Good picture there! You certainly make your 300D proud.

How low was the shutter speed? 1/4 ~ 1/8 ?

Keep it up with your good work.

Ok a couple of quick questions :

I) How critical is post-processing for you guys? I have always printed, posted or presented my photos As-Is... direct from the camera. Always have adjusted lighting using apperture, shuttle speed or iso. I don't quite know how to do exposure compensation or other stuff so could that be why some photos come out "dull"?

II) Would you recommend the photos be taken in RAW or JPEG (Fine) mode?


@ Derek : Have some bad experiences with noise in high ISO modes for S3, so up till 1/3 or 1/4 for non-moving objects I'm still okay with it. Will try to lean against something or crop my hand against another object to stabilize. I guess will have to get out of bad habit and play with ISO more often. Out of curiosity... if 1/8 is slow... what's the standard/recommended shuttle speed for scenery/still objects?


Edit : Great pictures in the Bird Park outing. A pity I missed it.

This post has been edited by darthbaboon: Jan 21 2008, 11:49 AM

Post processing will definitely depend on the individual, if you feel that you want to give your pictures a little "oompphhh" then go ahead and post process them. Make sure that when you are doing that, the colour space you are using would be in sRGB so that once it is printed, the colours will look the same.

If you shoot your images in RAW, then you definitely need to convert them to JPEG before sending them to be printed. So that is an additional step.

thanks. it was taken at a funfair in penang, mode was slow shutter 1/4, no ai servo assist though. i'm really proud of my previous 300d that it became my lowyat ID.

more of my travel entries here, i'll update randomly. http://www.flickr.com/photos/8899183@N04/

This post has been edited by dgrebel: Jan 21 2008, 01:03 PM

Personally I was from the old batch, films for many years... Thus old people like us has some problem with photoshop magician...

Well, I also use photoshop, but mainly to convert raw to jpeg when there are serious color cast like very yellowish lamp post light source etc... and maybe slight exposure correction... 10 or 20 percent adjustment...

If you have higher capacity CF, I always recommend shooting raw. You never know if you need it.

digital darkroom?

mmm.. personally.. in the early stage, almost all picture i took mus be edited.. but now lazy enough to do so.. just play bit with curve and crop.. that all.. unless u need super power picture like super kewl HDR effect, or else..

I think I had never crop a single picture... except one event when shooting butterfly with my non-macro 100 f2 prime lense where the subject is so small...

Anyway, photoshop should depends on individual need. But I have a feeling that if anyone depends too much on it, it should degrade the way you take picture, because always think it can be solved later...

Personally, I do not need photoshop much and can live without it or with JPEG direct... I got myself winning some prizes by using straight-JPEG, without a single modification! And I think my pictures still pretty ok straight from it. I think the latest Nikon D300 + D3 that use CMOS should be able to get similar good result directly also...

This post has been edited by TheVoIP: Jan 21 2008, 03:33 PM

1) For me, post-processing is a need in photography. I know there are a lot of photogs in lowyat do not agree with me, but it really helps u a lot when you want you want to bring out all the elements of a picture. Most of commercial photography nowadays are all PPed. So i think learning PP is an additional knowledge in photography. Both PP and photographing skills are important to me. That's what i think.

2) I would recommend photos to be taken in RAW mode. Your pictures can be easily saved when u realize you want/have to do the followings. adjust colour, exposure, brightness, contrast and create a HDR image from it, etc... It takes up more memory capacity in your card, but saves your pictures. So you decide. =)

Question for me: As i was told by someone in the forum, and i always try my best to follow that rule. That rule, is... 1/the focal length of the lens. which means, if you are taking a photo with 50mm, it's advisable to use 1/50 shutter speed or faster shutter speed, not slower than 1/50. It also depends on how steady how you hold your camera. Hope my tip helps. =)

For me, in the world of photography, it doesnt really matter how you get the photo, whether u PPed or none PPed, with skills or with luck. The main goal to use the camera is to have satisfaction of what you get from the camera. And of cause, sometimes u need to compare your pictures with others, and have c & cs in order to set your goals higher. When someone "WoWs" at your picture, you feel great and satisfied, and i bet this is definitely a great feeling for everyone here in photography.

This post has been edited by derek87: Jan 21 2008, 03:41 PM

Also don't be too constraint by the rules of photography as well. Some rules are meant to be broken anyway

^true the debate between do pp or not its not going to end. So PP or not, its up to you, don't like it, don criticize it. Just go happy shooting

agree. photography is about happiness and self satisfaction. if u not happy..than its not a hobby

Yes.. rules are meant to be broken.. just like the rules of third.. some pictures can actually turn out quite nice without implementing that rule. =)

Just to add. Most photos are post-processed in a camera right after the shot anyway. So doing it on a PC is nothing that special.

I always PP my photos. They can make really bring my photos to life, especially photos taken with my camera phones.

most importantly, PP with a purpose.

for me, my PP is almost always resize + sharpen + watermark + border only.

minor contrast / brightness correction if needed.

any further PPing would be considered as attempting to make picture into some creative form of art - not wrong either. again, PP with a purpose. some times you need to PP to get a certain feel out of the pic.

yeap... that is what i mentioned in my earlier post, to bring out the elements of a photo. but for some people, they just hate pp who pp.. i guess what they want is originality.

Haha.. im always happy in both ways, pped pictures, or non pp.. if it's good, then i'll love it and be satisfy.

^lol then ask them to set the in camera settings to 0 that's pure non pp stuffs

haha... no one will ever realize and take that as pp Rad . When your camera settings' are all 0, the colour of the picture really do sucks...

that's why the debate about this matter will just go on and on and on forever until the film really went extinct. Which i highly doubt it will.

Even film itself has its own "pp'ed settings" inside, and the traditional darkroom has now evolved into photoshop. The concept is almost the same, the main thing that sets them apart is just two words: analogue/film and digital.

Haha.. that's so true.

Btw, Rad, i really admire your works too.. haha... any chance that we can have TT sometimes in the future?

can can my works so so only la ahaha... Just used alot of plug ins lol mostly im free d. Just pick a time.