Bit Tech Photographer's Thread

After PsychoI3oi started a Modding Pics "how to" thread in The modding forums (great idea!), the inevitable technical talk started to creep in. As the original thread was for basic techniques, and not in depth discussion on photography, I decided that G-Gnome's idea of a seperate thread for serious imaging talk should be put here. Please use the original thread to show your modding pics, ask for critiques and for general, basic techniques for those who just want to improve their pics.

This thread is for photographers, or those with a deeper interest in the subject to really get into the nuts and bolts - either technically, or artistically.

The original thread is here for those that wish to read that, and carry on any discussions.

 

sweet, I have always hoped to find some more advanced commentary on taking nicer pics.

?- do you think, in visual appeal, centering in the frame is better...or drawing attention to the important part of the Mod results in better pictures?

ie- I have hand filed a 6-in-1 card reader into the acrylic faceplate in my clear case...I have generally taken a shot of the whole faceplate to show the continuity of the acrylic that it creates, I have no drive-colored plates at all.

What would you do to convey the overall, or specific qualities of the Mod in question?

 

56k bye bye...

Hey Pookey, I looked at your website - very nice stuff there. I especially like some of the really digitally manipulated shots, they look surreal and striking. Some David LaChappelle influence in a few pics there too?

I quit shooting full-time in 2001 though I guess still doing the odd paid job still qualifies me technically as a 'professional'. I still call myself an 'ex' prof though. I plan on getting back into it when I get out of the army in a couple of years, though not shooting fashion and advertising like I did, but landscapes and nature (with a modern-art feel). I used to work through an agent in Sydney (Network Management) and shot for most of the big-name pubs here and a few overseas ones - Vogue, Marie Claire, Rolling Stone, FHM, TIME, Sony Music/Festival/V2 Records, Cleo, Oyster, Max, Total Sports, to name a few. A lot of advertising and celeb portraits too. After 7 years I got sick of the whole industry and moved away to be with my then-fiancee (now wife). Oh and re-joining the army made it tricky to keep shooting full-time as well Now I take pics of weapons, guys fast-roping out of helos, blowing doors etc. Lots more fun.

Anyway, a few pics of the sort of stuff I used to do, from an old CD of scans from about 2 years before I quit (I never got around to scanning my later stuff )

 

im going to be reading this to get ideas (photography a-level student)

im a more land-scapes person and did my first portrate set in may.

 

I've been known to glance at the odd LaChappelle image from time to time

Thanks for the kind words.

That was a radical move!

You got some very polished stuff there, reminds me of a Danish guy working out of London called Claus Thuman.

I know how you feel... I feel the same about London.. it's a pressure cooker, and the whole industry is in a real mess at the moment... no one's doing much work.. if any. Too much royalty free stuff out there, so licensing your work for different usage, which can be the biggest money spinner suddenly doesn't seem attractive anymore. Design house work is all done in house now as well, so a lot of work is just no longer there.

I need to update the site badly. In the mean time, I may drop some other stuff into this thread at some point.

 

Good morning all.

I'd just like to apologize agian for starting the technical clutter in the original forum. But seeing as how it spawned this thread, I suppose it can't be all that bad.

Pookeyhead,
I've been mulling over our discusion regarding Reciprocity Law and overexposing vs. pulling/pushing. I think we may have just had some miscommunication and as well as differing opinions coming from what looks like two schools of photography. I took a look at your site, and you have some really nice work there. From what I saw, it looks like you deal more with fine-art and/or illustrative photography. As much as I love the fine-arts, my professional background is journalism and documentary photography. When you mentioned Reciprocity Law, I thought you you were talking about Reciprocity Failure. My specialty back when I was still in school was nighttime photography using only existing light sources (i.e. street lamps, lighted signs, etc.). After studying timed exposures for so long, anytime I hear the word Reciprocity, I have a habit of going straight to Reciprocity Failure.

I suppose we have had different experiences with film, because every type of film that I have used has been overrated, regardless of the camera used. I agreed that setting the ISO lower is essentially overexposing, but it can be used alongside the EV compensation features. When I manually set the ISO, what I am doing is re-baselining the EV to 0. I hope that made sense; I've never been good at explaining things. Now that I have my film set to what should be EV 0, I can use the EV compensation to make adjustments for other exposure issues along the way (person in front of a window, for example). You and G-Gnome have obviously been doing this longer than I, so perhaps you may have experienced something different. I'm just relating what I have found to work after some trial and error.

Again, I think we may have the classic "internet thread miscommunication." I understand that exposure latitude and contrast latitude are two different things. When I said that slide film had less latitude, I was referring to exposure.

As I said before, I come from a documentary/journalism background. Shooting for the newspaper was fun (especially with sports), but my heart lies in taking pictures of abandoned places with a trusty 4x5 and spending hours in the darkroom. I almost never use any kind of reflector, instead opting for the natural, existing light. And thanks for the book recommendation, I'll have to check that out, as Ansel Adams is one of my all-time favorites, no matter how cliché it may be. And you can never have too many photography books

What G-Gnome said rings very true. All the technical knowledge in the world is no substitute for the artistic elements in a photograph.

G-Gnome,
Looks like you made a fairly good name for yourself in the advertising/magazine world. That's some pretty nice work.

Here's a link to some of my work. The site is aging and is desperately in need of a makeover. The link goes right to the HTML version, as my poor attempts at Flash are rather embarrassing (not to mention they take forever to load. I really wish I had some better scans of my "fine art" work. Let's just say I'm much more comfortable with an enlarger and chemicals than I am with a scanner.

-monkey

 

As for framing, I'm of the school that says placing it in the centre is usually boring, unless it's something that's got such impact, it can stand alone with very little in the background. I tend to find things slightly askew, off centre, or at a jaunty angle a little more interesting. However, with shots of your mod, you gotta make it clear, so exercise caution. Just experiment mate... The best rule to remember, is that rules can be broken.


As for the acrylic card reader thing, I'd shoot it against a dark background, but lit from the front, to one side, but with a light reflected off a very large piece of card so the acrylic has something to reflect. Have the light low down, aimed up at the card, so the light itself wont reflect in the acrylic... just the white area of the card. A second light behind the case, but not in shot will highlight the edges of the acrylic.

You could also light it directly from above.. this will highlight the edges of the acrylic, whilst keeping the overall case dark... it depends what look you want to go for

PS: I think this one is best in the other thread... BTW... pasting it there too for the benefit of others.

Get all dust and fingerprints off your case, or it will look horrible when backlit!

 

thanks for the leads on angles and lighting, wasn't sure if this thread was for more technical analysis of shooting, or just over my head.

I'm just a hobbyist with a 5MP digicam that would love one of the new 8MPs.

Most of my case shots are in the dark (like after 10pm even with blackout miniblinds) and using .5-2sec exposure to get the UV to pick in the CCD.


Th main problem I have experienced with showing the acrylic case I have is under ANY flash or exposure setting, it turns semi-opaque (not a word I guess, but you get the idea) to the camera, and I get a hazy orange color instead of transparent. So I tend to lower or raise the tripod so the flash doesn't bounce back at the lens. I also move back so the flash is more dispersed.

You guys clearly have a huge amount of experience with EV and exposure setting for field of view effects, and composition to learn from.

Again, thanks tons, I will experiment with those lighting techniques over the weekend.

 

This thread was intended for more in-depth discussion, yes, but I'll answer it here as well. The best place for "how to" type questions though, is the "How to photograph your mods" thread here


First of all, don't use flash... switch your flash off. It will just give awful flat lighting, and probably reflect off every shiny surface in your case. The lighting diagram i put in the last post is the best way to light it. You can just use normal desk lamps if you want, but if you do, make sure you set the camera's white balance to tungsten... usually a little light bulb symbol. If you dont do this, your photo will turn out orange. This is because normal tungsten household bulbs are not actually white. We perceive them as white because the human eye can adjust to different conditions, whereas film or your cam's CCD can not, and is balanced for daylight.

The Lamp bouncing off the white card will give a large light area to reflect in the font panel, to show details, and the light behind will light up the edges, seems and joins in yoru case to show the transparency.

Do not use the camera's flash!! Switch it off, and use a sturdy tripod instead.

 

Hi Dgephri,

Don't worry about getting an 8 megapixel camera, at least not yet. Unless you plan on making 11x14 inch enlargements, 5 MP will be more than enough for you. Most of the decent 8 MP cameras out right now are just too expensive. Currently, the only people who would really benefit from 8 megapixels are photographers like Pookey and G-Gnome, as they tend to do more advertising/illustrative work that could potentially reach poster sizes.

There are other features that are more important for hobbyist photography, such as optical zoom vs digital zoom.

Of course given my track record over the past couple days, I could be mistaken, but you should be just fine with the camera you have.

-monkey

 

oh yeah I know, but I love gadgets and "new stuff."

I have the Sony 707 5MP, with 5X optical zoom (digital zoom is a waste IMO, and degrades detail clarity) and nightshot (fun for outdoors tricks).

I hear the Sony 828 has noise problems over 200ISO and the typical CA problems of most first gen Digital cameras. I will likely wait until the 838 or whatever comes out.

 

I still use 120 roll film

For anything you intend to put on a website however, it's really not important. I'd happily use my 2mp Coolpix 775 for web images. Even a 1600x1200 image is only around 2mp, and as that's way too large for a web image, don't worry.

As a 640x480 image is only around 0.3mp or so, it's well within the capabilities of your camera.

 

You have some really nice art stuff. I'd love to be able to do work like that. I never shot digital before I bought my current cam last year (always 6x7, 645 and 35).

I haven't owned a scanner for years either (hence the shots above being my older stuff - I have acres of things shot in my last 2 years of work. ) and my photoshop skills are fairly basic retouching only. I plan on getting a bit more together now the photo bug has been rekindled with the acquisition of my digicam (so easy...(and the main reason)...so cost-effective! I was always used to the client paying that I forgot how expensive it can be to shoot chem film for oneself). My digital technical know-how is still fairly basic as well.

Question for the digital gurus:

One thing I have been finding with digital, is when a magazine wants to run a shot at 300dpi it really reduces the printable size of the pic (being a 72dpi file), unless I re-size in photoshop (which I don't like doing). What would be a good work-around for this? Is there a way of fairly lossless re-sizing larger in photoshop? For re-sizing I normally use the standard 'Image Size' and bicubic etc. What do you guys do to convert digital for print? If I wanted to shoot a straight 300dpi A4 size page I'd need more res than my 5mp can get? Or am I way off track here? Any advice appreciated. I used to always just get a drum scan off a print (shot a lot of neg) or film scan done to 300dpi by the lab. Plus, when I did my photo course in 1992/93 there wasn't much covered on digital...

 

I should think in the digital realm you would want the highest full-frame res your camera will do in TIFF mode.

I'm pretty sure that scaling up or down with TIFFs results in lower image loss than JPEG (due to the recompressing at each stage).

Basically, you are limited by whatever the MP of your camera is, ie a 1.3MP will print 4X6 decently, but an 8X10 will look horrid. A 5MP will do 8X10 quite easily, and depending on the optics an 11X15 will likely be hard to distinguish from a photo. Bigger than that, and you suffer from data density problems.

I take my little photo program, and at 72dpi, my 5MP is 2560X1920 or some such and ends up being 35inches by 26 inches (+/-). I fix both the aspect ratio AND the file sized (Photoshop may do things differently). Then I change to 300dpi and get 8.5X6.4 inches (+/-). So I could feasably print and 8X10 at about 256dpi. Pretty damn close to the full 300dpi the printer can do. This is about as big as I would guess most magazine pages are, with margins?

 

This is the problem with digital capture, and why I still don't often use it. It's becoming normal these days for files to be submitted as 100Mb 8bit TIFFs (or 200Mb 16bit TIFFs), and there are precious few cameras that can produce that. Even stuff like the DCS14n can only output 14mp RAW files... that equates to around a 39Mb TIFF.

First, if your camera can save files in RAW format, work in that for resizing as it's usually a smaller file (Photoshop CS has native RAW support, and there are plug-ins for PS7). If it can't, and your cam saves the files in TIFF format in 16bit, then load into PS as that, and do all sizing in 16bit mode. Always resize first, in 16 bit, before you drop down to 8 bit for editing. If you have Photoshop CS, then you may not have to convert to 8 but at all, as CS offers far more 16 bit action. Large interpolating in 8bit can cause dithering errors, especially on smooth graduations... working in 16 bit avoids this.

For resizing, I use a program called S-Spline by Shortcut software. The results are way better than the bicubic interpolation in PS. Bicubic interpolation whilst not as good, can still produce good results if you use it correctly. Avoid massive resizing in one stage if possible. Resize upwards in around 20% steps, as that way, there is less interpolating work for PS to do.

There are also programs like Genuine Fractals that are superb at resizing images with minimum loss.

No matter how great these programs are however, you can't generate what's not there. They will all resize the image's bitmap, but the overall detail level will always remain as it was in the original file. I'm afraid digital capture is still no match for a decent scan from a 120 negative, and whilst it wont be long before it is, the cameras still cause problems. Using the DCS14n for example, can be an exercise in frustration: Lens "optimisation" problems, buffer underuns in fast shooting, stuff like that. It has it's uses, but don't throw out that old Nikon FM just yet

 

Supermonkey!

Some great stuff there! I can't do the whole reportage, documentary, editorial thing... i'm crap at it. I have this aversion to reality that I just cant shake off. You have an eye for it tho. Have you appraoched a stock library? You're stuff is VERY saleable as stock!

One of the problems faced by photographers these days, is competition from stock agencies. My stuff doesnt do well as stock, but yours would. You could easily weather this economic storm by dumping all your stuff in a stock library.

Caution however: Watch for licensing... lots will insist on exclusive rights, so you can't sell to others if you so wish. Some still allow you to license usage of your work to other clients however... just read the contract before you sign it.

 

Wow, thanks for the kind words, guys! It's kind of funny, actualy. I've noticed that alot of photographers are good at one thing, and not so good at others. Drop me in the middle of breaking news or a sporting event and I'm pretty comfortable, but give me a model and and a fashion assignment and I'm completely clueless. I've never been good at the advertising stuff, and my studio lighting skills need so much work

I had thought about shooting stock photography at one point, but after reading all the horror stories about licensing and shady agencies I was scared of the idea. I'm one of those people that couldn't negotiate his way out of a wet paper sack.

Sometimes I wonder where all the photos are coming from these days. It seems that every photographer I've met in the last year isn't actually doing any photography. I'm not sure what the economy is like over the pond, but it downright stinks here. Hopefully thigns will turn around soon and more photo jobs will open up!

Right now all I shoot with is 35mm and an aging Canon Rebel X. I would really love to get my own 4x5 view camera and enlarging equipment, then I could get back into the documentary work that I love so much.

I liked working with digital in journalism. At the newspaper we were shooting with a Nikon D1, which was a really nice camera. Nice image quality with a decent sized buffer for continuous firing. We usually set the image resolution to 150 dpi, but that was for newsprint. I'm going to take a look at those programs that Pookey mentioned, because I've been getting a lot of requests from friends who want me to enlarge really small digital images. My PS skills are ok, but I can't work magic I don't think I'll ever convert to digital for my own work, though, as I have a hard time adjusting the color and contrast with digital photos. For some reason my scans just never look quite right, either.

-monkey

 

Thanks for the pointers Pookey - just the sort of tips I was looking for. I'll go look for the programs you mentioned. I asked the question mainly because I had a couple of magazines want to run some of my digital pics as full-bleed pages and the ones they want need to be upsized about 20% to be able to run as a full-page at 300dpi.

Supermonkey - If you are having negotiation probs, have you thought about getting an agent? I worked through an agency and they did all the negotiating, contracts, booking go-sees at publishers, booking studios and assistants for me, etc. All I did was turn up and take the pics and follow through the post production and delivery to the client. The 20% I paid them was worth it.

I never used to think about shooting stock because I only ever did commissioned work through my agent which kept me busy (and paid). Good agents have the contacts though I guess it depends on what you shoot. In fashion/Advertising a client will often approach an agent without any real idea who they want to use, and a lot of clients won't consider using a photographer unless they are with a good agency. Apart from an agent, I'd say just have a strong sense of the value of your work and don't 'settle' for less than what its worth.

It sucks that the work sounds pretty thin in the US/UK. I have been out of circulation for about 4 years now so can't really comment on the situation here in Aus (though it's likely the same).

 

Then G-Gnome's idea of getting an agent sounds good. Even if you dont actually use the agent to find you a stock agency, he/she will be able to read through the contract to see if you're getting yourself into a nightmare or not.

I only know the UK market, but there's a stock library called alamy (www.alamy.com) who are pretty flexible with usage. Usually you just send them a CD of low res samples, and if they're interested, they'll let you know.

Royalty free stock!! It's killing the industry. Once was the day when royalty free stuff was low quality, and if you wanted to buy stock images, you bought the rights managed stuff. At least there was money for the photographer with rights managed work, but these days lots of photographers are just selling their stuff outright to stock libraries, and the resulting glutt of royalty free images means that an ad agency that would at one time pay for photography, for a below the line campaign, now wont. Why should they pay £1300 per day for a photographer, when they can just buy an image outright for £400?

Below the line work is drying up fast. Magazine and editorial is still there, but the pay reflects this ability to buy stock. Only above the line is unaffected, but there are few jobs, and many photographers

yes, it's depressing, but the industry is, and always has been one of feast and famine. I'm sure things will change.

I would have thought 5x4 an odd weapon of choice for documentary... but i'm not a documentary guy I used to have an old Linhoff Karden 45s. Nice solid camera. Just total lack of use for it prompted me to sell it not long ago actually.

I used to have a friend that regularly sold to fashion mags, and supplied them with images scanned from 120 on a Epson Flatbed. Most people just ask for these specs because they're told to, and wouldnt know if it was up-ressed or not if their lives depended on it to be honest. It doesn't hurt to be thorough however. Just up-res in stages if using PS, and avoid excessive use of Unsharp making etc.

The best sharpening method is a two pass method using edging. It's a little too complex for me to sit here typing it up I'm afraid, so allow me to point you to a link.

click here

This usually gives finer results, without adding artifacting to parts of the image that don't require sharpening.

It's probably the same unfortunately. I'm sure things will improve at some point tho.

 

the word i'd use is translucent ,litterally light-through, (as opposed to transparent, apparent[visible]-through).