 Branches under new snowfall |
I took a few photography classes in high school and really enjoyed developing film and printing pictures. After much trial and error I felt like I had a firm grasp of what a picture would look like before I snapped the shutter after I finished setting the focus, adjusting the f-stop, and tweaking the exposure. I also knew that I could play with the image in the darkroom and dodge or burn if necessary (for example, to bring out detail in a sky). Outside of school I took a lot of portraits and candid shots (for family vacations or things like that) and learned how quickly an expression or moment needed to be captured before it would vanish. When I first started using digital cameras, I didn't like them, or at least not the ones I could afford. They took too long to take an image, there was only minimal user control over focus or exposure, and the resolution and dynamic range seemed decidedly inferior to film. That was a long time ago, though, and technology moves quickly. I haven't done much photography recently but we just bought a new camera to take pictures of our baby and I thought I'd see what it could do. It snowed this morning so I took a few shots outside. More below the fold... |
The above image of snow on the branches of a bush was a check on how well the camera focused at close range. (All pictures link to larger versions, which are 25% as large as the full images obtained from the camera.) I was quite impressed. The other things I wanted to check were whether I could get a decent image that included a bright sky and a darker foreground, and whether I could capture the subtle nuances of colors without everything muddying together. Here are the two test images:
Not bad, all things considered, but obviously "point and click" doesn't automatically result in great images. Of course to be fair I should include the equivalent of darkroom manipulation, which would be digitally altering the intensity scale or coloring. I make no claims to know what I'm doing in that area, but after a little playing around I was able to better bring out the darker areas without sacrificing too much from the brighter:
Edit: adding another example, looking at colors. Picture of the sky this (Monday) morning, original on left and tweaked to make sky redder and more intense but bring out foreground slightly on right.
Clearly digital cameras are pretty good these days -- more megapixels, smarter portrait modes, and greater user control. And the convenience can't be beat. So... I guess I'm on board, somewhat reluctantly because I do love film, but there's no point in denying progress. Any tips or suggestions for taking good pictures with a typical digital? Any settings I should explore changing for different types of pictures? Any standard processing steps that enhance digital images? Thanks in advance!
(I thought I'd start a regular weekend series loosely focused on art, including literature, film, and music. I'm definitely hoping other people will want to do installments, I know there's a lot of art-related experience and knowledge among SC participants. The plan is to keep these low key and fun, nothing too in-depth but hopefully interesting, entertaining, and sometimes informative weekend reading. I'm going to call Madonna of the Yarnwinder and art theft the first installment and this the second...)
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Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I have just a basic Sony digital, < $200
Bought last summer on vacation, when I dropped the previous one, another similar Sony, on a rock one too many times, and killed it. I take a lot of pictures on vacation, and i've thought sometimes it would be nice to have different kinds of lenses and so forth, but I have to say that it's really incredible how good the pictures are with such an inexpensive device. Besides, I like my travels as they are, and really don't want them to become about photography, so keeping it simple with a simple camera is okay. And now I can store a whole trip worth of pics on the little tiny flash drive without downloading to my laptop. The batteries last longer, the pictures have nearly double the resolution, and the pictures seem sharper than the previous camera, and the colors seem more true to what my eyes remember seeing, especially distant scenery in bright sunlight, which often looked washed out and indistinct before.
Here's what I think is my favorite picture from last year's vacation, at the top of Laramie Peak, Wyoming. I don't know what it says about me that of all the great natural beauty I saw on the trip, my favorite picture is of radio structures at the top of a mountain :-)
Anyway, I have no photography advice for you, other than get one of those backpacks that Brendan Jr. can ride in this summer, and go hiking in the nearest mountains you can find! Oppotunity trumps technical prowess, that's my philosophy towards photography.
Yeah, I forgot about storage
which has also improved enormously since the early days.
Ours is also a cheap camera but the specs are so much better than what was available last time I looked that it seems top of the line to me. We also bought a new laptop because the old one died and it was cheaper and way better than the old one.
That's a nice shot, I love how blue the sky is, and the antenna certainly does look striking. You can practically feel the mountain air. I like nature shots, my favorite bunch of pictures is from a trip I took to the Grand Canyon. It's definitely easy to take great looking images with that kind of backdrop but at the same time there's still an opportunity for creativity -- the sun peaking over a rock outcropping, the gnarled branches of a tree hanging over the edge. And sure, technology merged with nature makes a great image too, and there's probably all kinds of symbolism too =P
__________________________Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
My first digital
was the Sony Alpha. I just did not want to sacrifice what I perceived as film-quality shots by going with too few pixels or a less than ideal lens set up.
I love it.
I tend to do nature/scenic shots, closeups, and, when I can afford the wide-angle lens, I think it would be fun to try to capture larger compositions.
I don't do any post-processing, mainly because I've not yet taken the time to learn how to do much more than the basics. I found good how-to digital SLR camera books at the local camera store, and although I've played some with the settings, I tend to prefer natural lighting and natural effects
I don't have many loaded to photobucket and I'm not on my home PC right now, but here's a couple:
Texas wildflower
A fortuitous find while wandering around in some South Texas scrub ;} (which should be smaller but I'm obviously having a blond (heh) moment right now)
and some creative use of boots
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Very nice
The closeups are lovely, great detail. The boots one is funny.
It's easy to make images look "off" after processing, but I've seen some examples where the picture retains its natural look but features that were lost in the raw image become apparent. It's not something I want to devote a lot of time to mastering, though. Like you say ordinary light and shadowing have their own charm.
Is there a big difference in quality between the current high-end digital equipment and what most non-photographers use?
__________________________Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Another example: colors
Picture of the sky this morning, original on left and tweaked to make sky redder and more intense but bring out foreground slightly on right.
__________________________Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson