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My latest musings about photography



 
 
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  #1  
Old January 21st 07, 02:07 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Wayne J. Cosshall
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Posts: 826
Default My latest musings about photography

Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
  #2  
Old January 21st 07, 04:13 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Gary Eickmeier
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Posts: 286
Default My latest musings about photography



Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php


Some decent thoughts.

I agree that the attitude toward digital as either being capable of more
manipulation or needing more manipulation is misguided. We are used to
the days when we sent our film to the lab and got back nice, color and
exposure corrected prints. This made us think that film was superior in
its ability to capture images accurately. What we fail to realize is
that the lab manipulated the images as much or more than we do on our
computers with digital. In fact, digital has a better chance of getting
it right in the first place, because we can inspect the results
in-camera by means of histograms and white balancing. Both media can be
manipulated, and both sometimes need it to improve the results. You just
learn the differences in your workflow and go with the one that gives
you the better results or has greater convenience.

This gives the nod to digital, for the same reasons that computer word
processing beats out the typewriter. We have greater flexibility in
digital, but that does not mean that the film photography did not
require the same manipulations - just that they were more difficult in
those days.

Gary Eickmeier
  #3  
Old January 21st 07, 04:42 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Bill Funk
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Posts: 2,500
Default My latest musings about photography

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:07:02 +1100, "Wayne J. Cosshall"
wrote:

Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne


An interesting treatise. I don't agree with it all, but it does deal
with some interesting ideas.
BTW, "bares" should be "bears".

--
Angelina Jolie moved into
a mansion in New Orleans
with Brad Pitt where they
say they will be very
involved locally. The
actress is nothing if not
meticulous. Whenever Angelina
Jolie orders in Chinese she's
very careful to specify boy or girl.
  #4  
Old January 21st 07, 04:54 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Dave Cohen
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Posts: 841
Default My latest musings about photography

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne

My fear of Photoshop is what it may do to my wallet, so I'll stay with
PhotoPlus (and it's companion product PagePlus).
Dave Cohen
  #5  
Old January 21st 07, 06:17 PM posted to alt.photography,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Doug McDonald
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Posts: 344
Default My latest musings about photography

Bill Funk wrote:
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:07:02 +1100, "Wayne J. Cosshall"
wrote:

Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne


An interesting treatise.


I agree, it's interesting. I recently went digital. The experience,
after a long vacation and about 1000 shots, 500 of them not discarded
on the spot, was about as expected.

First, I had expected to have to adjust for "expose for the highlights"
instead of "expose for the shadows" which I had previously use (for color
negative film.) This turned out to be true, very true, and very imnportant.

Second, I had expected that the autoexposure in the camera would be better
than the camera I had previously used (a Minolta X-700). This was true,
using the Canon 30D's "evaluative metering", but still, the camera did a bad
job on shots of glaciers or cloudy skies, very bad. I had to use the
histogram a lot and be paranoid about checking it and using the "exposure
conmpenation" wheel.

Third, as I had never used autofocus, I had wondered how good it would be.
I had expected that for really 3D images, using only the central focus spot and
focusing on the desired point, button half down, then moving to the desired framing, it would
work real nice. It did. I had expected that it would work well focusing
on a scene which was all at infinity. It did not, on the whole, do as well as
I expected. Even with the crummy focus screen, I could often do better
by hand. I had not expected that **the** critical "autobracket" feature, which the
30D lacks, would be focus bracket. I'm not sure why this vital feature is missing.
The autofocus at infinity was OK for f/16 or f/11, but not for f/5.6 or f/4
(for zoom lenses). For my 50 mm f/1.7, it seemed completely reliably OK only at f/8 for more.
For closeups (e.g. flowers) I had expected to need to use manual focus and
focus my moving the camera, and this turned out to be true.

Fourth, I had expected that underexposed shots would in general be
fixable if saved as RAW, and that was true.

I had not expected that I would be playing with the ISO setting as often as I did. This is a whole
new dimension to photography. It would not be necessary, of course, if the camera had
an amplifier/ADC system that captured the whole dynamic range of the sensor, from
1 electron to full wells, in one go. I found myself setting the shutter speed and
f/number by hand and adjusting the ISO for correct exposure. This was a very strange
experience. It did work, though.

And then there is IS. I had heard it touted ... but had not expected the absolutely
amazing miracles that I experienced. Handheld exposures of 1/2 second at 70 mm focal
length, with my hands steadied on a window sill ... and they turned out quite useable
and sometimes perfect .... that's a miracle.

Finally ... there is Photoshop. I have used it a lot with scanned images.
But with digital and RAW it is even better. The 18-55 kit lens that comes with
the 30D is widely accused of being crap. It does have crappy ... very crappy ...
lateral chromatic aberration at wide angle ... but that is trivially fixed
with the camera raw import section of Photoshop. That fixed, I'm quite happy
with this lens. It's not the 50 mm f/1.8 prime, but it's OK.

The RAW import feature of PS for the 30D works wonders. I love it.
I'm a tweeker, and it lets me get close to what I want in the linear domain,
with no "shoulder" to the exposure, and I love that. The color temperature
correction feature works perfectly, and I love that. I love playing with
the "sharpness" setting to get it just right. I hate seeing picture with
obvious white rings around black objects, or vice versa. Using this feature,
I can set the sharpness just below that horror, and below the "too much noise"
level, and still get a nice sharp image. I did not expect this to work
as well as it does. Finally, on my recent vacation I took many photos
of glacier scenes, which are, always have been, and always will be, hard to
print. I found that the gradient mask combined with the "filter, sharpen,
unsharp mask, radius = 250, amount in the 20-50 range" works wonders.
The unsharp mask with a big radius and a modest amount is a great tool for
under contrasty scenes. Finally ... with PS now working on 16 bit images,
one does not have to worry about overprocessing resulting in those damn
quantization artifacts. One merely needs lots of memory and a fast machine.
I'm thinking of upgrading my PC to a dual processor 3 GHz machine
with 4 gigs of memory.

And then there are panoramas. I used to love large format. I tried
Hugin on some panoramas I took, and the results are great. Next time
I'll take a small tripod and try 2-D panoramas. This time I did only
1-D ones.

That's my take on just going digital.

Doug McDonald




  #6  
Old January 21st 07, 06:50 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
VicTek
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Posts: 20
Default My latest musings about photography

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne

My fear of Photoshop is what it may do to my wallet, so I'll stay with
PhotoPlus (and it's companion product PagePlus).
Dave Cohen


Yes, Photoshop does cause one's wallet to be overexposed g. There are
many photo-editing programs that are quite capable that cost a lot less than
PS. I imagine there are jobs that only PS can do well, but as a hobbyist
I've managed without it.


  #7  
Old January 21st 07, 07:14 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Steve Koterski
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Posts: 6
Default My latest musings about photography

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 17:50:08 GMT, "VicTek" wrote:

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne

My fear of Photoshop is what it may do to my wallet, so I'll stay with
PhotoPlus (and it's companion product PagePlus).
Dave Cohen


Yes, Photoshop does cause one's wallet to be overexposed g. There are
many photo-editing programs that are quite capable that cost a lot less than
PS. I imagine there are jobs that only PS can do well, but as a hobbyist
I've managed without it.


What about Photoshop Elements? (At least for us non-profit hobby
photographers.) It only costs about $80. They even sell it at Costco!
  #8  
Old January 21st 07, 07:43 PM posted to alt.photography,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Gary Eickmeier
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Posts: 286
Default My latest musings about photography

Sounds like you are a fast learner. And experienced photographer.

Your roving ISO procedure is new. Anyone else do this? I think we all
end up checking our LCD after pictures are taken, to reassure ourselves
that the highlights haven't been blown out and the color is right. No
miracle procedures on light reading, even with digital. I think the
ideal would be live preview, such as the R1 Sony and the Oly 330.

Gary Eickmeier
  #9  
Old January 21st 07, 08:20 PM posted to alt.photography,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
Prometheus
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Posts: 264
Default My latest musings about photography

In article , Gary Eickmeier
writes
Sounds like you are a fast learner. And experienced photographer.

Your roving ISO procedure is new. Anyone else do this?


I do change the where required, it's an advantage of digital over
carrying several cameras or interchangeable backs or attempting to
recover something printable from an underexposed negative.

I think we all end up checking our LCD after pictures are taken, to
reassure ourselves that the highlights haven't been blown out and the
color is right.


If I feel the scene could be problematic, otherwise I do not glance at
the display.

No miracle procedures on light reading, even with digital. I think the
ideal would be live preview, such as the R1 Sony and the Oly 330.


Only if it does not restrict or degrade producing photographs.
--
Ian G8ILZ
There are always two people in every pictu the photographer and the viewer.
~Ansel Adams
  #10  
Old January 21st 07, 09:04 PM posted to alt.photography,aus.photo,rec.photo.digital,rec.photo.digital.slr-systems,rec.photo.digital.zlr
David Dyer-Bennet
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Posts: 1,814
Default My latest musings about photography

VicTek wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I've posted a new column article, called "Why Do Some Fear Photoshop and
Others Think Digital Photography is Something Special?" to my site at:
http://www.dimagemaker.com/specials/dimw.php

Cheers,

Wayne

My fear of Photoshop is what it may do to my wallet, so I'll stay with
PhotoPlus (and it's companion product PagePlus).
Dave Cohen


Yes, Photoshop does cause one's wallet to be overexposed g. There are
many photo-editing programs that are quite capable that cost a lot less than
PS. I imagine there are jobs that only PS can do well, but as a hobbyist
I've managed without it.


In many ways a hobbyist is *more* at risk there; we don't mostly have
the production rate, and hence the need for a really efficient workflow,
that professionals do. We can afford the luxury of hand-tuning each
exposure (just like we used to do in the darkroom).

Personally, I'm addicted to non-destructive editing, and hence
adjustment layers. Again, this is more an amateur problem in some ways
(and high-end professionals of some sorts). People doing wedding work,
say, will never look at a picture again after their first hit at it (if
they even consider hand-adjustment at all, with that kind of volume), so
doing destructive editing is fine. But I'm always going back to old
photos (I've re-edited scans of old negatives, so I've adjusted that
photo *at least* three times). Only Photoshop has adjustment layers,
that I know of. Sigh.
 




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