of exit window? After all, the lens should be designed only for the standard frame size and anything beyond could be distorted. What is the technical term to describe this?

Hey Guy,
Just starting out with my own rig, & looking for some accessories. What do all think about this kit, & also will this go along or fit my lenses I ordered?

My Rig:EOS Rebel T3i body, 18-55mm IS type II lens, & EF-S 75-300mm III lens.

Kit in Question:Essential Lens Set Filter Kit for 58mm Canon Rebel T4i T3i T3 T2i T1i XSi XS | eBay

Thanks in advance,

in lieu of upgrading to the d600 from the d5000 until the bugs get worked out, i will invest in lenses. i already own a 50 mm f/1.4. which of these 2 is best to add for now, 23mm f/1.8 or 35mm f/2d?

So RAWs are at 12-14 bits or so. Jpegs are at 8.
The difference ends up being a difference of a factor of 16 or 64, respectively, in the number of different steps you can have along color or luminosity values. This gives you extra latitude in editing, because you can pick and choose which areas you want to sample more densely (like almost blown out highlights) and which to sample less densely in going from RAW to the final version you send to print or post on the internet, etc. In other words, more dynamic range to choose from (even though you end up with the same dynamic range).

However, RAWs take up way more space and take longer to process, etc. Why not have a format that compromises between the two? Why are camera companies ONLY offering you either a completely unedited format (aimed at people who want high image technical quality), OR an inflexibly edited version (aimed at people who want to use images SOOC)? Surely some people want something in between (I am one).

There's no reason why they couldn't also offer a format that flexes as needed, preserving PORTIONS of the dynamic range of RAW only where they are needed based on the resulting histogram from an image. Giving you the size and speed of a jpeg, but not sacrificing any of the precious data where you need it. Only where you DONT need it.

It could go something like this:

1) The camera calculates a luminance histogram from the RAW itself, or at least the closest rectangular grid approximation. (all these steps would work equally well for color. I'm just using luminance as an example). Simple arithmetic.
2) The camera superimposes the shape of the histogram so that its average value falls on the dotted line on the graph shown below. Also simple arithmetic.
3) The camera adjusts the shape of the histogram to account for the fact that you can't go higher than 12 bits (this involves clipping the parts above 12, and then pulling up the average value of every other point on the curve so that the average is once again right on the dotted line. Also simple arithmetic.).

nhMJDz0.jpg

4) Okay so now the camera is going to save it in an 8 bit format. Which means 256 lightness values. BUT, critically, each of those 256 values does not have to cover an equal portion of the dynamic range that RAW provides. They can cover VARIABLE portions of the dynamic range. As in, value 125 might cover a range of 50 different lightness values from RAW, whereas value 126 might only cover 35 values from RAW, etc. So we need to determine how big each bin is. How? Well, we already did. That's what that red line does for us.
5) The height of the red line at each point corresponds to what portion of RAWs dynamic range that value covers. Let's say that your camera has RAWs with 12 bits. If so, then if the red line is on the dotted line, then that value (for instance, approximately value 30 in the example above?) will average across 16 lightness values in the RAW (12 bit - 8 bit = 2^4 = 16). If the red line is at maximum (12 bits), then one value in the file will correspond to one value in the RAW (NO loss of data). If it is at 4 bits, then one value will correspond to 256 values of lightness in the RAW (12 - 4 = 2^8 = 256).
6) Save the data along with a "key" that tells you what the value of the red line was at each point (this only adds a couple of kilobytes or whatever to your image)
7) The highlights and very darkest shadows could, by default, be biased to have a bit denser sampling.

When you're done, the overall file size will equal the size of a normal 8 bit jpeg, but it will be nonlinearly sampled, to best suit your image. So in this example, the highlight will be at maximum density sampling with the RAW, meaning you will have almost just as good of an ability to recover highlights or do any other editing as if you had shot RAW. but in a jpeg sized file.


There are no decisions to be made in the field, because the density of data will auto-scale to where it's needed. Any large smooth areas that need to have smooth gradients will be densely.

When you load it into a computer, the computer can then use the key to decode it back to a normal grid with almost the same RELEVANT data density as the original RAW did.

A toy example:

gKsAjGK.jpg
The bars on top are a histogram. Imagine that the top row of boxes are a "RAW" file in an imaginary system where the data is 3x as dense in RAW as in the imaginary jpeg-style format. Each box = one value of lightness. This is how it samples currently, more or less. Each lightness value corresponds to an equal number of values in the other format. This is true regardless of the density of the pixels. Notice that the first of the compressed boxes doesn't correspond to even one pixel! Yet it is still using up some of our data bandwidth. At the same time, alll of the actual pixels in the image are being crammed into one single lightness value, and all that data is getting pointlessly thrown away. Wasteful.

In the proposed system, it would map like this:

a3QgKjo.jpg

The first box covers the whole empty area, and then the second two boxes are devoted to storing the majority of the data that is actually in the photo at a higher than otherwise resolution. The very top lightness value is actually equally as dense as the RAW data, where density and precision are most relevant to this particular photo.

Thoughts?




P.S.: two other random details:
1) You could select in camera menu how much you wanted to compress (doesn't have to be 8 bits. If we are gonna make our own new format anyway, might as well let people select how much compression they want).
2) In reality, the red line above would only go in steps of 1 bit at a time, for technical computer reasons.

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Hello, My apology if this is posted somewhere else but I'm curious if anyone more experienced can help me with this strange and annoying issue.

Purchased a D600 recently and find all pictures have a line down the right hand side of the lens.:

1-ARC_1746.jpg 1-ARC_1576.jpg

Does anyone know what this is? The camera is relatively new (one month) so it is still under warranty should it be a serious issue. Digitally cropping it out isn't a huge deal it just shouldn't need to be done on this model of camera. Oh, and the lens is the Nikkor 24-85mm standard kit.

Many Thanks

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• 1-ARC_1576.jpg (117.5 KB)
• 1-ARC_1746.jpg (56.7 KB)