Reply To: Fauxtogs are overwhelming!

[fstopper89]

Thank you Sharra. While I don’t often order very large prints for people I will check into those programs. I like having more image to work with also when editing. For those images that I get that aren’t tack-sharp (yes, it’s something I’m working on to figure out why I sometimes get perfect sharp images and sometimes do not), when I blow it up to do some editing on the skin and eyes it’s fuzzy. “They” say you don’t need more than 10 mp to create excellent images. But I’ll have to do some testing with prints to really be sure for myself. And I believe both of my cameras make 240 dpi images by default.

I also love my new Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 OS (optical stabilization) for portraits. I love the compression of DOF, but my issue occasionally like I said is the camera shake is more pronounced the more I’m zoomed in. I bought this to replace my JUNK kit lens, the EF-S 55-250 f/4-5.6. While it’s a nice little lens with a good focal range for nature shots, and is lightweight, I will never use it for portraits again after wanting to throw out every portrait I shot with it. Nature/flower/etc. shots seem to be ok, with slight lack of clarity much less evident than in a portrait. I thought about selling it for $150 but I think that I’ll keep it, and once I get the 5DII I’ll just keep it to take on my Rebel for when I go hiking around and don’t want to chance damaging a more expensive camera/lens out in nature, and plus, the person I bought it from included a UV filter which is great for shooting water, you don’t get sun glare. My Rebel will be my toy camera.

This winter, with a lack of clients wanting portraits done, I’m planning a fun shoot with a girl who does makeup art on the side, to work on exposing for snow/cool winter tones, and focusing better on faces, even while shivering. Might be a challenge but I need to do it.

If anyone is wondering about my progression of skill, I received my first DSLR I think at the end of 2009. It was a Panasonic, piece of junk, super color-noisy, and you couldn’t even change the lens. I didn’t even know what the difference of any focal length meant, could not remember if a higher f-stop or lower f-stop gave you more light, and I didn’t even know what the heck ISO meant or how it related to the picture. I feel that I’ve come A LONG way since then.