Home Forums Am I a Fauxtog? My favorite local fauxtog

Viewing 15 posts - 91 through 105 (of 109 total)
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  • #10755
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    JCFindley, new link works.  Gorgeous photo!

     

    Thom, photography is a way to show others your world, the way you see it.  It’s true, you have to see it, but then you have to be able to render it so others can see it.

    Ultimately you have to be so familiar with your tools that using them becomes second nature.  You can concentrate on the scene in front of you because you don’t have to think about the camera, the rest of the gear, or physics.  You just take the picture you see.  Both “seeing” and familiarity with your tools come with practice.  Lots of practice…

    In the spirit of learning the craft, and observing, here is some recommended reading:  http://www.amazon.ca/Light-Science-Introduction-Photographic-Lighting/dp/0240808193

    #10756
    Thom
    Participant

    Cameralicker: But the tech talk is all worthless if the person is focused on the specs and not on what is actually in front of them. Which is what is going on here. I had to sketch every frame I saw before I snapped a single frame (in college). So whatever I shot, should be worth taking the time to draw. It’s hard to believe there is an inherent learning curve to something that comes from convenience (digital camera) to something that comes from meditating on the “why”. Do you believe they learn from their mistakes this way?

    In essence, the lousy fauxtogs that continually make the same mistakes and copy other fauxtogs making similar awful choices. Consider the commonality between the shooters deemed “fauxtographers.” Then read above…where the shooter glazed over the “why” and jumped to the issue being their gear is the culprit.

    #10757
    nesgran
    Participant

    You’re right, I was a little heavy on the vignette. That accounts for the glow-y look.

    That makes sense, I can see it now that you’ve pointed it out

    #10758
    JCFindley
    Participant

    If I had a 1DX I would shoot weddings cuz that is all I need….

    Thom, the OP is getting plenty of advice on the “how to” stuff along with the gear but she did ask about glass, thus the direction the thread went from there.

    Back when I did live shows, my favorite comment was the “Wow, you must have a really nice camera.” I enjoyed that because I would point to a large framed print and tell them it was shot with a $200 point and shoot. Even now two of my top five selling images were done with that cheap camera.  Now, they are not my top earning images because you can only print an image from a cheap camera or soft glass so large before the image falls apart because of noise or is just not sharp enough to look good so equipment does matter.

    From my perspective though it is better to know how to use what you have and develop the skill with the camera one has until the equipment starts to limit what you do, then upgrade away.

    http://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-day-begins-jc-findley.html (The cheap shot)

     

    #10759
    Thom
    Participant

    JC, never said the “how-to” wasn’t there, it’s the “why” she should be concerned about. BUT, if that’s where the winds take her and the convo, I’ve said my piece, and will let it lie. Good luck to all.

    #10762
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    Thom, I don’t think it is an either/or situation.  You have to get all the pieces right.

    Fortunately no one ever asked me to sketch anything.  My father liked to draw and could draw well.  My son is  an animator.  I can’t sketch to save my life!  The drawings I do all involve AutoCAD or similar software.  I photograph because I can’t draw.

    For me, the “why” is because I can’t draw and photography lets me capture images that look “cool” to me.  For her and the rest of the fauxtogs, the “why” seems to be that others will throw cash at them.   Call me shallow.  I don’t think it’s a bad thing that people are willing to give her money.  It does pain me that the photos she takes/provides are what we might charitably call sub-standard.

    On these forums we are from all over the place.  She is probably a couple of thousand miles from me, and even farther from some of the others on here.  It is not practical to invite her over and provide a demonstration of how it works.  The best we can hope for is to show our own work and point to the work of others, while saying her’s needs to be better.  And, providing some suggestions on how to improve.  While one of those improvements is better composition and another is better lighting, yet another is better lenses.  If she wants to concentrate on lenses, that’s fine.  All steps in the right direction are good.  Even if she doesn’t upgrade anything, having an understanding of what different hardware can do is still additional knowledge.

    #10763
    picarusslim
    Participant

    Maybe the ‘spirit’ of photography lies in the eye and how you see what you’re shooting, but you can’t shoot what you see without learning how to shoot, which involves knowing your equipment and how to use it.

    Hippie 😉

    #10768
    fstopper89
    Participant

    Looking again at my image, there also happen to be two trees in the background on either side of him that have white trunks partway up (the high water mark). I think that has something to do with it… it’s going to bug me now!

    But I reiterate, a low-quality lens is going to give more difficulty and less consistency in getting a sharp, good image.

    #10769
    nesgran
    Participant

    A crop body does not change the focal length of a lens. It does not affect depth of field, regardless of what some defective DOF calculators may indicate. The reason little point & shoot cameras and cell phones have such deep depth of field is their lenses are very short. The apparent length of their lens is due to packing far more very small pixels onto their tiny sensors. They take “crop” to the extreme, making very short lenses seem long by cropping with a very, very small sensor. Look at the PowerShot ELPH 330 HS, for instance: 4.3 (W) – 43.0 (T) mm (35mm film equivalent: 24 (W) – 240 (T) mm). If they actually gave you a 240 mm lens, you could get very shallow DOF, but since they actually give you a maximum of 43 mm, you really have to work to get shallow DOF. Really, since they give somewhere between 36 and 50 mm, it should not be too hard to get shallow DOF if you could open it up enough, except the crop is such that you couldn’t get a person’s face in the frame when working at the distances you would use for 50 mm on an SLR.

    In a way you are right but the effect of the smaller sensor is that the angle of view is smaller, hence lenses act as if they are longer. The result of this is that at the same equivalent focal length (i.e. effective angle of view) a crop lens will have a longer depth of field. That is why people say that a FF camera has a shallower DOF than a crop camera. Check the DOF requirements section

    #10770
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    Nesgran,  I have quite a bit of gear, including full frame and a couple of crop bodies with different pixel densities.  If I take a prime lens and mount it on a tripod, then attach a body and aim at a target arranged to show DOF, I don’t find any discernible difference in DOF between a full frame body and a crop body, at the same aperture.   I also don’t find any discernible difference in DOF between crop bodies.

    If I take an 8 mpx crop body and put it behind a lens aimed at a target, then change bodies, attaching a 21.5 mpx full frame body, I can drop both images into Photoshop, at the same scale, and the 8 mpx image will fit almost perfectly on top of the 21.5 mpx image, with the border all the way around, showing the area cropped off by the smaller sensor.  If instead of attaching the full frame body, I attach an 18 mpx crop body, then both images “fit to screen” look the same but at 100% everything in the 18 mpx file is larger.  That a greater photo site density results in a bigger image when played back at the same resolution, as the image from a less dense sensor, is the basis of digital zoom.  I think the notion of a crop sensor causing magnification equivalent to the crop factor came about because Nikon was offering a 12.5 mpx full frame body and a 12.5 mpx crop body.  The effect happened due to the smaller, more tightly packed photo sites, not the sensor dimensions.   Since then, both Canon and Nikon have offered many sensors with different densities, and lately, Canon are the ones in sync with the 1.6 crop factor working as magnification factor since the 1Dx, 7D and a number of other offerings all have 18 mpx.  Nikon is offering a 36 mpx sensor in the D800, so if you use that as the full frame reference, the lens will seem shorter if the image is taken with a D3100 or D90 and both images are viewed at 100%.  Of course the same is true if you compare images taken with the D800 and D3 or D4, yet they are all full frame bodies.

    Getting back to DOF, if you fit a full frame body on a lens, and take a photo, then change bodies and use a crop body on the same lens, DOF will change if you back up in order to fit the same view as you had with the full frame body.  This is not the body causing a change in DOF, this is you moving the crop body and lens and getting a greater DOF because you increased the focus distance.

     

    Check the DOF requirements section

    Where would I find the DOF requirements section?

    #10771
    nesgran
    Participant

    Oops, forgot to include the link http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm

    Well, that is why we say the equivalent rather than anything else, with the different angle of view necessitating different focal length or subject distance the effect is that for the same aperture the dof is thinner on a ff cam. Didn’t you post some photos in another thread, I seem to recall the last one showing the effect quite well

     

     

    #10772
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    I put up the same information as above, previously in another thread, though I retyped it above so the wording will not be the same.    I did a whole piece on DOF, here:  http://cameraclicker.com/Compare/DOF/DepthOfField.html , most of it deals with changing aperture but the sensor size part is at the bottom.

    I had been using high end CoolPIX cameras and when I got a dSLR, I started paying attention to what people were saying about crop sensors.  One group is saying a 100 mm lens is a 100 mm lens, doesn’t matter what body it is on.  The other group is going on about how the crop factor makes the lens longer.  A local pro (well he is in Oakville so it’s a 40 minute drive on the highway) teaches, does trade show seminars and has a blog at http://www.speedlighter.ca/ .  A lot of his information is quite good but he does go on about crop factor giving him a better focal length.  He still does it, but after I put a note on his blog, at the next seminar he explained the reference and pixel density part so it would make sense to anyone new to digital.

    I think it is a difficult concept for a lot of people.  I didn’t figure out what was going on until I had a full frame body to experiment with.  After the previous time I put the information on a thread here, I shot some focusing targets.  I haven’t put the photos up because they show the same as the tape measure photos — that my bodies focus at slightly different points but the actual DOF is the same.

    After dinner, I will go through the link you provided and see what they say.  Certainly if you move the camera, or subject, you are going to get a different DOF because focus distance affects DOF.

    What I’m trying to do is cut through the noise and explain what is really causing the effects we see.  That a crop sensor actually crops,  that the density of photo sites on the sensor affect the size an item in your image appears when viewed on your monitor at 100%, and that if you keep everything else exactly the same and just change a full frame sensor for a crop sensor, DOF does not change because all you are doing is cropping.  You could take the photo with a full frame body, then print it and get out scissors to crop it… you would not expect DOF to magically change in the print, why would you expect the crop sensor to change DOF, if you were doing the same by changing bodies?

    If you think I should be wording something differently, or I could be clearer, or I have it wrong, I’m interested in a discussion.

    #10773
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    Lots of text at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm uses terminology that muddies the water.  Then they say this:

    Be warned that both of these terms can be somewhat misleading. The lens focal length does not change just because a lens is used on a different sized sensor — just its angle of view. A 50 mm lens is always a 50 mm lens, regardless of the sensor type. At the same time, “crop factor” may not be appropriate to describe very small sensors because the image is not necessarily cropped out (when using lenses designed for that sensor).

     

    #10774
    JCFindley
    Participant

    I think yall are basically both correct, but simply viewing the equation from two different angles.

    Example. Let say I have a 12MP full frame sensor camera and a 12 MP and am shooting with my 100mm macro. OK, if I am at the min focal length that lens will fill the sensor with a 1:1 macro but the FF sensor is bigger so that image will have more of the scene in it as opposed to the crop sensor. The DoF at the min focal length is going to be exactly the same. But, if I want the same image with the crop sensor I will have to move back beyond the min focal length and by moving back I will increase my DoF basically giving the effect of an increased DoF.

    It is really the same thing as thinking you get more reach with a crop sensor. Technically, you don’t, it is simply a cropped image but the end effect is like adding a factor of 1.6 or 1.5 depending if you are a C or an N (or 1.3 for some 1Cs)

     

    #10775
    mhinc
    Participant

    You claim you don’t do this as a business or call yourself a professional, yet you have a given yourself a business name, You have a Facebook “Fan” page where you show off your “photography”, and you are clearly advertising your phone number to do “Sessions”.

    I am not sure what having a disabled husband has to do with taking awful photos and charging people for them.  If you are looking for sympathy, you won’t get it from me.  If anything, you should be the one feeling bad for under cutting the real professionals in your area, and taking advantage of locals that don’t know any better and think just because you are cheap, that you are their best choice.

    You want to take pictures for fun, then do so.  But don’t come on here and spew out that CRAP you spewed and expect everyone to believe you aren’t trying to run a business.

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