Difference between revisions of "Photography"

From Eugene Eric Kim
(Neil Ta)
(Tripods)
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* [http://digital-photography-school.com/8-guidelines-to-taking-panoramic-photos-with-any-camera 8 Guidelines to Taking Panoramic Photos with any Camera.]
* [http://digital-photography-school.com/8-guidelines-to-taking-panoramic-photos-with-any-camera 8 Guidelines to Taking Panoramic Photos with any Camera.]


== My Camera ==
== My Equipment ==


My primary camera is an [[Olympus OM-D E-M5]]. I also have a [[Canon PowerShot S95]].
My primary camera is an [[Olympus OM-D E-M5]]. I also have a [[Canon PowerShot S95]].
Line 89: Line 89:
* [[Canon PowerShot SD450]].  
* [[Canon PowerShot SD450]].  


When I was considering the Lumix, I also considered:
I have a Manfrotto 293A3-A0RC2 tripod with a ball head and QR plate. More on [http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3095070 tripods here].
 
* [http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/default.asp?newsID=3901 Four new PowerShot models]
* [http://www.trustedreviews.com/digital-cameras/review/2009/01/23/Canon-PowerShot-SX10-IS/p3 Canon PowerShot SX10 IS Review]
 
For my upcoming [[BurdensLanding:Korea]] trip, I'm considering a new camera:
 
{|class="wikitable"
!Camera
!Thoughts
!Links
!Examples
|-
|Canon G11
|
|
|
* [http://laurencekimblog.com/index.php?link=166 Canon G11 Part 3 (portraits)]. Beautiful portrait shots.
* [http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/powershot_g11/ G11 shots on Flickr]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/danack/4586801074/in/set-72157623004022169/ Timelapse] (using CHDK) and other awesome pics
|-
|Canon S90
|
|
* [http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons90/ Digital Photography Review]
|
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/mesohungry/4164533630/ Shallow depth-of-field]
* [http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/powershot_s90/ S90 shots on Flickr]
|}
 
The [http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/27/olympus-e-pl2-camera-gets-reviewed-deemed-worthy-to-carry-on-th/ Olympus E-PL2] seems like a good option for a Micro Four Thirds camera.
 
One day, I'm going to get a Leica M8:
 
* [http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/leica-m8.shtml Leica M8 Hands-on Field Review]
* [http://www.flickr.com/cameras/leica/m8/ Flickr pictures taken with a Leica M8]
 
Other possible equipment:
 
* [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830997660 Solica ST500 Tripod]
* [http://www.adorama.com/ALC/Article.aspx?alias=15-Low-Light-High-ISO-All-Stars 15 Low-Light High-ISO All-Star Digital Cameras]. My S95 wins the compact category here.


== Managing Photos ==
== Managing Photos ==

Revision as of 19:44, 17 June 2013

See also Digital Images for more on processing and organizing images. See my /Learning Journal for goals and progress.

Techniques

When you take pictures, there are basically three things you control:

  • Composition: What's in the frame
  • Focus: What you're focused on
  • Lighting: How much light reaches your camera

Today's cameras do 90% of the focusing and lighting work for you, which means you can focus on composition.

Focusing on story.

10% of the time, your camera does the wrong thing. This is where the quality of your camera comes into play, specifically:

  • Quality of your camera's lens
  • Quality of your camera's sensor
  • Ability to control manual settings easily

"The Big Picture About Exposure" from the The Bastards Book of Photography offers a great, simple explanation for how to control the amount of light your camera receives using manual settings. You start with your camera's exposure setting, which essentially manipulates:

You can also manipulate these four settings manually.

Kelby Training a possible source for online courses.

Composition

Focus:

Using telephoto lenses

The Kind Of Shot That Ultra Thin Depth Of Field Was Made For

Lighting

Filters:

Aperture

A nice explanation of apertures and focal lengths, and why you can't get good depth-of-field in point-and-shoot cameras (like mine).

In general, to [get shallow depth-of field], especially w/ point-and-shoot cameras:

  • Lower F-stop numbers (larger apertures)
  • Longer focal lengths (zoom in)
  • Get closer to the subject

Online Depth of Field Calculator

Dynamic Range

Panoramic

My Equipment

My primary camera is an Olympus OM-D E-M5. I also have a Canon PowerShot S95.

Digital cameras have limitations on video length.

Old cameras:

I have a Manfrotto 293A3-A0RC2 tripod with a ball head and QR plate. More on tripods here.

Managing Photos

Most of my public pictures are on Flickr. View analytics via flickrstats. One day, I'll upload some of these to Wikimedia Commons. I'm intrigued by ThisLife and Everpix.

I'm migrating over to Adobe Lightroom for editing and photo management.

I wrote some of my own tools for cataloging my digital prints, which are now heavily outdated. They were inspired and based heavily on Gerald Oskoboiny's digital photo publishing software.

I'm experimenting with exiflow for managing my digital photography workflow (renaming files, metadata, etc.). F-Spot has an extension that supports an exiflow workflow.

I'm constantly disgruntled by F-Spot, but I keep returning to it, because it keeps getting better. I'm not crazy about F-Spot for importing images off of my digital camera, so I'm thinking about switching the default to gThumb.

I pondered a move to Google Picasa, but decided against it due to lack of development of its Linux client. If I ever do make the move, I'll need to import my F-Spot albums.

And now I've moved to Shotwell, because that's now the default in Ubuntu. I'm thinking about Lyn on my Mac.

Other tools of interest:

Services for scanning old photos:

Notes

Tags + types. Tags can have types. If I want to get really funky, types can have relationships -- an ontology! For example, the "Eugene Eric Kim" tag could be of type "People." This would allow me to do faceted classification.

Collections (or albums) cannot be tags, because you want to be able to do special things, like define cardinality and other metadata within a collection. However, you ought to be able to assign a photo to multiple collections.

I'd love to integrate Greg Elin's Fotonotes for granular annotations.

Favorites from Eugene Chan

Photo Mosaics

The best tool for doing these on Linux seems to be metapixel:

See Also

Photographers

Mentions from my photography class (April-May 2013):