Are You Making These Mistakes With Your Photography?

[Jeffbridge]

Here are some common ones together with the right way of doing things.

http://www.photographytalk.com/photo...ur-photography

[IzzieK]

So I think I am pretty good not doing all those mistakes...??? I used to. Everyone has to begin somewhere...

[Manfred M]

Items 1 - 4 are ones I would agree with; 5 and 6 are subjective comments and should be viewed as such.

[kateveber]

Just confused in point #2 of making these mistakes with your photography 'cause GIMP is the great replacement of Photoshop.
I can't believe that tools like GIMP and Photoshop have found limitations.

[ajohnw]

One needs qualifying, what distance and two is so bad as to show signs of stupidity which is probably why they can't use the GIMP.

Has to be admitted though that if some one wants free software and plenty of easy gratification which doesn't depend on understanding exactly what is going on Linux is probably the only answer. The GIMP doesn't offer much of this. Neither do a number of other free packages. Long and complicated work flow is sometimes mentioned which basically means use a package that automates as much as possible leaving little real control.

John
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[Downrigger]

I'm just glad I'm getting my info here, not there.

[lukaswerth]

Some of this stuff, like about portraits or how to use a flash, I was concerned about perhaps the first 3 weeks when I started to busy myself with photography when I was 18 or so - a long time back, trust me. And then also, perhaps only three days, not weeks.
With regard to digital issues, either trivial (save your pictures) or rubbish (don't use free software). Raw Therapee, Hugin, and Delaboratory are programs I use, and I think they are quite useful - Hugin very much so, being, for all I know, one of the most powerful panorama software there is. Raw Therapee is somewhat obsolete when using ACR, but still a very powerful program capable of producing absolutely professional results.
So, if you don't have anything else to write, you tell people everything they never wanted to know because they took it for granted anyway.

Lukas

[rpcrowe]

I agree with #5, especially when using a wide focal length. I am over 6'1" tall (over 185.5 cm) tall and have the tendency to shoot down on people (especially now that my arthritis makes it difficult to get lower).

I really dislike the look so:

a. I try not to use a wide focal length shooting people
b. Will often shoot from a further distance using a longer lens
c. Will consciously attempt a slightly lower camera position
d. Will sometimes use a right angle finder

I first noticed the difference that camera height makes in shooting people when I switched from eye level viewfinders on the Graphic Press Cameras, Graphic XL Rangefinder cameras and 35mm rangefinder cameras to TLR cameras such as the Rolleiflex and SLR medium format cameras such as the Hassleblad. The lower position of the camera helped my viewpoint...

I definitely get down to the level of my dog's eyes by shooting my dog portraits from a rolling office chair.

IMO, #4 will only occur when using the built-in flash and a lens hood; or when using a low profile flash such as the Canon 270EX (series) for straight-on flash with a large hood such as the OEM hood for the 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens. I almost never shoot with the built-in flash In fact, I almost never shoot direct flash at all, preferring to bounce the flash indoors and to use a larger (thus higher profile) flash outdoors or... take the flash off the camera completely. One thing that I will not do, is this writer's suggestion of removing the lens hood as his/her "best solution"...

[flashback]

Here I was thinking my photography was getting better, only to find out that I've hit some gla$$ ceiling because I use GIMP and RawTherapee. Oh well, guess I'll just have to be satisfied with the little I can do with those two.
(Just curious, does the writer also recommend high end walking shoes, SUVs and 4 star hotels when traveling in order to be a better photographer?)

[Shadowman]

I think the comment about photographers using flash at sporting events was more of an annoyance for the author than a real effort by the shooter. Sure some people do use it, but I think it's more because they don't know how to turn it off than the belief that it'll reach far distances.

[ajohnw]

I use "free software" out of choice. I decided to quit windows at least 15 years ago. There are only a couple of problems with using the free stuff really. There is a certain amount of choice and each package offers something different and may well excel in a particular area. Makes work flow more interesting. For instance raw development, ufraw, rawtherapee, fotoxx, photivo or of late GtkRawStudio as I am a bit miffed with ufraw at the moment. For PP the choice is more or less the same main applications - Rawtherapee,Fotoxx,Photivo plus the GIMP. There are others as well. I need to look at Delabatory as until now I had never heard of it.

The other problem is how to do this and that. Rawtherapee is reasonably covered in it's manual. Photivo help is improving slowly. Fotoxx has always been well covered. The GIMP can be something of a problem. Lots of info but finding exactly what is wanted can be difficult. A decent option is to search what ever PS calls it GIMP but for some things that wont bring up the best way of doing it - eg portrait retouching. That's now done mostly via spatial decomposition. Many sources will mention working in the blue channel.

Hugin probably really is the most capable panorama program about. It will also do a number of other things such as perspective correction and HDR. It has the bits needed to do focus stacking too. Maybe one day they will add that to the gui. It will also generate CA correction parameters for any lens for use with LensFun. Distortion correction parameters as well. Typically of some types of opens source though for normal use the defaults for say panoramas are not what many people will want and they don't pull any punches at all in naming. the perspectives that it will generate. Some will find that confusing.

Why is free software in quotes - I do make a contribution every now and again. It's only fair really.

John
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[jcuknz]

Just confused in point #2 of making these mistakes with your photography 'cause GIMP is the great replacement of Photoshop.
I can't believe that tools like GIMP and Photoshop have found limitations.

The principle limitation is the skill level of the operator.

If you study news photography it is interesting to notice the 'usual' camera position resulting from the gear being used.
Pre 1950 when the Speed Graphic was king the photos are taken from eye level and often the photographer is standing.

In the early 50's the Rollieflex was used by one photographer Frank Dyer for the 1953 Royal Tour of NZ. Many newstogs adopted this and pre the prism finder the camera was often held at waist level. So much easier to carry a pocket of 120 rollfilm than a case of DDSs

With the prism the camera came back up to the eye and as 35mm became common it remained there to this day.

But as an editor a favourite comment of mine was "using the camera at the comfortable working height' resulting on looking down on small subjects .... must admit I catch myself shooting this way too from time to time when I'm lazy.

[ajohnw]

The principle limitation is the skill level of the operator.

If you study news photography it is interesting to notice the 'usual' camera position resulting from the gear being used.
Pre 1950 when the Speed Graphic was king the photos are taken from eye level and often the photographer is standing.

In the early 50's the Rollieflex was used by one photographer Frank Dyer for the 1953 Royal Tour of NZ. Many newstogs adopted this and pre the prism finder the camera was often held at waist level. So much easier to carry a pocket of 120 rollfilm than a case of DDSs

With the prism the camera came back up to the eye and as 35mm became common it remained there to this day.

But as an editor a favourite comment of mine was "using the camera at the comfortable working height' resulting on looking down on small subjects .... must admit I catch myself shooting this way too from time to time when I'm lazy.

It's an interesting area. The 3 basics of composition are the subject, the lens focal length or more strictly in some fields it's angle of view as that takes sensor sizes out of it and the height of the camera when the shot is taken. They all have a profound effect.

Whoops should have mentioned distance to subject as well.

John
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[inkista]

... Hugin probably really is the most capable panorama program about.

>koff!< PTGui. >koff!<

Just saying. There are reasons I shelled out the euros for that puppy. I love Hugin, but PTGui is my go-to for pano stitching, and it does stuff Hugin can't come close to (like viewpoint correction) and overall the UI to me is a lot less clunky. Hugin is a very capable program, but for me, it's not the most capable. See also my post in the "Anyone using Hugin for Panos?" thread.

...It has the bits needed to do focus stacking too. Maybe one day they will add that to the gui....

Here's the problem with Hugin--they already think they have. [eyeroll]. I mean, it's a window with a button on it, so it's a GUI, right?

hugin_enfuse_gui.PNG

Hugin is amazing, but it's mostly written by geeks for geeks, and their idea of "ease of use" might not be yours, if you're not a command-line open source type geek. For them, this type of usage would be off-label enough from the main task of Hugin to stitch panos, that giving command line option access is perfectly fine for them. And I could also see not wanting to spend precious volunteer development hours on that when there are already perfectly fine dedicated GUIs out there.

[Colin Southern]

I'd agree with 1 to 4 also. With regards to #5, I'd be inclined to say that high or low isn't necessarily "wrong" - but one just has to be aware that it will have an effect on the image. Every model seems to have an angle that works for them -- and quite often I will climb up a ladder to get a better viewpoint; it helps getting a good shoulder angle into the shot.

With regards to the flashes, in the vast majority of cases the cameras are probably just on automatic mode and I doubt many P&S owners are even aware that they're going off.

With regards to #6 - it's definitely something I see quite often - especially where Portrait Professional and Photomatix are concerned.

[Colin Southern]

>koff!< PTGui. >koff!<

Just for you Kathy!

http://www.healthchemist.co.nz/produ...FUsIvAodBioAuQ

[lukaswerth]

>koff!< PTGui. >koff!<

Just saying. There are reasons I shelled out the euros for that puppy. I love Hugin, but PTGui is my go-to for pano stitching, and it does stuff Hugin can't come close to (like viewpoint correction) and overall the UI to me is a lot less clunky. Hugin is a very capable program, but for me, it's not the most capable. See also my post in the "Anyone using Hugin for Panos?" thread.


Here's the problem with Hugin--they already think they have. [eyeroll]. I mean, it's a window with a button on it, so it's a GUI, right?

hugin_enfuse_gui.PNG

Hugin is amazing, but it's mostly written by geeks for geeks, and their idea of "ease of use" might not be yours, if you're not a command-line open source type geek. For them, this type of usage would be off-label enough from the main task of Hugin to stitch panos, that giving command line option access is perfectly fine for them. And I could also see not wanting to spend precious volunteer development hours on that when there are already perfectly fine dedicated GUIs out there.

You have a point about Hugin. I have tried the focus stacking function, couldn't make it work, thought it was my shortcoming. It probably was, but if someone could give me a hint of how it actually works I would be grateful.
As far I know, PTGUI uses the same algorythm as Hugin, but I can believe it is more userfriendly, and probably has some more functions. I was thinking of getting it once or twice, but then decided to spend my money elsewhere as Hugin does the occasional panorama very well for me, way better than PS at any rate.
But with regard to this stupid "mistakes"-article, the point is that, if you know how to use such programs, you can get a long way, so their point about free software was as daft as the other "mistakes".

Lukas

[ajohnw]

Hugin is geek when it comes to which particular projection is to be generated. It does more of them than you could shake a stick at which can be confusing. I can never remember which one to use so usually go to the tutorial page which is even up to date at the moment. The rest is down to producing a preview quickly. It works that way as it can have to do all sorts of things when stitching a lot of images together. The final given sufficient images can take 1/2 hr or more. Aligning, stretching etc etc.

Afraid I wont take much notice of a thread discussing something like Hugin in 2009. It's only recently become fairly stable in terms of what it looks like. I keep meaning to look in preferences and see if the default projection can be selected. I would bet a pound to a penny that PTGui has ripped off code from open source packages - that's why it's so cheap.

Focus stacking uses a Hugin routine to generate a stack of aligned images. Enfuse is then used to merge them. Enfuse it's self going on the HDR app I usually use doesn't seem to care if it's stacking focus or hdr. I use macrofusion but haven't tried it for focus stacking only hdr. That is here. None Windows or Mac

http://sourceforge.net/projects/macrofusion/



It tends to produce Colin style HDR. For the other sort which I am still working on I use the GIMP and also Fotoxx for more subtle additions to a shot, say a tinge more cloud tones using 2 shots from one raw. I'm having trouble getting the GIMP to produce results as bad as I have seen on the web.

In terms of focus stacking I would start here, The normal panorama tutorial on the tutorial page will specify which projection to set before doing anything else.

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/docs/ma...of_photos.html

This tutorial should be up to date as well.

http://blog.patdavid.net/2013/01/foc...os-enfuse.html

At some point I might purchase this package but I am a bit put off by escalating prices. There were just 2 licenses. None commercial use and commercial use. It's a very widely used package and capable of microscope image stacking and has more than one stacking algorithm. Suppose the guy has to support his life style. Helicon is it's main competitor.

http://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker

I believe something along these lines has been included in Image J too. This might be way too biological. CombineZP is still available. Why the interest. Microscope objectives can have F ratios below F0.4 in air and these package are suitable for that sort of thing.

John
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[drjuice]

It seems to me that the choice of tools isn't really the issue for free vs. $$$$$$ tools. The real issue for me is whether the photographer wants to get as much of the image as possible from skills with the camera versus having a really crappy ('scuse the language) picture that can be "saved" for some reason. My personal preference, probably because I put in so many years learning how to max the ways I used my film, is still to get the very best original image I can and then I worry about whether or not I can or need to do some repair work.

Last night I was out for a walk and spotted some irises in the garden near our local firehouse. I snapped several different ones with my Nexus 5. I knew from just looking at the images on the screen which one I liked for new wallpaper on my phone. And, by 7:15 last night it was on there. (I try to change my wallpaper once every week or two.)

I have been using Corel Draw! since 1989 (beta 0.81) and even back then, Corel included PhotoPaint with Draw! It's MUCH more functional now than it was then, considerably closer in terms of function to PS. For difficult problems, I still use it. But FastStone View is just about always the first tool I use, particularly for things like minor brightening/contrast changes, fixing off-color (just flat not good representation of particular color or colors) images, and cropping, all of which I consider to be minor adjustments.

I'm jes' sayin'....

v

[ajohnw]

I come from the same sort of background Virginia but I see digital as being different. For instance I will take shots that have shadow areas that I know will come out too dark even to a difficult extent. Then see what PP can do with them. Part of the reason is that I have done some PP for a long time and I want to expand my horizons in that area. So in many respects I don't concern myself with problems like this. From time to time the results are interesting but not as I saw the scene as that wouldn't be possible without throwing in HDR. On HDR I am currently trying to mimic some of the awful results that are about. In some situations these are effective. The only problem really is that from time to time I find out what some particular facility in a package like the GIMP is actually for. This makes learning PP a slow but interesting task. Given UK weather of late it's something to do as well.

John
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