Official BeyondUnreal Photography Thread

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BillyBadAss

Strong Cock of The North
May 25, 1999
8,879
60
48
48
Tokyo, JP
flickr.com
I've done a few time lapse movies in the past with excellent results. I can give you a few hints:

If your doing a time lapse film use:
Tripod
Remote Trigger (some have time lapse timers on them so you dont have to keep clicking for hours)
A big enough CF Card or tether it to a laptop. (Canon's software has a time lapse mode)

As long as there is no human contact with the camera your stills will not be shaking around.

If your planning on running the buffer up I recommend shooting in SMALL JPG format. You can shoot a heck of a lot more frames this way. Also be aware that shutter clicks put wear and tear on your shutter and that simply spraying away will shorten the life span of your camera. Most cameras shutter lifespan will run 50k clicks. Newer cameras like the 30d or higher are rated at 100k. 1d series are rated around 200,000+ None of this guarantees you will even get 10k clicks of of your camera before failing.. its only a rating like the one on your Cars tires. Clicks will also lower your resale value. Experienced photographers want to know :)

I don't mean to discourage you from the project. By all means do it! Personally, I would choose to use a camera that isn't your primary.

Meh, I don't plan on doing it very often. I would rather just buy a HD video camera if I was going to do this as a regular sort of thing.
 

Crotale

_________________________ _______________
Jan 20, 2008
2,535
12
38
Anywhere But Here
I really like the light and processing you did on the color. You are really learning fast. :)
Coming from you, that is a great compliment.

Fantastic. Can you elaborate the post processing?
Hmm, let's see, the shot was not exactly primo to start with. I cropped it back and added a lightly gaussian blurred mask over the background elements. The greens and yellows were too saturated and the result was that the little dude was lost in the sea of colors. I noticed that the reds were fairly strong, so I went into Lightroom and enhanced the red luminance and saturation just a tiny bit to make the stems really stand out. I then lowered the luminance and saturation quite a bit on the green and yellow. To finish it off, I darkened the outer edges of the image some to feather a bit more "focus" on the inner section.

Beautiful!
Thanks!

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7515/ginasmall.jpg
Nice one. From the look in her eyes, one cannot determine if she is thinking "rawr" or "get the damned shot already."


Nice shot.
 

BillyBadAss

Strong Cock of The North
May 25, 1999
8,879
60
48
48
Tokyo, JP
flickr.com
Recent pic:

So Good To Be Here

3484781899_f5b904ee4a.jpg


On another note to those that shoot film. I think I am going to pick up a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 Film Not good for shooting people as the color is too vivid, but amazing for everything else I think. Check out these real word results.
 
So I guess a 50mm lens is what people use normaly for portraits and normal shots yes?

I've been using my 28-135mm lens and I want more out of my camera. It's either that or a wide angle is what I may be wanting. I plan to get the 100mm Macro lens for my 40D. I don't think I can afford any L series lenses at this time, but I'd like a decent 50mm WA lens perhaps.
 

sid

I posted in the RO-me thread
and all I got was
a pink username!
Oct 20, 2005
2,140
0
0
Hmm, let's see, the shot was not exactly primo to start with. I cropped it back and added a lightly gaussian blurred mask over the background elements. The greens and yellows were too saturated and the result was that the little dude was lost in the sea of colors. I noticed that the reds were fairly strong, so I went into Lightroom and enhanced the red luminance and saturation just a tiny bit to make the stems really stand out. I then lowered the luminance and saturation quite a bit on the green and yellow. To finish it off, I darkened the outer edges of the image some to feather a bit more "focus" on the inner section.

Thanks for that mate, I need to get my hands on lightroom too.

4176_76966728067_575508067_1725270_3348328_n.jpg
 

OO7MIKE

Mr. Sexy
May 2, 2000
5,022
107
63
Nalicity, NC
Big price hikes all around for camera gear. It makes me sad.

I'm thinking about selling my Canon 50mm 1.4 in about a month. After reading reviews and having a personal experience with the Sigma 50mm 1.4 I think I will be making an upgrade. Key reason? Better AF with slightly sharper image quality. The AF has always bothered me. Even my kit lens focuses better than the Canon 50mm 1.4.

The sigma is neck to neck with the sharpness of the Canon 50mm 1.2 for a whole lot less.
Sigma4less.com usually has sigma stuff for slightly less than B&H. It's worth checking out.
 

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
63
somewhere; sometime?
ok here comes another one of those "I've always been into photography but never had a good personal camera of my own and now I'm thinking about getting my first" posts.

so.

I've always been into photography but never had a real, good personal camera of my own and now I'm thinking about getting my first. Naturally, it's gotta' be DSLR and from what I've been reading lately the Nikon D40 kit (kit because it comes with the 3x 18-55mm lens) is an outstanding place to begin, regardless of skill level even though I consider myself far from amateur. I was actually broken in on manual SLR's, loading film and developing it myself, the whole nine yards.
Aside from stellar reviews on websites (and a couple magazines) I have read about professional photographers, who already own big expensive sh*t, say that this D40 is so nice they started using it for their everyday shooting. It's light and compact but carries the range of options that anyone from an amateur to a pro would want.

The versatility and features for the price (local shop Wolffe Camera has it on sale @ 350 bucks) make this seem like it's too great a deal to pass up. There's no rush at the moment, the guy said the sale will be running into the summer, so whaddya guys think?

D40 product page
 

SlipStreams_65

User Titles are Useless.
Dec 29, 2005
239
0
0
Kingdom of boredom
ok here comes another one of those "I've always been into photography but never had a good personal camera of my own and now I'm thinking about getting my first" posts.

so.

I've always been into photography but never had a real, good personal camera of my own and now I'm thinking about getting my first. Naturally, it's gotta' be DSLR and from what I've been reading lately the Nikon D40 kit (kit because it comes with the 3x 18-55mm lens) is an outstanding place to begin, regardless of skill level even though I consider myself far from amateur. I was actually broken in on manual SLR's, loading film and developing it myself, the whole nine yards.
Aside from stellar reviews on websites (and a couple magazines) I have read about professional photographers, who already own big expensive sh*t, say that this D40 is so nice they started using it for their everyday shooting. It's light and compact but carries the range of options that anyone from an amateur to a pro would want.

The versatility and features for the price (local shop Wolffe Camera has it on sale @ 350 bucks) make this seem like it's too great a deal to pass up. There's no rush at the moment, the guy said the sale will be running into the summer, so whaddya guys think?

I upgraded from a compact to a D40 back in january this year. Ive been nothing less than amazed with this camera. It may be 'only' 6MP but the image quality is superb. Controls are intuitive and its very comfortable to hold. The kit lens is pretty decent too. I have had the occasional problem with the autofocus on some subjects but its hardly a major fault.

It comes with the ViewNX software. This converts RAWs into Jpegs, and thats about it (cant seem to do any advanced editing). Personally I use the UFRaw plugin for Gimp to do my image processing.

Overall a very recommended buy :tup:
 

The_Head

JB Mapper
Jul 3, 2004
3,092
0
36
36
UK
www.unrealized-potential.com
I've seen the D40 recommended a lot of the time, however most of the entry level SLR's are all very similar in terms of quality.
Its generally recommended to go to a local shop and try a few out, unless your planning on working towards a big collection of lenses including specialist gear there isn't necessarily any reason to limit your choice to Canon or Nikon.
Both the Sony and Pentax entry level cameras are very good indeed. I believe most if not all of the lenses Sigma and other 3rd party companies make are available for all brands.