Photographer Workshop Request :)
Sun, 03/07/2010 - 21:45
Folks,
I wonder if anyone in the community works or know someone on the photography field that would be whiling to share some knowledge..
The reason for this is that this weekend was a nice day at Chapin and I was using a nice camera with excellent lens but the picx came out very bad..
If we find someone who is whiling to help out we could take a lot nice pictures during the season for sesh report...
Only reading the manual is not going get us there so we need someone to help out and share some knowledge on how to use the camera and take nice pictures...
Let me know if someone see a need for workshop or this is something stupid to have..
Mon, 03/08/2010 - 08:09
#1
Camera
What kind of Camera do you have?
Some independent photographers sell "crash course" instructional CDs that visually explain how the camera works, aperature, shutter speed, etc. I picked up the Canon XSI DVD from this store: http://www.michaelthementor.com/store/
Mon, 03/08/2010 - 13:29
#3
Hey Den, what went wrong with
Hey Den,
what went wrong with the pics? I'm no expert but I can give some tips...
There are two things you need to get right, basically:
1. Focus - blurry vs crisp pictures
2. Exposure - bright vs. dark pictures
To get focus right, you can do:
1. Autofocus - make sure to set the camera on Autofocus. When you're shooting, focus on your subject by depressing shutter button halfway, and the shoot when you want to take the pic. And with a fancy camera it should have a really fast autofocus anyway.
2. Manual focus - harder to do, but nice if you want to focus on something and the autofocus is not giving you the picture you want. I don't use it much.
Exposure:
Before you do anything else: having the sun BEHIND you is generally more desirable, but sometimes you can get cool effects shooting almost into the sun. (avoid directly shooting into the sun)
But then to get the exposure right, you have a few options:
1. Aperture control.
2. Shutter speed control.
3. ISO sensitivity control.
Once again, you camera should have an "auto" mode. the camera also has a sensor that will tell you if the picture you are about to take will be overexposed (too bright) or under exposed (too dark). But if you wanna get fancy:
1. Aperture - Set to a LOW number to expose MORE (e.g. F2.
, or set to a HIGH number to expose LESS (e.g. F8). LOW apertures have a smaller "depth of field", which tends to blur the background and highlight the subject (the kiter). but it means the focus has to be "spot-on". Higher aperture numbers e.g. F8 are more forgiving on focus, but may not give you enough light on the camera sensor in low light.
2. When shooting kiting, shutter speeds of faster than about 1/700 of a second are generally desirable. Or with a large amount of zoom, faster than 1/1000 of a second. So typically I select a combination of aperture and ISO settings that allow me to shoot at 1/500 of a second and get well-exposed pictures.
3. ISO - I shoot with the lowest ISO number that allows greater than 1/700 shutter speeds. Sometimes 1/1000 or faster shutter speeds. The higher the ISO, the more noisy your pics will be. but sometimes that's the only way. And your fancy camera should be able to take high quality pics up to ISO 800.
There are a few modes on the camera that will be very handy:
1. Full Auto - no brainer but less control
2. Aperture priority "A" / "AP" on controls - nice if you want to force a certain "depth of field". Camera will automatically compensate by adjusting shutter to get right exposure.
3. Shutter priority "S" / "SP" on controls - nice to ensure that you are always at a fast shutter speed. Camera will automatically compensate by adjusting aperture to get right exposure.
4. Full manual - nice but means you have to ensure you have both aperture and shutter set correctly for the shot.
Play around with it and we wanna see some cool pics on the website!! And some of those fancy-ass time-lapse backroll-loopy-de-loop whatevers.
PS - lately I've been using a circular polarizer sometimes to cut glare and make the sky look nice. Also a UV filter is not a bad idea, according to my photographer friends..
Go outside and experiment a bit with all this - it'll all become second nature very soon.
Take a picture of the same subject using "AP" and use F2.8 and then F8 and compare the two pictures. Take an F2.8 of something close up and something far away.
Let me know if this helps...
I've never actually had a formal lesson on photography but then again my line of work involves a bunch of stuff related to imaging.
I think your time would be better spent playing around with the camera and seeing what it does, but that's purely my opinion.
Mon, 03/08/2010 - 14:11
#4
I want to echo Lodyyy's comments.
First off Lody's suggestions are very sound. I would recomend a UV filter for sure. Its a great way to protect the lens and may clean up the images somewhat. Note that it should be less important for digital cameras than old film cameras as digital cameras usually have a UV filter built in to the sensor. If its bright and sunny, a polarizing filter is a good idea as it cuts glare and will make the sky more intense. Its a bit like putting sun glasses on to the front of the lens though in that it cuts out a fair bit of the light coming in to the camera. A lens shade may also be a good idea. They can very effectively cut glare. Kind of like putting a hat with a brim on. It can also improve the images you get. Next time we are at the beach together I would love to check out the camera. I have its little brother, the D80 and have found it to be a great camera.
Most importantly though, practice with the camera. Maybe not all the practice at the beach though as ideally, you want to have the skills wired in so that at the beach you can be intent on getting the shot.
Tue, 03/09/2010 - 09:58
#5
Lodyyy
Dude you wrote a book for dummies 
This helps a lot and give me a start point of what i should be focusing on...
I'll paly around with the camera and hope to see you soon so you can also show some stuff live...
The weather is getting warmer and this year we have to go at places besides Wako Bay
thanks again for the quick lesson..
Let's hope that I get better taking picx to create some nice sesh reports!
Mon, 03/08/2010 - 22:15
#6
Photoshop
Lodys post is very well written, nice that he took the time.
I'm no pro but one thing that helps me is to shoot in raw mode and then adjust any pics that I want to save in my photo software. My software makes it very quick and easy to adjust the basics, too light, too dark, etc., (once I learned how to use it). Since it's in Raw I don't lose any data by making the changes and I find I can save most pictures that have good composition but poor exposure. If shooting raw is impractical then using the highest resolution will still give you a pic that you can make some adjustments too before you lose too much data.
I also take a lot of shots and just delete the majority, save the few good ones. I'm not a good enough photographer to know for sure which pics are going to look the best but taking a bunch from different angles, settings, and zoom usually gets me something I like.
Wed, 03/10/2010 - 13:48
#7
I think we have another
I think we have another masskiting photographer in the making!
Now that you what to focus on (yes pun intentional), we're keen to see your pics.
Scooper and OldC's comments are spot on too. The more you experiment with all these things the more you'll learn.
I forgot to add one more thing - as you use more ZOOM on far away subjects you will get less light into the camera, so once again you want to increase aperture size (Lower F-number) or increase ISO speed to make the shot. And in addition you will be more sensitive to camera shake, even with an image stabilizer, so you may need faster shutter speeds too, requiring even higher ISO. For me, the best shots tend to happen when I'm closer to the subject. So you may want to invest in a plastic bag of some sorts to protect your investment from the occasional splash... because getting close up often means standing in the water / getting wet.
Hey I still like Wako bay! Hope to see you out there soon!
Thu, 03/11/2010 - 13:20
#8
Kiting soon!
Lodyyy, how soon are you thinking about going water kiting?! let me know cause next time we could hookup and I'll bring the camera so we can play with it and take some picx
Fri, 03/12/2010 - 15:12
#9
Gladly! Let's pick a nice day
Gladly! Let's pick a nice day when it's not raining and then head out. Would be great to be out kiting again with you!
Thu, 03/11/2010 - 18:22
#10
Camera Help
Den,
When I started this project it was to be a mix of media (photo and video) and kiteboarding. I went and bought a D-80 Nikon camera. I have read allot and got original help from TAD and other folks. Shane and Victor are also very good with the details and there are a few pros that are out there too that are kiteboarders. I am more than happy to help any way I can and have contributed allot of the pictures on the site. But now its exciting to see the push fro more media as that was a MASSkiting goal. We spend a good deal each month on hosting so that you can upload many pics and have them be large enough to download and really enjoy without having to ask a copy.
I find I am in less pictures than I take so its a treat again to see more of them. We just increased our hosting cause we keep using up all the server space but so what
I generally on average set the camera to White Balance "sunlight". I set my camera to auto shutter @ 1000+. When using auto Shutter you set ISO and the third number the aperture will change automatically so that the exposure will be good. 3 things ISO, Shutter, Aperture. Set two and the third will be calculated for you I mean.
Sunny days RULE making Brilliant pics and cloudy days make normal pictures.
Thu, 03/11/2010 - 21:22
#11
I'll reach out
JD,
I'm going to reach out to other folks on the community so i can gain some knowledge on how to take some nice shoots..
In the mean time can you set some type of retention on the picx older then 60 days.. This will help in deleting some old stuff.. One thing you could do is limit the total of picx to 100 as you have today then set a policy after 60 days to remove pictures from session reports that contain more then 10 this will have to be scripted but i think is duable also will work like a recycle bin type of thing..
Another option is to do data archiving but can be complicated and $$$ too..
Plus I had 2 other lens very nice which I couldn't take the most out of it...
I'm looking into those DVD's to see if will help improve the skills
Thanks for the advice!
__________________