Introduce Yourself & Welcome Other Members (archive)

[Dave Humphries]

And a question of mine: from your gallery I get the impression you know a family member of my avatar - our bracco and pacifist hunting dog (shooting scares him s...less). Kindly ask "DSC_2881_N-D5k_ed1_H1000.jpg" if he knows an Italian called "Mazzel".

It's embarrassing, I can't find where you saw the picture now
I think I know the one you mean, a black dog staring into the distance in the early morning sunshine. It was taken on the bank of the river Thames at Windsor, I don't know the owner I'm afraid and in fact he/she seemed to be passed from one person to another while I was standing close by, so I can't ask the question

In regard to ACR, if you already have a 5.x version, I don't think you will gain any extra functionality (only the latest cameras released) with 5.4. If you have 4.x or earlier, it does give a little more, but nothing I can recall as being spectacularly helpful. I needed 5.4 (over 5.3) for the Nikon D5000 compatibility.

I see Terontola is above a lake in the northern end of Italy a little south (and east) of Florence/Firenze. I did quite a few coach trip holidays from UK to Italy as a teenager with parents, nice country, well it must have been, we kept going back for more

Cheers,

[Colin Southern]

How important is IS ? or can you do without it ?

Hi Ricko,

IS is nice to have, but not essential; keeping in mind that it's designed to reduce camera shake, but doesn't do anything to freeze subject motion. In fact if anything, it's counter-intuative in that regards because if you need IS it's probably because of low light - which means you have a low shutter speed - which means your more likely to get subject motion. Not quite that cut and dried though, as if all depends on what your shooting eg when using flash it lessens the effect of subject motion (proportional to the ratio of flash to ambient) - and of course if shooting from a tripod it's a whole new set of rules as well.

[Colin Southern]

Hello everone,
I thought I just want to stroll along first. I have just register myself and learning what HDR is all about.
I have just bought this new toy Canon EOSD50 which I have just started to enjoy.

My flicker photostream is at.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sammua/

I need to understand what is HDR and how to create HDR images.
I hope by going through the discussion I could learn.

Cheers
sammua

Hi Samma,

Great to have you with us. We've hammered HDR quite a bit recently, but please don't hesitate to start a new thread if there's anything we can help with.

[Colin Southern]

Over the years I have worked with 4X5 Grover, and have 6 35mm film cameras and 1 21/4, one underwater system good to 150 feet digital plus a number of snapshot digitals wanting relief from larger systems.

Hi James,

Great to have you with us - be sure to sing out if there's anything we can help with

[Don Burt]

Hello Everyone: My name is Amber, and I have been shooting for 7 years. I've leisurely learned and am now shooting weddings for a studio and the rest on my own as I have small children and want to wait until they're in school to take on bigger commitments. I look forward to learning new things, as well as sharing what I know with you.

Welcome - I too am a new member and have just accessed the site for the first time. I suppose you are a little like me - finding out the contents of this site and learn more about photography. I will be posting an introduction message about myself soon.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Don,

We look forward to the intro post.

This is a good place to learn, the more you contribute; be it via questions or photos for critique, the quicker (and more) you learn.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ..

[joelsolomon]

Greetings,

My name's Joel and I'm new here. I decided to pick up photography a few months ago and have been loving it since. I live in Munich, Germany, which is a gorgeous city that offers a lot to be photographed. I have a couple of blogs where you can get to know me better: Shutteria and Living in Munich

I decided to start Shutteria as a means of logging my journey and development in photography. I use Living in Munich on the other hand to share with others about my life here in Munich.

I've benefitted a lot from online resources on photography so far and I expect that I will continue to gain much from Cambridge in Colour. I hope to be able to contribute more with time too.

See you around.

[Colin Southern]

Greetings,

My name's Joel

Hi Joel,

Great to have you with us

Looking forward to reading your post and looking at some of your images here.

[Mikishots]

Hello all,

I'm a long-time photoSIG.com member, out to see if there are other forums that are of interest. Been shooting semi-professionally for seven years; "semi" meaning part-time, still have a day gig. I'm always looking for new ideas and techniques.

Been shooting Canon for years, no other reason than it was the first brand I ever bought (the trusty AE-1). Image interests include b&w portraiture (Karsch is my fave), the work of Vincent LaForet and all the wonderful shooters at Magnum.

If I win the lottery, my dream is to open the largest studio this city has ever seen.

See you in there!

[GillR]

I can't remember if I ever "introduced myself" - shame on me if not because I joined over 12 months ago although have not been an active member, hoping to change that from now on!

If I say that my first camera was a Kodak Brownie 127, it might give you a clue as to why I describe myself as an 'old fart'

I've been taking photos for longer than I care to recall, including a long spell with SLRs through the 80s and 90s and although I took the time to learn at least the basics of exposure, aperture & composition I never really applied myself until about 2 years ago when I stepped back into the world of DSLRs after a few years with compact/bridge cameras, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the journey.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Joel,

Good to gave another member willing to ask questions and answer them.
Look forward to seeing some images in due course.

Welcome to the CiC forums from...

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Miki? Mikishots?

Nice cause, but if you win the lottery, which city will benefit?

Anyway, welcome to the CiC forums and don't hestate to post any questions, answers or photos.

An evening/weekend semi-pro photographer then? Portraits?

Regards,

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Gill,

Better late than never, as they say

So welcome, somewhat belatedly, to the CiC forums from me.

Glad you have become active now, I did have an interesting read on the macro forum (thanks to your link in the macro flash thread), even if did make my efforts look even worse, at least I have access to lots of tips on how to improve.

I think I can remember one of those brownies in my family too, but the first camera I remember being allowed to use (by my parents) was a box brownie made of that thick cardboard stuff. I'm going to stop there in case I incriminate myself and turn out to be an older f...

Cheers,

[GillR]

Hi Gill,

Better late than never, as they say

So welcome, somewhat belatedly, to the CiC forums from me.

Glad you have become active now, I did have an interesting read on the macro forum (thanks to your link in the macro flash thread), even if did make my efforts look even worse, at least I have access to lots of tips on how to improve.

I think I can remember one of those brownies in my family too, but the first camera I remember being allowed to use (by my parents) was a box brownie made of that thick cardboard stuff. I'm going to stop there in case I incriminate myself and turn out to be an older f...

Cheers,

Thanks for the welcome, Dave! I'm pleased those links were useful

Hmm, wonder if a bakelite brownie (which I still have!) is older or newer than a cardborad one?

[Olivia]

Hello, I have just joined after being recommended to look at the CIC forum by a friend and I hope I am not going to get thrown out on the basis of my first query!

I am an artist and use photography to photograph artworks for reproduction when needed. I am confused about pixel dimensions: image size and resolution ratio's. I recently took some photos of artworks size 42"x42", with a 7mega pixel camera. The doc unopened reads as being 4MB but once opened reads as 17MB and is reasonably good quality.
By contrast I went to a friend & professional photographer to get some proper high res images done for which she is charging quite a lot, but when I got the disc open on my monitor I see that his images are (once cropped) only 17MB - like mine! the quality is really not great, and I don't know why or what to say since she seemed confident to charge David Bailey rates for the session. Could anyone help me out here? I know that most people won't work with anything less than 40-50MB files now, but how does this work with small vs big originals and scaling up or down?

Thank you, Olivia

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Olivia,

Welcome to CiC, I do hope you stick around, who knows, we may get you interested enough to take up photography too

I'm going to wait for Colin, our other admin/mod to answer this one as he's far more experienced in these matters than I. He sells large canvas printed photos, so this is right up his street - although not quite the same thing.

My guess is this may be a file format issue, if you've been given jpgs, you will see quality artifacts. I suspect you need them in tiff format, and "16 bit", if quality matters to you.

What were you going to do with the files you've bought? As this may explain some of the problem, it all depends on what you said, or she assumed, you wanted to do with the files.

Regards,

[Colin Southern]

Hello, I have just joined after being recommended to look at the CIC forum by a friend and I hope I am not going to get thrown out on the basis of my first query!

Hi Olivia,

Great to have you with us

Great too that you've had the presence of mind to "leverage" your work by producing prints ... I've had this conversation with several artists and from a "return on investment" point of view, I think it makes perfect sense. You probably won't be able to charge as much as an original - but - when someone wants a copy it's fundamentally as easy as clicking "File -> Open -> Print", earning extra $$$ from your efforts really doesn't get much easier than that (I like to think of my work as "digital assetts").

On to your question ...

A couple of things come to mind ...

First up, it's not really the size of the file that matters - it's the amount of information contained within the file that's important. In most cases this equates to the pixel dimensions of the file. If, for example, you have a file that represents an image 6000 pixels wide and 4000 pixels high, that file will have vastly different sizes depending on whether it's saved as a low-quality JPEG - a high-quality JPEG - a compressed TIFF - and uncompressed TIFF - a BMP (bitmap) - a PSD (Photoshop Data). So before I can help you much more, it would be really helpful to know (a) what file format you have the shots in, and (b) what the pixel dimensions of the image are (that'll determine how big you can print it).

Second up, with regards to pixel dimensions, because it's a 2 dimensional thing, pixel dimensions tend to be somewhat misleading. If you've captured something with a 6mp camera, to double the resolution you'd need something FOUR times as big (eg 24mp). So depending on what the professional shots were captured at you may or may not see a difference (eg if they were shot with an 8mp camera you wouldn't see any real difference - with a 10mp camera you still wouldn't see any difference - with a 12mp camera you MAY see a small difference - with a 15 or 16MP camera you'll PROBABLY see a relatively small difference. Megapixels are SERIOUSLY over-rated these days. I've got canvases of my work shot with a 8MP camera and a 21MP camera printed up to 44 inches wide - and there's no obvious difference in quality between them (unless your REALLY looking for it).

In terms of photographing artwork, if you've got enough room then it's really not that hard - Takes me about an hour to setup lighting and tripod - metering & exposure - capture - post-process (for 1 image) ... obviously subsequent images are then a LOT quicker. Best to shoot with a relatively long lens so that correction for perspecive distortions are reduced or eliminated, and lighting needs to be at 45 degrees from both sides. Obviously frame the shot to minimise cropping - and if you get it right then usually post-processing is pretty minimal (if anything, you can get the prints looking even BETTER than the original by virtue of levels / contrast / saturation adjustments (and sharpening)).

Hope this helps (just let us know) (might be a good time for us to then move this to a thread of it's own so it doesn't get "lost in the noise" of the welcome thread).

[kickstan]

Hello all, I'm from Ottawa Ontario in Canada and am currently shooting a Nikon D300 with an 18-200 VR, 180mm 2.8. I enjoy shooting just about anything and am constantly learning about photography. This is my first foray into digital (D300) - sold off my F5 and good lenses (28-70 2.8 and 80-200 2.8) to go digital. Figured it was about time to save money on developing!

[Eightohms]

Hello, I found a lot of valuable information at this site without needing to search any further.

I use a Nikon D40 with a 18-200 mm as my main lens and camera for day to day photography.
I also use an Nikon F2 & F4 for film although seldom used any more.

Mal Stevens (Eightohms)

[Dave Humphries]

Hello all, I'm from Ottawa Ontario in Canada and am currently shooting a Nikon D300 with an 18-200 VR, 180mm 2.8. I enjoy shooting just about anything and am constantly learning about photography. This is my first foray into digital (D300) - sold off my F5 and good lenses (28-70 2.8 and 80-200 2.8) to go digital. Figured it was about time to save money on developing!

Hi Stan, (hope I guessed right)

Welcome to the CiC forums, a good place to learn.

Do post some pics of "just about anything" when you get a chance.

Regards,