Zoo Critters C&C

[DennyCrane]

I waited TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES for that damned dirty ape to even glance near me! lol. And thanks, all for the advice.

Many years ago, a co-worker spent nearly a full day getting a single nature shot. He went through several 36-shot rolls of film and caught one hell of a cold. The pic was beautiful, though.

I can believe that. I get a little impatient with animals or people. I'll wait forever for the perfect moment of a sunset or sunrise.

 

[Plato]

HEARD of them, never used them.

As you are probably aware, the human eye can't see very well through an f/16 lens opening, especially in the dark. You compose the pic with the lens wide open and it automatically stops down when you push the shutter button. It wasn't always automatic. In the early days of SLRs, you would manually open the lens, compose the shot, then manually close it down and finally take the shot.

A "preset" lens was an improvement over full manual. You decide on the exposure first and, of course, the required aperture. You set a mechanical "stop" on the lens so that you can manually close down to the desired aperture without looking at the lens.

The "Honeywell Pentax" Spotmatic (1964) was advertised as the "world's first automatic SLR" because the aperture automatically opened wide for composing and automatically closed down to the (manually configured) shooting aperture when you pressed the shutter button.

That's why I get a laugh out of those that scream "Manual is the only way to go." Hell, most of them don't know what full manual really is. (There was also a time when you had to manually move the mirror out of the way!)

My first camera was my grandfathers kodak rangefinder 35mm. It had shutter speed, aperture, and ISO on a VERY small lens. But, my first SLR experience wasn't until the 80s. I had a Brownie, once, too.

Actually, it was "ASA," not "ISO." The setting didn't actually do anything. It was only there for you to use as a reminder of what film is in the camera.

 

[Plato]

I waited TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES for that damned dirty ape to even glance near me! lol. And thanks, all for the advice.

Many years ago, a co-worker spent nearly a full day getting a single nature shot. He went through several 36-shot rolls of film and caught one hell of a cold. The pic was beautiful, though.

I can believe that. I get a little impatient with animals or people. I'll wait forever for the perfect moment of a sunset or sunrise.

Waiting forever for a sunset or a sunrise isn't too smart. It's gone in minutes!

 

[benlonghair]

I was playing with the gorilla a little and decided I liked how it came out. Here's what I did. This is all in GIMP so if you're working with PS it'll be slightly different.

Played with the curves. Don't ask me exactly what I'm doing, but it looks good.

Little bit of contrast:

And some Unsharp Mask

And here's the final result. It looks good on my uncalibrated screen.

Hope this helps!

 

[DennyCrane]

That's absolutely amazing. I do have Gimp, but have barely scratched the surface of it's uses. I'll try to duplicate what you've done here and maybe that'll help some of it sink in.

Nicely done.

 

[robertwsimpson]

Since the histogram is not using the full area, I would have pulled the black point up just a bit to get it farther to the left. I'm a fiend with setting white and black points though.

 

[benlonghair]

Since the histogram is not using the full area, I would have pulled the black point up just a bit to get it farther to the left. I'm a fiend with setting white and black points though.

I don't actually have any idea what i'm doing, as we discussed in my Heron thread. I just do what looks good.

 

[DennyCrane]

I played with Gimp last night and (after finding where unsharpen mask was hidden) was able to duplicate the changes. Neat stuff. I'll be exploring that program a lot more soon.

 

[robertwsimpson]

you should still use a faster shutter speed. his nose is blown out to the point where no amount of PP will make it look right again.

 

[DennyCrane]

Since that was taken, I've gotten more used to using the camera's light meter on shots. Hopefully there'll be some incremental improvements.