Wah, everyone start to spam DLE pic already....

I also spam my not-so-bokelicious, WB-out pic first.

I want to hardcorely save for my 70-200 f/2.8 VRII

Or master Joe McNally's Da Grip!

You don't really "get" (dapat) good lighting. Quality lighting comes from how you find and strategise on directing the light to create some dimension in order to provide a visual impact. If the light is harsh, this give you an opportunity to play with shadows and details. If the light is diffused, it gives you an opportunity to play with dreamy look. This also affect the color saturation of your pic.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 17 2011, 11:50 AM

Lack of passion in photography, or maybe because sadly, they do not receive enough guidance from peers to properly make use of their equipment to make better pictures. Not many people are very technical about photography, so probably the first few hundred shots, they are amazed at the picture qualities of DSLRs due to its larger sensor and shallower DOF (can say it's like the HD version of the PnS pics), but as they shot more and when things became too repetitive, they start to feel bored because there are no images that are strong enough to make them continue (motivated) to shoot, that's why their DSLR went into the dark closet for months, maybe years..

So, yeah, I think guidance and motivation is quite important, and also understanding what you actually wants from your photography is also important. You can be very knowledgeable about your camera, every single details. You know how to take sharp and clear pictures, but photography is a vast field. Portrait, Fashion, Landscape, Macro, Journalism, etc. It goes on and on and never ends....

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 22 2011, 01:32 PM

Most of the time, different individuals have different tastes, again you have to ask yourself what you want to pull out that favourite camera of yours and start shooting. As long it serves the whole purpose it doesn't matter.

I never brought my DSLR out all the time when going out for casual lepaking. Like Andy said, sometimes, it feels bulky, and when I lugging my gears for 1 whole day (e.g. PC Fair), I can feel very bad pain on my shoulders the day after.

Sometimes, when something just happened, pulling out my phone's camera is 10x much faster than pulling out my D90 which is sunk deep inside my camera bag and is topped up by my flashgun and my kitlens, which is kind of a hassle, by the time I am able to pull it out, the moment has already been gone. I use it mainly for my personal art projects (because I really need that extra control a DSLR can give) and even though, yeah, I admit, it does stay in my room for weeks when I'm idling and do not have any shooting projects or events. Idling times were spent on browsing through photos at Facebook, LYN Showcase, Photomalaysia gallery etc, trying to get some inspiration.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 22 2011, 05:15 PM

-- edited: I will add on my points once the clearer question is known --

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 25 2011, 10:11 AM

A year ago, I had the same question like you, even worse, I don't even know what's the difference between 2, I know both are fast prime lenses, until I went to J-One, grab a 50mm because I thought it's cheap (RM380), and overlooked the field of view.

When I reached home, I just realized the frame is much tighter than my kitlens as that time I haven't realized myself being a portrait shooter yet (Problem 1). Going f/1.8 sure is nice, at first trying it out on a few small objects which such a shallow DOF wows me.

There I started my adventure with my 50 f/1.8D. I bring it out for a test, and it was Christmas month. As you can imagine, so many Christmas lights and they are perfect candidate for Bokehlicious photos, and because I do not know what is the sweet spot all about, I was greedy and shoot everything wide open (at f/1.8 - Problem 2), and because I am still not used to prime yet, zooming with my feet feels troublesome, and also such a tight field of view, makes things much more frustrating.

Then come KLIMS. Again, shooting everything wide open, and finally realized why many of my shots looks so blurry. Colors desaturated even.

Finally about a month later, only I have realized that I shouldn't go wide open when using the prime. When going for a shooting at DLE 2010, the first time I was shooting PC fair showgirls, I tested again by shooting at f/2.8, f/2.2 and f/2. Oh, my! the sharpness of f/2.8 only made me realized the optimal use of my prime before I almost left it into my dark closet. From that point onwards, it has been my favourite portrait lens, though tight but good enough to cover the subject.

I think different people have different thoughts, but that was my 2 months of learning about prime lens the hard way.

I think prior understanding of the lens first (characteristics, field of view, etc) is better because a lens is like a paintbrush. You have to use the right brush for the art you are making, so you have to know what pros and cons of the lens that can do to achieve the picture you want. Again, sometimes, getting a real feel of the lens is more important, as what lwliam mentioned.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 27 2011, 08:54 AM

Guys, I got a technical question to ask here.

Does the focus alignment on the lens and the body can get misaligned when used over time and need to be recalibrated? Does it happen even on first party lenses too?

I'm figuring out whether is it due to the change of my techniques recently that caused more of photos getting slightly blur recently, I'm using focus and recompose quite a lot lately. I feel a lot of my earlier shots
are much sharper....

Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Aug 29 2011, 12:16 PM

About photo commenting.

Fixed.

Unfortunately, in today's internet age, people have easier access to poisonous pictures in Flickr, FB, etc. Photographers like us usually have filtered out
a lot of failed shots before uploading them online, so giving newbies a wrong impression that DSLR can take good pictures. Even DSLR can shoot lousier pictures, and probably 10x lousier than a normal compact cam, if every other factors are not in favor with the scene.

Speaking of Vitamin-M, many people these days are treating photography like a gadget collection hobby, like computer parts. If the game doesn't fulfill the requirement, upgrade RAM, graphics lousy, upgrade graphic card, new Windows version 64-bit come out, throw away the motherboard and change the CPU. Photography is very much different. You cannot look at it the same way especially dealing with camera lenses. Camera lenses are expensive because the production costs are so high.

10-15 years ago during the film days, did anyone care about bokeh? Anyone care about DOF in photographs? Anyone care about cross-processed photographs through certain development chemical? It was much costlier in the old days, people go bankrupt with photography, getting themselves into loans, etc. Almost as expensive as being an audiophile collecting high-end A/V equipments.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Sep 9 2011, 10:33 AM

I think it roots to how people see things. We always have the habit of pulling out the camera (doesn't matter what kinds of camera), points at the scene and shoot it, usually for documentation and for memory-keeping purpose.

About photography being subjective, yes. I agree. The photography compositional rules still applies (rule of third, etc) because they form a structure or the grammar of a picture on how you can express what the picture is. Can say it's like a formal way of aesthetically making a photo look beautiful. Just like make-up, usually the common tools like foundation, blushers, concealer, lipstick, etc. are used to beautify a woman, and when it comes to breaking the rules is how you slowly tweak how much of each of the elements being used to make a statement of the makeup style and look you want to give to the lady.

How you want to express the picture depends on you because each people express things different. Some people like it elaborate, some people like it simple. Just like how we say a certain sentence in our daily conversation. Different people have different tastes.

Why certain people can take good pictures even with compact cam is because how they train themselves up to have an eye to see things differently, something that an average layperson will not see. Some are talented with it, and most people can be trained to look at things for a different angle or perspective. So as you are used to document things in your daily life creatively and distinctively, as you upgrade your equipment to DSLR and use it to the fullest potential (since DSLR can be further tweaked to produce higher visual impact to strengthen your shot), the outcome can be phenomenal.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Sep 9 2011, 10:51 AM

I agree with you, the handling of a DSLR sometimes is like driving a car. When we are walking, it is easy to move about and manuver around easily, but after we get onto the driver seat, suddenly there are so many things we need to worry, like applying correct pressure to the clutch pedal and the accelerator, engage the correct gear at which speed, so that the car will move at an expected pace, then when making turns, how to properly turn the steering wheels etc., same thing with DSLR. So many factors need to be taken care: SS, Aperture, ISO, WB , eV, Flash direction, AF points, metering...sometimes, we had to worry so much on the technicalities until we become clumsy when taking just a simple photo.

Yup, even a luxurious 85 1.4G lens they also let you test, after that help you wipe your current lens somemore.

For me, depends on lighting.

If outdoor, I would use A mode and fix the aperture and ISO (200 for a nice sunny day/maybe ISO 400 to have one extra stop of light when overcast), minor tweaking on the eV. Shoot one to test exposure then, a.k.a chimping. , then only do a real shot. If backlighting, will use flash to fill in the face so that it won't look under.

If indoor, bump ISO to 640, fire flash and goes on M mode, fix SS to a "safe level" depending on the focal length and the situation. If too many movement and demands a higher SS, would bump ISO higher and then do noise reduction during PP process.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Sep 11 2011, 04:14 PM

I'm not so worried about overexposing like 1/3 or 2/3 stops. It is much more dangerous if my pic is 1 stop underexposed (sometimes 2 stops under). It's almost important impossible to recover in PP nicely, it will only end up looking very fake and unnatural.

Usually if it's a normal group shots where I don't have time to waste, I would quickly expose the pic correctly without further attempting to tweak the pic to satisfaction.

For portrait shoots, when I have the time luxury of testing, then I can slowly assess the light, see how to pose the model correctly to properly illuminate her face and then estimate the closest setting in the camera to properly expose it.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Sep 11 2011, 04:59 PM

^DX?

8.5k? Dayummm!!!

I think most likely I will still have to buy D700 just like how I decided to buy D90 last time even though my friends ask me to wait for another 4 months for D7000 to come out!!!

D3s... lolz... The Ferrari of Nikon DSLRs.... expensive wei!