ajx22
May 17th, 2002, 12:03 PM
SOURCE=
Photography (http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?forumid=118)
-- Please describe your photo taking techniques. (http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=59251)
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 03:29 PM:
Please describe your photo taking techniques.
Hi Everyone,
After seeing some of the incredible images posted in this new forum and in the other forums on ReefCentral I thought it would be interesting if some of you could describe how you take such awesome pictures.
Some simple questions that I can come up with are:
Do you use a tripod?
Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
Do you use a flash.
If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
Do you add supplemental lighting?
Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
Are you using auto focus or manual?
Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
Do you use specific white balance settings?
Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
Are you using special metering modes?
I am sure that some of you can come with some more questions that I might have missed that will help everyone take some awesome pictures.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:28 PM:
heres a tip or two (some tips say 950, etc some will still apply to 990 995 775 880 885- check your manual for references on these items)
most info are from digital secrets e-book.
set your white balance @ the tank,
White Balance Preset is used when you wish to show the camera exactly and
precisely what you want it to consider white to be. You then “pre-set” to this white reference, and it is remembered by the camera until you change it. At any time you can select White Preset and your last saved white balance will become the camera’s white reference.
Professional video cameras have a similar feature, but even these don’t usually have the range of the Nikon compacts. Setting up the white balance is straightforward.
You are balancing the camera to the existing light.
• Point the camera at a white surface that is in the lighting you wish to balance to.
• Tell the camera “this is it” by selecting the Menu choice: White Bal. Preset. This produces a menu screen that asks Cancel or Measure? and shows a square sampling area from the center of the image sensor. The 950 zooms full tele to limit the sample. The 990/995 lets you zoom wider if you wish.
• Choose Measure. If you choose Cancel, the camera’s preset memory
stays filled with the previous manual white balance.
• Press the Shutter button on the 950 or click right with the Multi- Selector on the others, and the camera cycles through a brief exposure sequence during which it measures the RGB content of the target area of the sensor. The camera will now assume that anything it just saw equaled white. The circuits responsible for detecting red, green, and blue pixels will immediately have an internal look-up file that tells them how to create a good-looking color image. This file stays intact through battery changes until you do it again. Point the camera at anything that is pure white or truly neutral gray. Some high quality bond papers and white fabrics have “UV brighteners” in them. They look a little “too white” to your eye and produce a slightly warmer white balance.
Use a Tripod.
Use the timer mode - YES timer.. Use timer when you go into macro mode, so your finger does not jerk the camera resulting in a blurry picture.
if you want macro with your 880 885 995 and maybe the 775 it works nicely to set your nikon into optional lense mode
usually, in manual setting (885 - its called CSTM - on the 990-995's called M)
Fisheye 2 For FC-E8 converter Lens
Lens locks at 15.3mm. The macro point.
No zoom available.
All flashes off.
2 lens setting is also useful with no adapter at all, when you want to move the lens to a locked intermediate position. The lens comes to rest right at the macro sweet spot, ready for your next ultra close-up. Barrel distortion at this point is virtually zero.
in Adobe Photoshop, there is ways to make your picture to come out a bit more realistic.
use Auto Levels, and also use Unsharpen mask.
THE UNSHARP MASK
(FILTER > SHARPENING > UNSHARP MASK)
Who would think that the best control to sharpen an image in a computer would begin with the word, unsharp? But it does. The Unsharp Mask control is a filter in Photoshop in the group of controls labeled Sharpening. Choose the Unsharp Mask, and a window appears with several choices and a small preview window. If the box labeled Preview is checked, the filter is already being applied to your shot. With images the size of the Nikon 990/995/885 and 950/775 shots, you should be able to leave this checked, providing your computer is of reasonably fast speed.
The top slider shows the amount of “sharpening” the control is generating. Under that you have a window that asks for a number. This is the radius, in pixels, of the influence of the filter. It works fractionally as well.
This is important. By being able to influence only about third of a pixel with an entry of 0.3, you are keeping the effect very tightly bound to the contours in your image. A 1.0 pixel radius will extend the influence of the sharpening effect a full pixel in every direction from the one being worked on.
How it works is interesting. It heightens the contrast between pixels of different values. A dark pixel against a light pixel will become a darker pixel against a lighter pixel. Since the original values are slightly exaggerated, the boundary from one to the other is exaggerated, and looks sharper to the eye.
Locally, the contrast between the two original features is increased, but it is our vision system that interprets this as being a sharpness improvement.
It is real easy to overdo Unsharp Mask. Try numbers like these to experience how they work:
RADIUS AMOUNT
0.2 100 - 500
0.3 80 - 300
0.5 50 - 170
1.0 20 - 90
2.0 10 - 50
Large number entries in the Radius box have a different sort of influence on the picture. Try putting in a number like 60~200 and moving the Amount slider around. Notice how areas of the picture adjust their relatively local contrast into looking more vivid? Watch out for bright areas, though, they can easily become too bright and lose detail. Often a conservative use of this technique will simply add a bit of snap to the image. Try a Radius of 80 and an Amount of 15.
This control is capable of achieving several effects and is worth playing with for a while, just to get a sense of how its various settings interact.
While the Unsharp Mask tool can perk up the effects of low or no in-camera sharpening, the camera has the image in memory before compressing and storing it, so the very sharpest images with the fewest
artifacts will probably result from appropriate in-camera sharpening. With the 950, this is moot, since the camera has no control over in-camera sharpening, and does fine as is. But with the 775, 880, 990 and 995, the Image Sharpening control may be set to its Normal or Automatic Sharpening setting without fear. Experiment with shots made using Low in-camera sharpening followed by judicious Unsharp Mask tweaking.
SIZING FOR POSTING IN REEFCENTRAL - THIS TIP IS GOOD INFO!
If you are preparing images for use on the Internet, it is doubtful that you will
need to display images larger than 1024 pixels wide. Photoshop’s scaling tool, Image > Image Size > Resample Image: Bicubic, produces the cleanest results. Specify a dimension in pixels in the upper windows and the rest of the window will calculate itself automatically. For the best results apply any sharpening after re-scaling your shot.
HOW DO I FORCE THE CAMERA TO FOCUS WHERE I WANT?
With the 950 you have two immediate methods of focus. Autofocus, and Manual focus. Since the camera is not a single lens reflex, manual focusing is given over to a series of preset focus ranges which lock in at 0.33 (feet), 0.66, 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, and INF (inity). In meters, the numbers show up as 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, 3.0, 10, and INF. Obviously these are only approximations, but they represent focus areas in which the depth of field compensates somewhat for inexactness.
The 880, 885, 990, and 995 divide up the focus range into 50 manual zones
creating a more refined selection of focus areas. The range goes all the way from infinity to 0.06 feet (0.02 meters).
Almost everybody wants to shoot very close on occasion. While closer focus is available through the Autofocus mode, the minimum Manual focus setting is available at every point in the zoom range. And 0.33 on feet on the 950, that’sa mere four inches. The 990 and 995 achieve this close setting at just a hair under full tele zoom. This is a field of view just over 1-1/4 inch wide! Very closeindeed. Close enough to crop inside the long dimension of a 35mm slide. On top of the 950 there is a button dedicated to being the focus helper. It is the rearmost button behind the shutter release. Stepping through it selects Infinity, Micro, and Self Timer. Wait a minute, how did that get in there? Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal > Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots and have the Self Timer function at the same time.
Some subjects are unlikely to wait for
the autofocus. Preset the focus (here
at 0.33 feet) and prowl by moving the
camera into position.
The Nikon Manuals aren’t any help here either.
An undocumented procedure works around this problem:
To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:
• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.
• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the camera top, and keep it down while turning the Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now you are setting the focus manually while maintaining the ability to trip the shutter while not touching the camera.
The other models include Macro Focus in the Self Timer choice, so all Self Timer shots will be forced to wait through the longer macro focusing procedure. Unless you set the focus manually. The procedure is the same as for the 950. Set the Self Timer, press and hold the M-Focus button while the Command Dial selects the distance. As the manual distance is chosen, the monitor shows you the focus distance, and the camera top display blinks all the focus icons on the 950. The 990/995 shows the numerical distance without the icon animation.
TIP - If the camera falls asleep, the setup is lost and you will have to start over.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:49 PM:
i forgot one more photoshop tip
CURES OR LEVELS
(COMMAND OR CTRL -M, -L)
The Curves and Levels controls have a special feature useful in color control of your image. Three “eyedropper” controls with black, gray, and white fluid in them are used to sample the image’s brightest, darkest, and most neutrally colored places for fast adjustment.
The middle eyedropper is the one with the greatest color correction use. The default setting is for middle gray. Double click on it to see where it is set on your computer.
Not gray? Easy to fix.
See those boxes labeled H:, S:, B:? B = Brightness. Enter H: 0°, S: 0%, B: 50% and the rest of this idea will work for you. Now touch this Gray Eyedropper cursor on any object in your scene that would naturally be close to neutral gray. It doesn’t matter whether the gray part is light or dark, just so long as it is supposed to be without other color. The white trim of a house in slight shadow, a whitewall tire or the dark gray of the tire itself, a gray patch of pavement, a gray foggy sky, a colorless rock, lettering on a sign, a silver car, a white shirt… all of these will work if you find the right place to click.
As soon as you click on your reference object, the entire scene adjusts to
re-color balance to that sample. The control adjusts the Red, Green and Blue channels in a way that turns the pixel you sampled into a neutral gray hue.
The brightness of the sample isn’t changed, just its hue and saturation. Play with this control a lot. It’s surprising to see how dramatically it works. After a while, you will become quite adept at improving the color of images shot in shade, indoor light, office light, and in errors caused by outright mistakes. Shade often tends to look cool, due to contamination from the blue sky. Indoor light can be recorded too warm, due to incandescent bulbs on dimmers. In office light, which is often greenish due to fluorescent lights, the color is dependent on the exact formula of the bulbs and no one fluorescent setting will get all of them perfect. Then there are the mistakes. Some will be due to your forgetting to put the white balance on the right setting; some will come from mixed light situations that simply can’t be correctly guessed by the Auto White Balance feature of the camera. When any of these show up on your computer screen, hit that center eyedropper in the Curves window, and start looking for a likely gray object in the shot. The image above was exposed with the camera set to the wrong white balance. Fortunately, the strip of cement (arrow) was neutral in color, and simply clicking on it with the neutrality eyedropper created the vivid, realistic result.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:59 PM:
heres a pict I took a long time ago
1 with pre-editing and after editing.
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Posted by aquafresh on 01/26/2002 07:38 PM:
Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?
__________________
Jake Adams
Video games don't affect kids. If pacman had any effect on kids, they would run around in the dark gobbing pills listening to repetitive music.
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Posted by JohnL on 01/26/2002 08:03 PM:
Nice tips Clyde!
I'll be trying them very soon
__________________
Peace - John
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Posted by ATJ on 01/26/2002 08:23 PM:
I have a Nikon CoolPix 950. Other than whole tank type photos, I always use an external flash (Nikon SB24) connected with a sync cord.
For most pictures I use the flash in TTL mode (although the CoolPix does not actually use TTL flash control).
For difficult subjects I use the flash in manual mode set at 1/16 power and move the flash in or out to control the exposure.
For ultra close-ups, I put a white handkerchief over the flash to cut the power further.
When using the flash, I set the camera to aperture priority with the aperture at its samllest (largest f-stop). This increases the depth of field - i.e. more of the image will be in focus.
Here is a sample:
and another:
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 08:34 PM:
Hi Clyde,
That is some excellent info! Thank you!
I don't have the same camera that you do but many of the things that you said to most photographers.
Also, I really like the info that you gave about the unmask in Photoshop. I would have never thought about that.
Thanks again.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by wdt2000 on 01/26/2002 09:02 PM:
How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg
Thanks
Will
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 09:31 PM:
Hi Will,
I have never used Paint Shop Pro but when you are saving the file does it give you the option to "save as"?
Or is there a choice on file menu to do a "save for web"?
Or is there and "export" option?
Those are some of the more common choices that I have seen with the software that I use.
If you find one of the above options you will want to choose the .jpg format.
HTH
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by jimfitz73 on 01/26/2002 09:46 PM:
Holy Crap CLyde!!!!! Thanks for all that info!! That's the best thing about this board, people always posting tons of info!!
Thanks again!!!!
__________________
Ummm? Honey, I ahhhh...well....ummm.. I ahhhh.. just thought that the 3000 gallon would look nice in the living room.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/27/2002 12:34 AM:
nada, no charge :P knowledge is power.
I have a 885, my parents have a 995.
What a 775 does not have that a 885,995 does not ?
thers several - best is go to a photography store, ask em to read the manual on both (features)
if you're taking point and shoot pictures most of the time and your budget allows for a 775 not a 995 - then I would suggest, maybe check out other cameras.
the 775 is a bit too small for me, the 885 had almost everything that the 995 had, cept the flash TTL, etc etc.
is there a $400 difference between the two. yes.
my aunt has a 775, I noticed the camera was slower in accessing info than my parents 995. I have not studied too much on the 775 myself, so I cannot say TOO much, but do check out these four or five links.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon775.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon885.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon995.html
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/ - where I got most of my info.
http://www.megapixel.net/cgi-bin/fs...icle-macro.html
quote:
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Originally posted by aquafresh
Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?
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Posted by Clyde on 01/27/2002 12:51 AM:
Chose File
Then Choose EXPORT - JPEG OPTIMIZER
Then thats it - save to whatever.
when you want to post a picture here in this forum, you ll see '[QUOTE]Attach File:
Find the file on your computer, or click browse - then a window will pop up, you look around where the file is.
after you're done typing your stuff and all then click submit or preview reply, to make sure it shows up.
so like doug says most programs use export, save as etc.
this applies to everyone else whos reading this and is usiing a different program.
to point out, some people say the Photoshop costs too much, but you just spent 600 bucks on the cam
I've seen Photoshop for sale at Half-Price books for cheap 80 bucks or so, not the NEWEST version, but heck do you really need Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for macosx, Photoshop 3.0 4.0 will work VERY nicely - but photoshop's save for web, I cannot remember when it first came out in 4.0 ??
Try ebay for photoshop ?
another nice software not as bad is Adobe ImageReady (But I do not think they sell this one seperatly)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by wdt2000
How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg
Thanks
Will
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Posted by andyk227 on 01/27/2002 02:40 PM:
Clyde - lot's of great tips. I can't wait to try them out.
thanks!
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Posted by Rick O on 01/28/2002 06:25 AM:
Thanks for the info Clyde. I have a Coolpix 950. I've also noticed that the camera moves a slight bit when I press the shutter release even though I'm using a tripod. Does the timer mode work in macro mode? It's on the same selector button and it appears that the camera goes out of macro when you switch to macro. Or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks.
__________________
Rick's Reef
The Reef Tank
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Posted by Clyde on 01/28/2002 08:49 AM:
Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal >
Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots
and have the Self Timer function at the same time.
To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:
• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.
• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the
camera top, and keep it down while turning the
Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now
you are setting the focus manually while maintaining
the ability to trip the shutter while not touching
the camera.
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Posted by Pinecone_Jeff on 01/28/2002 12:17 PM:
Thank you!!!!!
First of all, thank you Doug and JohnL for putting this forum together! This is exactly what I was looking for.
And thank you Clyde for posting those wonderful tips! I work in related media, but the finer details of basic photography (let alone digital photography) has had me mystified! I'll be using your tips for sure.
Thanks again!
__________________
Jeff
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Posted by mgk65 on 01/28/2002 01:15 PM:
Clyde:
Thank you very much!
I have the digital secrets book, but have not had the time.... plus, it is difficult to read it in the bathroom.
mgk
__________________
Nothing happens fast in a reef tank, except disaster....
Pittsburgh Frag Swap - Apr 27 - See what you missed!
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Posted by gregr on 02/06/2002 02:26 PM:
>Do you use a tripod?
not for fish pics, but i do for about 95% of all my other photography (people pics are the other 5% +/-)
>Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
i have a set of close-up filters but i don't use them much. i am hoping to rig some sort of off-shoe flash bracket- when i do i will try more really close close-ups because with the flash in the hot shoe the light won't reach that close.
>Do you use a flash.
for fish- pretty much always
>If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
see above. getting the flash off to the side will help a lot i think.
>Do you add supplemental lighting?
just what's on the tank (55g with 150 watts actinic and 150 watts daylight).
>Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
i use photoshop- mostly resizing, sharpening and levels adjusting.
>Are you using auto focus or manual?
mostly autofocus.
>Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
i like aperture priority.
>Do you use specific white balance settings?
i play around with this- always searching for the "truest" look. sometimes it's the daylight setting that works best.
>Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
i use the Canon G2 and as i said i like aperture priority, and i usually have the flash compensation set to minus one stop (although that gets adjusted back and forth).
>Are you using special metering modes?
these new digital cameras have such accurate meters that that really isn't an issue- i use center weighted metering and when i'm using the flash it is almost always good. without the flash there tends to be more contrast because that extra added light evens things out- sometimes that's good sometimes not so good...
greg
__________________
Greg's nature photography
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Posted by Doug on 02/07/2002 12:46 AM:
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the great info.
I was thinking the same thing about the off camera flash. I am going to try it as soon as I figure out what parts I need for my camera.
That is a nice shot of your angel and tang. The funny part is that I have both of those same fish and I took a shot last week that was almost identical to yours. I even have mushrooms just like yours which were in the same picture that I took. I will have to find it and post it here.
Thanks again.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by dennisV on 02/19/2002 02:52 AM:
Well I sometimes use a slave unit flash.
It's a secondary flash that has a white-light detector.
I put some cardboard in front of my camera with a hole cut into it for the lens. The flash on my camera hits the cardboard instead of the glass of my tank. The slave unit, being held above or beside the cardboard, detects the flash and then flashes at the same time, so the light hits the subject from this angle instead of straight next to the lens.
This is inexpensive and easy.
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Posted by Clyde on 02/19/2002 02:58 PM:
theres another way, tape a small peice of developed film, its powerful enough to trigger a slave flash, but does not affect the picture, or stray light hitting the lense if it occurs.
I will be following up on this on how to build one for your nikon based cameras shortly - in about 30 min, it takes time to take picts, write up a summary and examples
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Posted by lbussy on 02/25/2002 09:26 PM:
Great. Here 2 days and I went form reef envy to camera envy.
Thanks guys. :P
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Posted by Leslie on 04/14/2002 10:18 PM:
Clyde,
OMG, where did you learn all that?
That info is amazing! I have had the 995 for months and gone from taking publishable pics to horrible pics. I have been so frustrated! I even tried to return the camera. I had a photographer who uses the camera, also the sales person at SAMY's, who sold me the camera, come over and give me a lesson. It didn't even come close to what you presented. I keep seahorses and as you probably know they don't move all that much or all that fast and I still have not been able to get anything but a very occasional shot.
I can't wait to try all your great suggestions.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share all that.
Gratefully,
Leslie
__________________
~Leslie~
Visit my seahorse coral at
http://community.webshots.com/user/sassyseahorse55
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Posted by Pinecone_Jeff on 04/15/2002 12:27 PM:
Leslie,
I have a coolpix 990 and I also had trouble taking good closeup pics of my critters. But after Clyde's instructions and, ahem, reading the manual >sheepish grin< I've learned most of the ins and outs of my camera. Now, I really need to learn the nuts and bolts of basic photography before I can really exploit the power of my Nikon. And then I'm sure it'll take even more experience to get the kind of pictures I really want. Boy, this stuff is more involved than even my reef tank! Good luck with your new hobby!
__________________
Jeff
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:44 PM:
okay, seems we need some 'excercises' to get to know our camera better.
Set the camera on single focus in
manual mode so the background doesn’t steal focus from your subject and ruin the shots.
Nikon settings -
990/995: Menu > Page 2 > Focus > Single AF
950: Menu > Set Up > LCD In/Out > On&S-AF
775: Monitor Off
Other Cameras PLEASE PM me, I ll edit this to add other cameras how to set single focus
portraits
get a subject - a human being -
Some of the best portraits are done with a slightly telephoto lens. In 35mm photography many photographers prefer 105mm and 135mm lenses for head shots. You have both, approximately. Stay at the upper range of the zoom, and try to shoot verticals at least half of the time. This is easier with the
optical viewfinder than with the monitor. By the time you have spent thirty* shots on your subject, you will have probably shot at least two
very good pictures and half a dozen pretty good ones. Obviously the camera is the reason. Stifle that chuckle and keep moving.
*Yes, thirty shots. And make each one slightly different, somehow. The first secret to getting progressively better and better
images is doing what photography does best, capture the moment. The more moments you capture, the better your odds of
getting the Best Moment. When you look back at your images, some will be very good. Others will be excellent. Those won’t
often be your first three or five.
Shoot thirty shots!
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:55 PM:
NEXT EXERCISE, GEOMETRY
Now you are looking for one thing and one thing only. Interesting shapes.
The curve of a railing,
the abstract nock of a tree limb,
the pattern of brick, the legs and feet of
somebody sitting,
a reflection,
the texture of peeled paint,
a bunch of birds on a wire,
a leaf,
a row of books,
a cat’s ear,
a car’s grill…
There has been more than one award-winning photo of each of these ideas and you may find a billion other interesting shapes in nature, the city, people, and things around you. If you must shoot a flower, shoot for the radial symmetry, if you must shoot something square, find an angle on it that lends a certain abstraction of its form to the photo. Capture twenty subjects. Keep thinking “Form. Shape. Pattern,” repeating this mantra over and over in your mind. When you review the shots, separate them into three groups, Junk, Hmm, and Okay. Then go out and repeat the exercise.
This time the review will have about 50% improvement in the Okay category. Quality, quantity, or both will have gone up. When you feel stale, do the geometry exercise. The film is free, the shapes don’t need coaxing and often the results are rewarding.
[CODE]
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:57 PM:
THE SKY
Most inspiring at dawn and dusk, the sky can be interesting at any time.
Don’t just think of the sky as a cloudy thing. Think of it as a light or a backdrop. How does the sky interact with trees, buildings, windows, light poles, clouds, horizons, mountains and people? At noon
you might have to get real low to put people up into the sky. At sunset, you might have to get up high to see how the sun casts shadows across
the ground. With flowers, you might just have to put them against clouds or vast expanses of blue. The more you look, the more often you will see an oddly shaped cloud, a blotch, a wisp, or a plume that might someday be useful. Shoot it now, use it later. And on those days when the sky dresses up and just begs to be photographed, take out the Nikon and oblige her.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:58 PM:
ROUND
Things that are round. Things that suggest roundness. Circles, semi-circles, ovals, curves, round things against jagged things, round things inside square things. Christmas ornaments, round flowers, watches, bowls of food, wheels, eyes, signs, architectural features, roseate windows, grapes, baseballs, and knobs—whatever works. Now advance the lesson. Shoot them in such a way that if you were to dissolve from one to the next, the “round” would carry concentrically from shot to shot. This, like the geometry exercise, is a good refreshing activity for times when you need a cup of photo java
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:04 PM:
I'm skipping a few excerises, mainly because it applies to what I've learned how to take Panoramic Vistas (I ll cover this later if theres interest in it)
here is next excercise REPETITION
Here you are combining experiences gained from a number of previous exercises and adding a new foo-factor. Repeating similar elements are the target. There must be three or more similar objects in a creative relationship to each other. They can be as similar as fence staves, windows of nearly identical shape, palm trees all in a row, uniformed people, feet, whatever. There is no limit on things like having them all face in the same direction or be in the same light. Points are subtracted for factors like “too dissimilar” and “too far apart to connect the similarity.” “All boys” doesn’t count. A good thing to try for is dramatic direction. All the flags were blowing straight out, all the cops were looking at the same thing, all the birds were pecking at once, all the palm trees were the same shape, etc. Then there is the special factor. The counter point. All the cops were looking at the same three-yearold in the red dress, all the birds were pecking the same eight inches of birdseed; all the windows were the same except for the one with a person sitting in it. Symmetries of repetition are many. Certainly the things-all-in-a-row idea is easier to find than the things-all-radiating-from-a-point is. But in photography, odd relationships can form symmetries of balance in which “birds of a feather flock together” is counter balanced by “there’s one in every crowd.” As you move through this exercise, try to resist lapsing back into other exercises. Part of what you are learning here is the hunt, the safari that has a single-minded goal. If you come back with a bunch of nice images, but they’re not particularly tangled up in the idea of repetition, go out and do it again.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:07 PM:
now something that most of us LIKE - MICROVISTAS !!!
The Nikon digital compacts are very comfortable in the world of the very small. Big images of small vistas, microvistas, are easier to acquire with a Nikon digital than any film camera I know. Now it is your turn to become comfortable with very little. The Autofocus system in automatic mode will focus down to about nine inches. Two focus regimes can be selected using the M-Focus button on the top or back of the camera. The first one prevents the camera from focusing on near objects and puts a little double mountain icon onto the view screen and also on the LCD display. This is the icon you don’t want to see. A second press on the same button gives you the small flower icon and this is the one that causes the camera to hunt for a nearby object. This is the micro focus regime. Nikon calls the control “Macro Close-up”
just to satisfy all those who, over the years, have gotten into the habit of calling the very small, “macro.” Microvistas can be any subject, but the area you are going to shoot is 2-1/2 inches wide or smaller. Do try to avoid clichés. If you must shoot a flower, catch one with a bee in it. ( or an acropora with a comsmal crab in it) If you have to take a picture of a telephone keypad, get a real grubby or real beautiful finger into the shot. If it’s the contents of a pocket tossed on a table, include clues to a crime. If you shoot an eye, make sure it was projecting an attitude.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:10 PM:
this is enough for now, I will do the next 8 to 12 excercises in the next few days
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Posted by MikeG on 05/09/2002 02:35 PM:
Awesome stuff Clyde!!!
Any tips for a Canon S30?
Thanks in advance.
Mike
__________________
Oceanic 105RR
EuroReef CS6-1 in 20gal sump
AB AquaStarlight Fixture 2x150 w/moonlight
T3 -- sump return
T4 -- closed loop
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The time now is 12:01 PM GMT -5 hours
HTH...
Photography (http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?forumid=118)
-- Please describe your photo taking techniques. (http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=59251)
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 03:29 PM:
Please describe your photo taking techniques.
Hi Everyone,
After seeing some of the incredible images posted in this new forum and in the other forums on ReefCentral I thought it would be interesting if some of you could describe how you take such awesome pictures.
Some simple questions that I can come up with are:
Do you use a tripod?
Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
Do you use a flash.
If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
Do you add supplemental lighting?
Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
Are you using auto focus or manual?
Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
Do you use specific white balance settings?
Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
Are you using special metering modes?
I am sure that some of you can come with some more questions that I might have missed that will help everyone take some awesome pictures.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:28 PM:
heres a tip or two (some tips say 950, etc some will still apply to 990 995 775 880 885- check your manual for references on these items)
most info are from digital secrets e-book.
set your white balance @ the tank,
White Balance Preset is used when you wish to show the camera exactly and
precisely what you want it to consider white to be. You then “pre-set” to this white reference, and it is remembered by the camera until you change it. At any time you can select White Preset and your last saved white balance will become the camera’s white reference.
Professional video cameras have a similar feature, but even these don’t usually have the range of the Nikon compacts. Setting up the white balance is straightforward.
You are balancing the camera to the existing light.
• Point the camera at a white surface that is in the lighting you wish to balance to.
• Tell the camera “this is it” by selecting the Menu choice: White Bal. Preset. This produces a menu screen that asks Cancel or Measure? and shows a square sampling area from the center of the image sensor. The 950 zooms full tele to limit the sample. The 990/995 lets you zoom wider if you wish.
• Choose Measure. If you choose Cancel, the camera’s preset memory
stays filled with the previous manual white balance.
• Press the Shutter button on the 950 or click right with the Multi- Selector on the others, and the camera cycles through a brief exposure sequence during which it measures the RGB content of the target area of the sensor. The camera will now assume that anything it just saw equaled white. The circuits responsible for detecting red, green, and blue pixels will immediately have an internal look-up file that tells them how to create a good-looking color image. This file stays intact through battery changes until you do it again. Point the camera at anything that is pure white or truly neutral gray. Some high quality bond papers and white fabrics have “UV brighteners” in them. They look a little “too white” to your eye and produce a slightly warmer white balance.
Use a Tripod.
Use the timer mode - YES timer.. Use timer when you go into macro mode, so your finger does not jerk the camera resulting in a blurry picture.
if you want macro with your 880 885 995 and maybe the 775 it works nicely to set your nikon into optional lense mode
usually, in manual setting (885 - its called CSTM - on the 990-995's called M)
Fisheye 2 For FC-E8 converter Lens
Lens locks at 15.3mm. The macro point.
No zoom available.
All flashes off.
2 lens setting is also useful with no adapter at all, when you want to move the lens to a locked intermediate position. The lens comes to rest right at the macro sweet spot, ready for your next ultra close-up. Barrel distortion at this point is virtually zero.
in Adobe Photoshop, there is ways to make your picture to come out a bit more realistic.
use Auto Levels, and also use Unsharpen mask.
THE UNSHARP MASK
(FILTER > SHARPENING > UNSHARP MASK)
Who would think that the best control to sharpen an image in a computer would begin with the word, unsharp? But it does. The Unsharp Mask control is a filter in Photoshop in the group of controls labeled Sharpening. Choose the Unsharp Mask, and a window appears with several choices and a small preview window. If the box labeled Preview is checked, the filter is already being applied to your shot. With images the size of the Nikon 990/995/885 and 950/775 shots, you should be able to leave this checked, providing your computer is of reasonably fast speed.
The top slider shows the amount of “sharpening” the control is generating. Under that you have a window that asks for a number. This is the radius, in pixels, of the influence of the filter. It works fractionally as well.
This is important. By being able to influence only about third of a pixel with an entry of 0.3, you are keeping the effect very tightly bound to the contours in your image. A 1.0 pixel radius will extend the influence of the sharpening effect a full pixel in every direction from the one being worked on.
How it works is interesting. It heightens the contrast between pixels of different values. A dark pixel against a light pixel will become a darker pixel against a lighter pixel. Since the original values are slightly exaggerated, the boundary from one to the other is exaggerated, and looks sharper to the eye.
Locally, the contrast between the two original features is increased, but it is our vision system that interprets this as being a sharpness improvement.
It is real easy to overdo Unsharp Mask. Try numbers like these to experience how they work:
RADIUS AMOUNT
0.2 100 - 500
0.3 80 - 300
0.5 50 - 170
1.0 20 - 90
2.0 10 - 50
Large number entries in the Radius box have a different sort of influence on the picture. Try putting in a number like 60~200 and moving the Amount slider around. Notice how areas of the picture adjust their relatively local contrast into looking more vivid? Watch out for bright areas, though, they can easily become too bright and lose detail. Often a conservative use of this technique will simply add a bit of snap to the image. Try a Radius of 80 and an Amount of 15.
This control is capable of achieving several effects and is worth playing with for a while, just to get a sense of how its various settings interact.
While the Unsharp Mask tool can perk up the effects of low or no in-camera sharpening, the camera has the image in memory before compressing and storing it, so the very sharpest images with the fewest
artifacts will probably result from appropriate in-camera sharpening. With the 950, this is moot, since the camera has no control over in-camera sharpening, and does fine as is. But with the 775, 880, 990 and 995, the Image Sharpening control may be set to its Normal or Automatic Sharpening setting without fear. Experiment with shots made using Low in-camera sharpening followed by judicious Unsharp Mask tweaking.
SIZING FOR POSTING IN REEFCENTRAL - THIS TIP IS GOOD INFO!
If you are preparing images for use on the Internet, it is doubtful that you will
need to display images larger than 1024 pixels wide. Photoshop’s scaling tool, Image > Image Size > Resample Image: Bicubic, produces the cleanest results. Specify a dimension in pixels in the upper windows and the rest of the window will calculate itself automatically. For the best results apply any sharpening after re-scaling your shot.
HOW DO I FORCE THE CAMERA TO FOCUS WHERE I WANT?
With the 950 you have two immediate methods of focus. Autofocus, and Manual focus. Since the camera is not a single lens reflex, manual focusing is given over to a series of preset focus ranges which lock in at 0.33 (feet), 0.66, 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 10, 30, and INF (inity). In meters, the numbers show up as 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, 3.0, 10, and INF. Obviously these are only approximations, but they represent focus areas in which the depth of field compensates somewhat for inexactness.
The 880, 885, 990, and 995 divide up the focus range into 50 manual zones
creating a more refined selection of focus areas. The range goes all the way from infinity to 0.06 feet (0.02 meters).
Almost everybody wants to shoot very close on occasion. While closer focus is available through the Autofocus mode, the minimum Manual focus setting is available at every point in the zoom range. And 0.33 on feet on the 950, that’sa mere four inches. The 990 and 995 achieve this close setting at just a hair under full tele zoom. This is a field of view just over 1-1/4 inch wide! Very closeindeed. Close enough to crop inside the long dimension of a 35mm slide. On top of the 950 there is a button dedicated to being the focus helper. It is the rearmost button behind the shutter release. Stepping through it selects Infinity, Micro, and Self Timer. Wait a minute, how did that get in there? Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal > Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots and have the Self Timer function at the same time.
Some subjects are unlikely to wait for
the autofocus. Preset the focus (here
at 0.33 feet) and prowl by moving the
camera into position.
The Nikon Manuals aren’t any help here either.
An undocumented procedure works around this problem:
To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:
• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.
• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the camera top, and keep it down while turning the Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now you are setting the focus manually while maintaining the ability to trip the shutter while not touching the camera.
The other models include Macro Focus in the Self Timer choice, so all Self Timer shots will be forced to wait through the longer macro focusing procedure. Unless you set the focus manually. The procedure is the same as for the 950. Set the Self Timer, press and hold the M-Focus button while the Command Dial selects the distance. As the manual distance is chosen, the monitor shows you the focus distance, and the camera top display blinks all the focus icons on the 950. The 990/995 shows the numerical distance without the icon animation.
TIP - If the camera falls asleep, the setup is lost and you will have to start over.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:49 PM:
i forgot one more photoshop tip
CURES OR LEVELS
(COMMAND OR CTRL -M, -L)
The Curves and Levels controls have a special feature useful in color control of your image. Three “eyedropper” controls with black, gray, and white fluid in them are used to sample the image’s brightest, darkest, and most neutrally colored places for fast adjustment.
The middle eyedropper is the one with the greatest color correction use. The default setting is for middle gray. Double click on it to see where it is set on your computer.
Not gray? Easy to fix.
See those boxes labeled H:, S:, B:? B = Brightness. Enter H: 0°, S: 0%, B: 50% and the rest of this idea will work for you. Now touch this Gray Eyedropper cursor on any object in your scene that would naturally be close to neutral gray. It doesn’t matter whether the gray part is light or dark, just so long as it is supposed to be without other color. The white trim of a house in slight shadow, a whitewall tire or the dark gray of the tire itself, a gray patch of pavement, a gray foggy sky, a colorless rock, lettering on a sign, a silver car, a white shirt… all of these will work if you find the right place to click.
As soon as you click on your reference object, the entire scene adjusts to
re-color balance to that sample. The control adjusts the Red, Green and Blue channels in a way that turns the pixel you sampled into a neutral gray hue.
The brightness of the sample isn’t changed, just its hue and saturation. Play with this control a lot. It’s surprising to see how dramatically it works. After a while, you will become quite adept at improving the color of images shot in shade, indoor light, office light, and in errors caused by outright mistakes. Shade often tends to look cool, due to contamination from the blue sky. Indoor light can be recorded too warm, due to incandescent bulbs on dimmers. In office light, which is often greenish due to fluorescent lights, the color is dependent on the exact formula of the bulbs and no one fluorescent setting will get all of them perfect. Then there are the mistakes. Some will be due to your forgetting to put the white balance on the right setting; some will come from mixed light situations that simply can’t be correctly guessed by the Auto White Balance feature of the camera. When any of these show up on your computer screen, hit that center eyedropper in the Curves window, and start looking for a likely gray object in the shot. The image above was exposed with the camera set to the wrong white balance. Fortunately, the strip of cement (arrow) was neutral in color, and simply clicking on it with the neutrality eyedropper created the vivid, realistic result.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/26/2002 06:59 PM:
heres a pict I took a long time ago
1 with pre-editing and after editing.
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Posted by aquafresh on 01/26/2002 07:38 PM:
Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?
__________________
Jake Adams
Video games don't affect kids. If pacman had any effect on kids, they would run around in the dark gobbing pills listening to repetitive music.
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Posted by JohnL on 01/26/2002 08:03 PM:
Nice tips Clyde!
I'll be trying them very soon
__________________
Peace - John
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Posted by ATJ on 01/26/2002 08:23 PM:
I have a Nikon CoolPix 950. Other than whole tank type photos, I always use an external flash (Nikon SB24) connected with a sync cord.
For most pictures I use the flash in TTL mode (although the CoolPix does not actually use TTL flash control).
For difficult subjects I use the flash in manual mode set at 1/16 power and move the flash in or out to control the exposure.
For ultra close-ups, I put a white handkerchief over the flash to cut the power further.
When using the flash, I set the camera to aperture priority with the aperture at its samllest (largest f-stop). This increases the depth of field - i.e. more of the image will be in focus.
Here is a sample:
and another:
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 08:34 PM:
Hi Clyde,
That is some excellent info! Thank you!
I don't have the same camera that you do but many of the things that you said to most photographers.
Also, I really like the info that you gave about the unmask in Photoshop. I would have never thought about that.
Thanks again.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by wdt2000 on 01/26/2002 09:02 PM:
How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg
Thanks
Will
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Posted by Doug on 01/26/2002 09:31 PM:
Hi Will,
I have never used Paint Shop Pro but when you are saving the file does it give you the option to "save as"?
Or is there a choice on file menu to do a "save for web"?
Or is there and "export" option?
Those are some of the more common choices that I have seen with the software that I use.
If you find one of the above options you will want to choose the .jpg format.
HTH
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by jimfitz73 on 01/26/2002 09:46 PM:
Holy Crap CLyde!!!!! Thanks for all that info!! That's the best thing about this board, people always posting tons of info!!
Thanks again!!!!
__________________
Ummm? Honey, I ahhhh...well....ummm.. I ahhhh.. just thought that the 3000 gallon would look nice in the living room.
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Posted by Clyde on 01/27/2002 12:34 AM:
nada, no charge :P knowledge is power.
I have a 885, my parents have a 995.
What a 775 does not have that a 885,995 does not ?
thers several - best is go to a photography store, ask em to read the manual on both (features)
if you're taking point and shoot pictures most of the time and your budget allows for a 775 not a 995 - then I would suggest, maybe check out other cameras.
the 775 is a bit too small for me, the 885 had almost everything that the 995 had, cept the flash TTL, etc etc.
is there a $400 difference between the two. yes.
my aunt has a 775, I noticed the camera was slower in accessing info than my parents 995. I have not studied too much on the 775 myself, so I cannot say TOO much, but do check out these four or five links.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon775.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon885.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001...s/nikon995.html
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/ - where I got most of my info.
http://www.megapixel.net/cgi-bin/fs...icle-macro.html
quote:
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Originally posted by aquafresh
Well, how much do I owe you for the photography lesson??
Thank you very much for all the info. So i am assuming you like the coolpix, what features does a 995 have that a 775 doesnt. For aquatic photography purposes and macro shot abilities, is there a $400 difference between the 2?
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Posted by Clyde on 01/27/2002 12:51 AM:
Chose File
Then Choose EXPORT - JPEG OPTIMIZER
Then thats it - save to whatever.
when you want to post a picture here in this forum, you ll see '[QUOTE]Attach File:
Find the file on your computer, or click browse - then a window will pop up, you look around where the file is.
after you're done typing your stuff and all then click submit or preview reply, to make sure it shows up.
so like doug says most programs use export, save as etc.
this applies to everyone else whos reading this and is usiing a different program.
to point out, some people say the Photoshop costs too much, but you just spent 600 bucks on the cam
I've seen Photoshop for sale at Half-Price books for cheap 80 bucks or so, not the NEWEST version, but heck do you really need Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for macosx, Photoshop 3.0 4.0 will work VERY nicely - but photoshop's save for web, I cannot remember when it first came out in 4.0 ??
Try ebay for photoshop ?
another nice software not as bad is Adobe ImageReady (But I do not think they sell this one seperatly)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by wdt2000
How do you use Paint Shop Pro images on reefcentral. Paint Shop Pro always makes me use .psp and will not let me switch it to .jpg
Thanks
Will
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Posted by andyk227 on 01/27/2002 02:40 PM:
Clyde - lot's of great tips. I can't wait to try them out.
thanks!
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Posted by Rick O on 01/28/2002 06:25 AM:
Thanks for the info Clyde. I have a Coolpix 950. I've also noticed that the camera moves a slight bit when I press the shutter release even though I'm using a tripod. Does the timer mode work in macro mode? It's on the same selector button and it appears that the camera goes out of macro when you switch to macro. Or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks.
__________________
Rick's Reef
The Reef Tank
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Posted by Clyde on 01/28/2002 08:49 AM:
Because the Self Timer in the 950 is in the selection rotation of Normal >
Infinity > Micro > Self Timer, most people assume you can’t set up micro shots
and have the Self Timer function at the same time.
To shoot a Macro close-up and have the Self
Timer trigger the shot, do this:
• First, choose the Self Timer. An icon looking
somewhat like a clock with a second hand will
appear on the view screen and on the camera top
display.
• Next, hold down the M-Focus button on the
camera top, and keep it down while turning the
Command Dial on the front of the camera. Now
you are setting the focus manually while maintaining
the ability to trip the shutter while not touching
the camera.
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Posted by Pinecone_Jeff on 01/28/2002 12:17 PM:
Thank you!!!!!
First of all, thank you Doug and JohnL for putting this forum together! This is exactly what I was looking for.
And thank you Clyde for posting those wonderful tips! I work in related media, but the finer details of basic photography (let alone digital photography) has had me mystified! I'll be using your tips for sure.
Thanks again!
__________________
Jeff
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Posted by mgk65 on 01/28/2002 01:15 PM:
Clyde:
Thank you very much!
I have the digital secrets book, but have not had the time.... plus, it is difficult to read it in the bathroom.
mgk
__________________
Nothing happens fast in a reef tank, except disaster....
Pittsburgh Frag Swap - Apr 27 - See what you missed!
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Posted by gregr on 02/06/2002 02:26 PM:
>Do you use a tripod?
not for fish pics, but i do for about 95% of all my other photography (people pics are the other 5% +/-)
>Do you use a special lens (i.e. macro) when taking your pictures?
i have a set of close-up filters but i don't use them much. i am hoping to rig some sort of off-shoe flash bracket- when i do i will try more really close close-ups because with the flash in the hot shoe the light won't reach that close.
>Do you use a flash.
for fish- pretty much always
>If you use a flash is it on camera or off.
see above. getting the flash off to the side will help a lot i think.
>Do you add supplemental lighting?
just what's on the tank (55g with 150 watts actinic and 150 watts daylight).
>Do you edit your images in an image editing software before posting them?
i use photoshop- mostly resizing, sharpening and levels adjusting.
>Are you using auto focus or manual?
mostly autofocus.
>Are you using other special camera settings like manual exposure or manual aperture?
i like aperture priority.
>Do you use specific white balance settings?
i play around with this- always searching for the "truest" look. sometimes it's the daylight setting that works best.
>Do you have any suggestions for the best settings on the specific camera that you are using?
i use the Canon G2 and as i said i like aperture priority, and i usually have the flash compensation set to minus one stop (although that gets adjusted back and forth).
>Are you using special metering modes?
these new digital cameras have such accurate meters that that really isn't an issue- i use center weighted metering and when i'm using the flash it is almost always good. without the flash there tends to be more contrast because that extra added light evens things out- sometimes that's good sometimes not so good...
greg
__________________
Greg's nature photography
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Posted by Doug on 02/07/2002 12:46 AM:
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the great info.
I was thinking the same thing about the off camera flash. I am going to try it as soon as I figure out what parts I need for my camera.
That is a nice shot of your angel and tang. The funny part is that I have both of those same fish and I took a shot last week that was almost identical to yours. I even have mushrooms just like yours which were in the same picture that I took. I will have to find it and post it here.
Thanks again.
Doug
__________________
I'm not bad, but the bad don't mess with me.
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Posted by dennisV on 02/19/2002 02:52 AM:
Well I sometimes use a slave unit flash.
It's a secondary flash that has a white-light detector.
I put some cardboard in front of my camera with a hole cut into it for the lens. The flash on my camera hits the cardboard instead of the glass of my tank. The slave unit, being held above or beside the cardboard, detects the flash and then flashes at the same time, so the light hits the subject from this angle instead of straight next to the lens.
This is inexpensive and easy.
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Posted by Clyde on 02/19/2002 02:58 PM:
theres another way, tape a small peice of developed film, its powerful enough to trigger a slave flash, but does not affect the picture, or stray light hitting the lense if it occurs.
I will be following up on this on how to build one for your nikon based cameras shortly - in about 30 min, it takes time to take picts, write up a summary and examples
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Posted by lbussy on 02/25/2002 09:26 PM:
Great. Here 2 days and I went form reef envy to camera envy.
Thanks guys. :P
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Posted by Leslie on 04/14/2002 10:18 PM:
Clyde,
OMG, where did you learn all that?
That info is amazing! I have had the 995 for months and gone from taking publishable pics to horrible pics. I have been so frustrated! I even tried to return the camera. I had a photographer who uses the camera, also the sales person at SAMY's, who sold me the camera, come over and give me a lesson. It didn't even come close to what you presented. I keep seahorses and as you probably know they don't move all that much or all that fast and I still have not been able to get anything but a very occasional shot.
I can't wait to try all your great suggestions.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share all that.
Gratefully,
Leslie
__________________
~Leslie~
Visit my seahorse coral at
http://community.webshots.com/user/sassyseahorse55
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Posted by Pinecone_Jeff on 04/15/2002 12:27 PM:
Leslie,
I have a coolpix 990 and I also had trouble taking good closeup pics of my critters. But after Clyde's instructions and, ahem, reading the manual >sheepish grin< I've learned most of the ins and outs of my camera. Now, I really need to learn the nuts and bolts of basic photography before I can really exploit the power of my Nikon. And then I'm sure it'll take even more experience to get the kind of pictures I really want. Boy, this stuff is more involved than even my reef tank! Good luck with your new hobby!
__________________
Jeff
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:44 PM:
okay, seems we need some 'excercises' to get to know our camera better.
Set the camera on single focus in
manual mode so the background doesn’t steal focus from your subject and ruin the shots.
Nikon settings -
990/995: Menu > Page 2 > Focus > Single AF
950: Menu > Set Up > LCD In/Out > On&S-AF
775: Monitor Off
Other Cameras PLEASE PM me, I ll edit this to add other cameras how to set single focus
portraits
get a subject - a human being -
Some of the best portraits are done with a slightly telephoto lens. In 35mm photography many photographers prefer 105mm and 135mm lenses for head shots. You have both, approximately. Stay at the upper range of the zoom, and try to shoot verticals at least half of the time. This is easier with the
optical viewfinder than with the monitor. By the time you have spent thirty* shots on your subject, you will have probably shot at least two
very good pictures and half a dozen pretty good ones. Obviously the camera is the reason. Stifle that chuckle and keep moving.
*Yes, thirty shots. And make each one slightly different, somehow. The first secret to getting progressively better and better
images is doing what photography does best, capture the moment. The more moments you capture, the better your odds of
getting the Best Moment. When you look back at your images, some will be very good. Others will be excellent. Those won’t
often be your first three or five.
Shoot thirty shots!
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:55 PM:
NEXT EXERCISE, GEOMETRY
Now you are looking for one thing and one thing only. Interesting shapes.
The curve of a railing,
the abstract nock of a tree limb,
the pattern of brick, the legs and feet of
somebody sitting,
a reflection,
the texture of peeled paint,
a bunch of birds on a wire,
a leaf,
a row of books,
a cat’s ear,
a car’s grill…
There has been more than one award-winning photo of each of these ideas and you may find a billion other interesting shapes in nature, the city, people, and things around you. If you must shoot a flower, shoot for the radial symmetry, if you must shoot something square, find an angle on it that lends a certain abstraction of its form to the photo. Capture twenty subjects. Keep thinking “Form. Shape. Pattern,” repeating this mantra over and over in your mind. When you review the shots, separate them into three groups, Junk, Hmm, and Okay. Then go out and repeat the exercise.
This time the review will have about 50% improvement in the Okay category. Quality, quantity, or both will have gone up. When you feel stale, do the geometry exercise. The film is free, the shapes don’t need coaxing and often the results are rewarding.
[CODE]
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:57 PM:
THE SKY
Most inspiring at dawn and dusk, the sky can be interesting at any time.
Don’t just think of the sky as a cloudy thing. Think of it as a light or a backdrop. How does the sky interact with trees, buildings, windows, light poles, clouds, horizons, mountains and people? At noon
you might have to get real low to put people up into the sky. At sunset, you might have to get up high to see how the sun casts shadows across
the ground. With flowers, you might just have to put them against clouds or vast expanses of blue. The more you look, the more often you will see an oddly shaped cloud, a blotch, a wisp, or a plume that might someday be useful. Shoot it now, use it later. And on those days when the sky dresses up and just begs to be photographed, take out the Nikon and oblige her.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 04:58 PM:
ROUND
Things that are round. Things that suggest roundness. Circles, semi-circles, ovals, curves, round things against jagged things, round things inside square things. Christmas ornaments, round flowers, watches, bowls of food, wheels, eyes, signs, architectural features, roseate windows, grapes, baseballs, and knobs—whatever works. Now advance the lesson. Shoot them in such a way that if you were to dissolve from one to the next, the “round” would carry concentrically from shot to shot. This, like the geometry exercise, is a good refreshing activity for times when you need a cup of photo java
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:04 PM:
I'm skipping a few excerises, mainly because it applies to what I've learned how to take Panoramic Vistas (I ll cover this later if theres interest in it)
here is next excercise REPETITION
Here you are combining experiences gained from a number of previous exercises and adding a new foo-factor. Repeating similar elements are the target. There must be three or more similar objects in a creative relationship to each other. They can be as similar as fence staves, windows of nearly identical shape, palm trees all in a row, uniformed people, feet, whatever. There is no limit on things like having them all face in the same direction or be in the same light. Points are subtracted for factors like “too dissimilar” and “too far apart to connect the similarity.” “All boys” doesn’t count. A good thing to try for is dramatic direction. All the flags were blowing straight out, all the cops were looking at the same thing, all the birds were pecking at once, all the palm trees were the same shape, etc. Then there is the special factor. The counter point. All the cops were looking at the same three-yearold in the red dress, all the birds were pecking the same eight inches of birdseed; all the windows were the same except for the one with a person sitting in it. Symmetries of repetition are many. Certainly the things-all-in-a-row idea is easier to find than the things-all-radiating-from-a-point is. But in photography, odd relationships can form symmetries of balance in which “birds of a feather flock together” is counter balanced by “there’s one in every crowd.” As you move through this exercise, try to resist lapsing back into other exercises. Part of what you are learning here is the hunt, the safari that has a single-minded goal. If you come back with a bunch of nice images, but they’re not particularly tangled up in the idea of repetition, go out and do it again.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:07 PM:
now something that most of us LIKE - MICROVISTAS !!!
The Nikon digital compacts are very comfortable in the world of the very small. Big images of small vistas, microvistas, are easier to acquire with a Nikon digital than any film camera I know. Now it is your turn to become comfortable with very little. The Autofocus system in automatic mode will focus down to about nine inches. Two focus regimes can be selected using the M-Focus button on the top or back of the camera. The first one prevents the camera from focusing on near objects and puts a little double mountain icon onto the view screen and also on the LCD display. This is the icon you don’t want to see. A second press on the same button gives you the small flower icon and this is the one that causes the camera to hunt for a nearby object. This is the micro focus regime. Nikon calls the control “Macro Close-up”
just to satisfy all those who, over the years, have gotten into the habit of calling the very small, “macro.” Microvistas can be any subject, but the area you are going to shoot is 2-1/2 inches wide or smaller. Do try to avoid clichés. If you must shoot a flower, catch one with a bee in it. ( or an acropora with a comsmal crab in it) If you have to take a picture of a telephone keypad, get a real grubby or real beautiful finger into the shot. If it’s the contents of a pocket tossed on a table, include clues to a crime. If you shoot an eye, make sure it was projecting an attitude.
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Posted by Clyde on 04/15/2002 05:10 PM:
this is enough for now, I will do the next 8 to 12 excercises in the next few days
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Posted by MikeG on 05/09/2002 02:35 PM:
Awesome stuff Clyde!!!
Any tips for a Canon S30?
Thanks in advance.
Mike
__________________
Oceanic 105RR
EuroReef CS6-1 in 20gal sump
AB AquaStarlight Fixture 2x150 w/moonlight
T3 -- sump return
T4 -- closed loop
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