Yes, people used to use color filters on black-and-white film, to accentuate certain colors and increase contrast.

For example, a red filter darkens blue skies (red filter does not allow blue or green through) while letting in tree greens/yellows and skintones (yellow = red + green). So the result is darker skies with brighter trees and skin.

I tried my Hoya 25A red filter on my camera a while back, and found that it actually reduces contrast compared to the in-camera black-and-white. I don't know why.

#5 17mm F2.8; minimuffin tries to cheer her up. "Let's go to the waterfall!", he says.


#6 135mm F1.8; "yes I like that idea, and some ice-cream!"


#7 135mm F1.8; and so we have the cliche shot.


#8 135mm F1.8; she takes it one step cuter.


#9 50mm F1.7; thanks buttercup.y2k for taking this shot though I would've composed it where the red dotted lines are; the man on the left with the walkie talkie was the security guard who pestered us off Jaya One.

Kul | Mo0, there were originally 4 chairs in that stack. I then took out one, and placed it aside. I sat on that 1 chair and asked her to sit on the 3-chair stack. Guess what story I was aiming to tell!

This post has been edited by albnok: Jun 1 2009, 05:51 PM

Banzai_san, it's more comfortable to sit down and shoot in this case. (Also, he is using an A700 which does not have Live View.)

alpha_company, it is shown every Friday at 7:30pm on NTV7. Or did you mean the A330 brownie? Sony doesn't take to long to launch their products in the Malaysian market (except the PS3 LOL.)



My intended scene was that she was my annoying younger sister who gets 2 extra chairs to boost her height. I asked her to swing her legs happily while I looked annoyed. Don't know if anybody caught that shot!

#10 135mm F3.2; Zoe is sad because we were chased by security guards. "Can you make me taller?"


#11 20mm F3.2; with a wide-angle lens and shooting at a sharp angle, I can!


#12 17mm F8; yes, we relocated to the Kelana Jaya Park.


#13 17mm F3.5; Zoe is sad because she missed her garden wedding.


#14 35mm F7.1; there are things you can do to amuse yourself and be happy.

This post has been edited by albnok: Jun 2 2009, 01:54 AM

signither: LOL! They have a hand-held leaf blower though.

AlphaBeta, er, in your edited version, the contrast is overdone and the whites are close to blown. Also her skin is horribly red! (Is this a side effect of having a Nikon? I hate that Nikon red.) What I would do to your image is Undo by 33% in Photoshop (so it's nearer to my version than yours.)

I would do it like this:

1) duplicate layer
2) adjust skintone to be smack in the middle of the histogram (this will look even lower-contrast)
3) apply large radius unsharp mask with low amount
4) add layer mask and concentrate it only on her face (as that's the only part which I'd want some contrast)

Banzai_san, at 35mm F7.1 on a full-frame camera (which has a sensor with twice the surface area of an APS-C camera) depth of field is shallower. In the original image, her right hand and right knee is sharply in focus. Her face is not exactly in the plane of focus so it's not as sharp. I was using Aperture Priority so the camera chose 1/250s (I didn't intentionally set the shutter speed.)

Seng_Kiat, I suggest you find other methods of bringing out the ship and details from shadow; I can see icky halos. I'd suggest exporting at different EVs instead of a shadow fill + USM.

Boon3, your observation skills are crazy!

SpOOkY, I intentionally focused on her right hand and not her face; so, when she throws the petals, the petals would be in focus and look 3D while she would be bokeh-fied. But then I could've done so with a different lens or at F4 (at F7.1, I was thinking more to an environmental, in-focus shot.)

I very often do not prefer to have objects in front to be out of focus. Only in straight up portraits would I prefer to have eyes in focus, but this was a more thematic shot.

Even in this picture:



I wish I manually focused on her left pinky finger instead (I was already at the minimum focus distance of 50cm for the Sigma 17-35mm F2.8-4 EX, so to solve this I should have stepped backwards.)

MechaHerc, CLS can set your off-camera flashes to manual power, while with the Sony flashes you need to walk over to set power manually. Other than that, ratio groups are supported by having a F58 on an A700 or A900.

Nikon - Group A, Group B, Group C
Sony - CTRL, RMT, RMT2

Supposing you want TWO lights, one more powerful than the other.

CASE A, using A900, 2 F58s and 1 F42 (I borrowed a friend's F58)

Set F58 on camera to CTRL+ mode, Ratio On, ratio to "-:16:8".

"-" means the CTRL flash (F58 on A900) does not show in the picture. "16" is for whatever flash is in RMT group, namely my F42; "8" is for whatever flash is in RMT2 group, namely my F58. "16" is 1 stop more powerful than "8" so the F42 is firing at a higher power than the F58.

I can also set "-:2:1" and it would mean the same thing.

CASE B, using A200, 1 F36 and 1 F42

Set A200 to WL flash and raise the pop-up flash. F36 is in TTL (no manual power). F42 is in manual power. Adjust the F42 power until you get the power ratio you want.

If you want to make the F36 brighter, change your EV - this will affect flash EV by default (unless Exp.comp.set is set to Ambient only in your Alpha menu) so you can control the power of the F36 without walking to the flash.

Honestly though, once you've set your flash zoom and ratio, you don't need to set it again unless you change location or go from shooting a headshot to shooting a group of people.

Sony cons:
- A200-A380 doesn't support ratio groups so if you want one flash to be under/overpowered compared to the other, you need to set one flash to manual mode and leave the other in TTL
- A200-A380 doesn't support having the F58 on camera and triggering off-camera flashes
- Sony flashes do not have a SU-4 mode so digicams cannot trigger it

Nikon cons:
- D50/40/40x/60/5000 doesn't support using pop-up flash as wireless TTL trigger
- no F58 Quick Shift Bounce hehe
- when you activate WL commander on a D90, and put say a SB-900 flash in slave mode, and you put the flash back on the D90, you need to turn the flash back into On mode. If not, the flash will not fire *

* I find this very annoying, with Sony A200-380 if your flash WL is on and your Alpha flash is set to WL, and you put the flash on the body, it will automatically change to TTL and you can shoot with flash normally without having to turn off WL

Seng_Kiat: That's a lot better, a lot less halo. But yes, now, composition!

cplow1, go without your girlfriend when you buy a F42 hehe. Tell her somebody sold it to you for RM450 or something.

MechaHerc, the key to such a shot is controlling the spread of light. The main light on the model is big and soft; that may mean that he shot it through an umbrella from the top left of the frame. (You can tell by her shadow.) There is probably another light just to light the background.

I'm not sure if the A200-A380 have the Exp.comp.set function but if it does not, then it is assumed to be "Flash&ambient" all the time, meaning you change EV, and it affects flash also. You can try this - set your EV to -2, shoot a shot with flash. Then shoot the same thing with your EV at +2.

When I get back I'll post something done with 2 flashes in Case A.

Kul | Mo0: That taxi driver deiii!

hafeez71: We have no idea yet but best not to assume that it can. It probably cannot.

This post has been edited by albnok: Jun 2 2009, 03:39 PM

hafeez71: What is an off-shoe? Who mentioned it? LOL. You mean flash stand? The F58 flash stand is much bigger than the one for the F36/F42/F56.

millenia3000: Don't think you can buy it.

MechaHerc: Yes, of course, umbrellas will give you the same effect. You can achieve exactly the same effect with Sony wireless flashes and umbrellas.

millenia3000: Nolah, they don't sell it separately, just like the normal charger.

MechaHerc: Yes, those not listed, should be able to trigger a flash using the pop-up using CLS. Just like every Alpha body can trigger off-camera flashes using the pop-up flash (except the A900 because it doesn't have a pop-up flash.)

Come for this Thursday's TT, we'll explore such options!

This is a really bad Photoshop job! The A230 doesn't look like that from the front. Neither does the battery charger (it's the same one for the Sony HX-1.)

http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-ALPHA-DSLR-A230-3...93%3A3|294%3A30

achew, great stuff! Love the setup especially for the bokeh and water drops!

And now, for the final pictures from the Zoe series:


#15 135mm F3.2; for example, tying your hair up releases some heat from the back of your head. I know this!


#16 135mm F3.2; extreme closeup before I take on the role of hairstylist!


#17 135mm F2.2; I forgot to ask if she had an older sister.

hanafinoor: Thanks!

0168257061, yes it was on purpose. Some shots seem to have duller light because they were shot in the shade.

For the headshots I originally adjusted it to be more contrasty, but then it made the face, especially the cheeks, too... dramatic (not intended for this style of female portrait), and made the eyeliner too deep. Try it in Photoshop yourself! The mood is different, not so young and innocent.

So I masked my adjustments so that only the hair gets a slight high-radius USM adjustment (22% 33 pixels 4 threshold). For guys however, you could go overboard with the contrast and they'd look more macho with that LOL. But it's a n00b thing to boost contrast if you cannot control it correctly, just like n00b HDR that looks fake with halos.

Radeon: About #16, yes, that is the nature of a full-frame camera shot at a long focal length and a close focus distance. I was about 1 meter away. Even at F3.2 there isn't enough DOF to cover both eyes especially since she is moving and not facing straight on exactly at me! Since her left eye is closer to me I focused on it; if her right eye was in focus, it would not look as pleasant.

This is far from being technically perfect - this is a representation of what challenges one might face.

An example of how a portrait would look like if the person was facing directly at me:


Shot at 135mm F1.8 (cassplayer look it's Barack Obama!)

cassplayer: Digitalsmania, look for the Octopus DM-6. It's about RM50.

MechaHerc:

Manual power is not the same as flash EV; manual power is "absolute" while flash EV is "relative". And yes, EV+/- will affect flash EV.

It seems only the Sony 18-70mm F3.5-5.6 DT kit lens has a gear stripping problem.

MechaHerc, if you set flash to Manual Power, then whatever +/- you set on the camera will not affect the flash.

If you set the flash to TTL, whatever +/- you set on the camera will affect the flash.

soulfly: Not necessarily, I've snooped around before, and some things can sit in the warehouse until the price has been decided. Or in the infamous case of the Sony PS3 LOL.

Kul | Mo0, congratulations!

SHOfrE3zE, opening your viewfinder and finding all the pieces drop out must've been a nightmare! I know, hehe.

SHOfrE3zE: Er, it's not called a focusing mirror; the mirrors don't drop out (not a Canon 5D LOL.)

It was:

retainer clip
focusing screen
metal spacer
metal spacer
SI screen (the one with the focus points etched on it)

clivengu: Clean it with a blower (refer to the 1st page of this thread for a video on how to.)

shootkk: I'm coming for the TT!

This post has been edited by albnok: Jun 4 2009, 11:51 AM

LOL that looks exactly like an A700, Photoshopped.

P.S. Congratulations on your A700!

signither, you could look at the Golla laptop backpacks:

http://www.thundermatch.com.my/catalog/Lap...ptop-Backpacks/

It has a surprising number of pockets and I know you can fit a beercan in the top compartment. nic_chm has carried his Zeiss 135mm F1.8 and Sony 70-200mm F2.8G SSM in this bag and you'll never suspect that he was carrying that much gear because the bag maintains its slim shape.

P.S. Congratulations on... work!

Don't mix different types of batteries!

http://www.aboutsafety.com/article.cfm?id=589

Was reading what was written on an AA alkaline battery lying around and I wondered what an exploding battery looked like.