As with any art form, it takes getting creative to make something amazing. It's super helpful to know what each part of the camera does, but also what you can do in spite of them. One of the best lessons I learned in my high-school film class was that lighting is important, but never a limitation. The beginning of this article talks about avoiding/using certain lights, but I would argue against the need of having the perfect circumstances for a photo. The combination of two flashlights in the dark or car sunshades in the sunlight are creative ways to make any camera take sharp photos with meaning.
Photography for geeks
131–140 of 150 posts
Re: Photography for geeks
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking one of the few recent-ish mainstream phones on this list since the subthread is about smartphone sensors: Samsung Galaxy S7 has an ISO range of 50–800 and basically all the noise values (measured in log2(electrons)) are between 2 and 3. There is a downward trend from 50 to ~300, above that it's all around 2. Other phones have similarly shaped graphs with different absolute values. That sounds like the opposite…
> That sounds like the opposite of what GP (CWuestefeld) described. Am I misinterpreting the graph? No. I was stupid in what I said above, getting the direction wrong. Where I said, "...will reset to a lower snr", I should have said HIGHER.
Ah, got it! Thanks for confirming! And it's definitely not stupid: I didn't even know of this concept, so I learned something today thanks to you :)
Re: Photography for geeks
#133Re: focus. Most cameras focus on shutter button half-pressed. Learn to use this by focusing first (with a half-press), framing, and then taking the picture by finishing the press (not doing a complete press again as that would reset the focus point). Some cameras let you have a focus button different from the shutter button. This can be super useful and can become natural after a little while.
Or even use manual focus. Want to do "artistic" photos? Get lens with wide aperture (below f/2), it has very low depth of field, so you can focus on your subject and have blurred background. After using "normal" cameras all my life, I've recently (less than 3 weeks ago) bought cheapest mirrorless camera and bought f/1.2 lens (50mm without zoom, those are cheapest lens there are). First photos of my dog were so sweet I instantly fell in love with that camera and lens.
Re: Photography for geeks
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot from the article will not work, because the terms are too overloaded ("three point"). SD photography and lighting keyword dump I've tested for 1.5: f1.8, dof, bokeh, soft focus, chiaroscuro, backlit, golden hour, soft lighting, natural lighting, warm colors [but not "cool"], Polaroid, lens flare "85mm", "50mm" etc all make the image realistic, but don't do anything specific. Pro-tip: use "windows" to get many o…
Thanks for these. Can vouch for golden hour . I can see why directors are obsessed with it.
Golden hour is great if you want things to be very warm. Sometimes I throw in a (sun behind subject) as a negative prompt to reduce the "sunset" effect
Re: Photography for geeks
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can force yourself by setting everything to manual on a digital camera. Especially on a non-pasm camera, like fujifilm, where you can see and control physical dials.
It's still way too easy with digital mirrorless where you have a tight feedback loop of being able to see the image respond to adjustment live, and also there's no cost associated with pulling the trigger. I guess the best thing to do would be turn off exposure preview (so you can't see what settings are going to look like and the EVF becomes "dumb"), and perhaps buy a tiny 512MB SD card or something so you can only…
Why is it a virtue to make things hard? The analogy of "if you truly want to learn programming, you have to do it with punch cards" feels apt.
Instant feedback is good for learning. I sometimes feel that old-school photographers are just kinda bitter that it's a lot easier to take competent photos today than it was 20 years ago, and think it's not real unless you're carrying a light meter around.
Re: Photography for geeks
#136Longer focal length, more zoom, more perspective compression, more blur outside of the focus area. Wider open arperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. Longer exposure time, more light on the sensor, more motion blur. Bigger sensor sensitivity (ISO), more light collected per unit of time, more grain/noise. Bigger sensor, bigger field of view, more blur outside of the area of focus. The…
> Wider open aperture, more light on the sensor, more blur outside of the focus area. / shallower depth of field
Thats the phrase, I wrote this after waking up
Re: Photography for geeks
#137This is very well done for a new-to-photography audience. Will be sharing around to people who say all their things look like snapshots, what's up with that. Great use of examples, except for one: kid on bridge. > At the same time, it must be said that color and tone can be what separates a mediocre photograph from a memorable one. To illustrate, let's look at the potential evolution of this vacation shot deliberatel…
In the mid-2000s, HDR was all about jacking up local contrast, giving you that unique look of gritty skin and halos cropping up all over the place. I'm talking stuff like this: https://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/20... Less obnoxious tone mapping that compresses shadows and highlights is a more modern trend, I'd say post-2012. It's basically done by every cell phone today when shooting a high-co…
I thought those types of shots were "woah, cool!" when I first saw them. But they got old and overused fast. I'm so glad those days are (mostly) behind us. It's interesting to me how that came and went as a photography "fad" in less than a decade.
Re: Photography for geeks
#138Can we all stop for a moment to appreciate this fantastic content? Great writing, with well-picked and carefully crafted examples, with lots of good (and correct) advice. On a web page. That you can just read. If you don't appreciate this, let's describe what this website is NOT : it is not an ad-ridden cesspool of misinformation with auto-generated text interspersed with ads. It does not smack you in the face with a…
Totally agree but now I wish the author would get some kind of small reward for his effort so that he's incentivized to keep writing this kind of content.
One could buy his book https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/
Re: Photography for geeks
#139Just sharing: If you want to learn photography, buy yourself a film camera and read those two books. Ansel Adams: The Camera https://amzn.to/3gMyCa5 The Negative https://amzn.to/3U88fsN The rest is just practice.:)
You missed The Print: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ansel-Adams/dp/0821221876
Thank you. I came here to post the same thing. Glad to see these three books mentioned. :-) But as another said, The Print is only for the "chosen ones". I have all 3, and I find "The Print" to be an informative joy to read, but not as necessary to the taking of the photos.
Re: Photography for geeks
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still way too easy with digital mirrorless where you have a tight feedback loop of being able to see the image respond to adjustment live, and also there's no cost associated with pulling the trigger. I guess the best thing to do would be turn off exposure preview (so you can't see what settings are going to look like and the EVF becomes "dumb"), and perhaps buy a tiny 512MB SD card or something so you can only…
Why is it a virtue to make things hard? The analogy of "if you truly want to learn programming, you have to do it with punch cards" feels apt. Instant feedback is good for learning. I sometimes feel that old-school photographers are just kinda bitter that it's a lot easier to take competent photos today than it was 20 years ago, and think it's not real unless you're carrying a light meter around.
Actually, today the quickest way is to start with a digital camera, but the caveat is that you must have discipline not to fall into the technography trap.
Technography is not photography.
I can take a photo without a light meter. Zone focusing and the zone system are a thing, even today.
https://petapixel.com/how-to-use-the-zone-system/
https://petapixel.com/sunny-16-rule/
The idea behind making things hard for yourself is to develop a discipline and way of seeing the world without assistance. When you get this superpower, you will use the digital aids in a completely different manner.
The instant feedback is so bad for the development of photographers mind, that some brands like Leica and Fujifilm have a digital camera without screen on their back.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=z-u3AoSV5e4
P.S. Not every debate is a generational war. I have learned plenty from the young, but in my view ignoring the knowledge of the past is not a good thing. In photography and the arts in genereal, slowing down is a feature, not a bug.:)