The Photography Thread

[Raid]

Walked up to the castle, but couldn't find a decent angle. The problem with castles is that they're on the tops of the highest hills in the area, meaning that to get a shot of anything interesting you have to constantly be looking upwards. Photos of things looking upwards always look touristy. So I took a street photo shot instead.



I really liked the shadow spreading across the scene.

One of the main reasons I wanted a mirrorless camera was that they (mostly) all have an electronic viewfinder rather than the optical one found on SLRs. The EOS R has one of the best on the market, with no noticeable lag and high resolution. That means the camera can display all sorts of things in the viewfinder, including making the scene monochrome meaning it's easier to visualise for shooting in black and white.

[Alan]

That’s great. Almost looks like a still from a Lynch movie.

In the EVF thing, I’ve taken to leaving it set to black and white because someone told me it lets you see clearer light and shadows. I’ve convinced myself this is both true and of great importance to my shitey amateur photography

[Raid]

Oh it's definitely true, when you're shooting in black and white all you can see is the relative brightness of everything. You don't see individual objects as easily because their colours no longer separate them. I didn't spot that shadow until I looked through the viewfinder.

Whether that's important is up to you. I've always wanted to be able to shoot good black and white images but I've never been able to easily visualise how a scene will look in black and white. I've got one of my camera's custom shooting modes set up for black and white photography; the EVF displays a monochrome image and boosts the contrast, though as I'm still shooting in raw, the camera still captures the colour so I can change my mind later should I want to.

[BoggyB]

The problem with castles is

That's a very rarely spoken phrase these days.

[Pew-Pew]

Ooh a photography thread, me likey! I've been meaning to get more into it, since I got a mirrorless camera a year or so ago (Sony A6000, so not high end). A few photos are here, some of which are from my phone as well:

https://www.instagram.com/james.lawrence1/

Unfortunately they're all the shitty instagram from phone resolution, so I might upload higher res ones here at some point. I don't really know anything about editing, so I need to get into that. Most of the ones further down from a trip to Japan are the 'proper' photos, not just social media-y type posts.

[Raid]

A couple of my shots from my afternoon walk.

This single red berry caught my eye, and I figured this was a decent chance to play with my new lens' lovely depth of field potential. I find myself having to readjust to the depth of field on a full frame sensor, which is significantly shallower than the same aperture on an APS-C sensor.


Another play at black and white with a slightly moody look (which I find myself gravitating towards at the moment).

[Rusty]

Good stuff.

[Alan]

Real nice composition.

[Alan]

Raid, you were considering CaptureOne sooo

Just a quick note, a huge discount is available on the premier RAW imaging software for Fujifilm!

Expires on Monday, March 4, but we're not sure the exact time of day it expires, so act quickly!

Normally $219, you save $109.50 using coupon code 'ivy50'

Note that this is only for the perpetual license, not the subscription (also available for Sony.)

Here is the link: http://bit.ly/captureone50

Was considering it since it’s supposed to handle RAF files better but I don’t think I really care *that* much.



Edit, forget that, seems it just the Sony and Fuji ones. I guess you could try it on the generic one.....

[Raid]

Yeah, doesn't work for the standard version. Thanks though.

[Alan]

You could always just buy a Fuji or Sony...

[Pew-Pew]

Does anyone know of some decent free software for photo processing/editing? Darktable? I don't want to pay for lightroom.

(I don't mean hardcore editing, I mean for touching photos up a bit etc.)

[Achtung Englander]

good work Raid

[Alan]

Ive really not been in the mood lately, even when I take my camera somewhere I hardly use it for anything more than a snap of my dog. I think I blame the summer weather when I also cant ever be arsed with games and much of anything. Not a fan of the heat plus my work shifts and sleeping paterns mean its harder for me to sleep too so I suppose thats a big part of it.

Anyway I treated myself to a Ricoh GRii which Ive really wanted for ages but now that the GRiii is out theres some good second hand deals on the ii. Not had it long but first impressions are that its blooming awesome! So configurable, so tiny, so light, so cute but with real good image quality out of it. I thought it would feel cheap because the pics of it online make it look very plasticy but it feels great in hand, surprisingly premium. Never had a camera that had so many configurable settings nor one that saves *every* setting in a custom preset, even current focus range. Looking forward to getting out and playing with it proper after I spend an hour setting it up how I want. I love cameras with proper manual dials for everything (Fujilove!) so it is quite jarring not having that but its just a case of getting used to it. Its also got the best wifi->phone software Ive seen and its running on a web applet, not even an app!

Yeah quite happy with this purchase I think! I really wish Fujis X70 had the operating system of this. Fuji did steal some ideas (snap focus) but they put them in the XF10 which by all accounts is a crappy shadow of what the X70 was.


I also bought myself a Samyang 12mm F2.0 because I really want to try proper astro sometime soon and this is a pretty spectacular lens for it, especially for the price. Now if the clouds would just piss off and if night would start lasting a good bit longer that would be nice.....



How you getting on Raid?

[Raid]

I'm dimly aware of that Ricoh's reputation as being a superb compact, it's used by at least one of the street photography YouTubers I follow.

In all honesty it's been a few months since I had the motivation to pick my camera up; I've just gotten involved in other things (the 3D printing has taken up a lot of my free time). The last thing I was experimenting with was studio portraiture (well, as close as I can get to it with my limited space and equipment). While I'm not going to post any of the self portraits I took (which weren't very exciting, you're not missing much), I did use a couple of Gundam models as subjects:




I bought a pair of softboxes for my two speedlights, and some coloured gels for a bit of variety. I suppose I could rabbit on about duality or something (the angle on the Gundam's 'mask' makes for an easy facial divide if you light it from either side), but honestly I just thought red on one side and white on the other looked cool.

There was also my favourite edit from the Exia shoot that I forgot to post:

I need to remember to pose these things for symmetry (there are so many moving parts that it's easy to miss a few). Detail is something you really need to focus on (hur hur) with studio-style shooting, as mistakes with the subject are a little more obvious when you've got a completely neutral background.