Official BeyondUnreal Photography Thread

[BillyBadAss]

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]

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."

Went for a walk and found this lil fella'

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3332/3480292853_a68f2d4015_o.jpg

Nice shot.

 

[BillyBadAss]

Recent pic:

So Good To Be Here

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.

 

[Slainchild]

Rain is less colourful in England.

 

[BillyBadAss]

Rain is less colourful in England.

May not be as colorful, but it sure is moody which is what you should be going for. I like it.

I picked up that film I mentioned in my last post. I plan to shoot it over the weekend while hanging out with my Kansai Nookas.

 

[Juggalo Kyle]

Yay, finaly got my ND filter. Whooh! Go Tiffen.

 

[Jackal]

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.

 

[pine]

MOAR macro!

 

[Juggalo Kyle]

You should try the 50mm f/1.8

I have it, and I like it. It seems to focus alot better on my Canon 30D than it did on my Canon Rebel XT.

 

[BillyBadAss]

I prefer the 50mm f/1.4. The 1.8 has a cheap plastic mount, so if you change lens a lot it's going to have a short life.

 

[Slainchild]

Bought a Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 lens off ebay last night. Payed a bit more than I wanted due to last minute idiots bumping the price...

But yeah. Wide angle shots incoming.

 

[sid]

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.

 

[The_Head]

Bought a Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 lens off ebay last night. Payed a bit more than I wanted due to last minute idiots bumping the price...

But yeah. Wide angle shots incoming.

It's quite a fun lens. I have one but have barely used it yet. lol. How much did you end up paying?

 

[Slainchild]

Got it for £350. Will probably use it quite often, been looking at some nice photos on flickr using it. :tup:

 

[The_Head]

Ouch!

I bought mine brand new in March for £330
Then the price increases came in rofl.

 

[Slainchild]

Yeah, can't find it for less than £400 new. :/

Expensive game innit

 

[OO7MIKE]

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]

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]

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]

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.