[Sharra]

Browneyedgirl: The lenses are an investment over several years as finances have dictated, but I’m happy with what I have. Bodies come and go, but quality glass can last a lifetime, as I’m sure you already know. I don’t proclaim to be a pro and I don’t have a business since software development is my main source of income, but I’d like to think I can take more consistent photos as opposed to some that would end up here. I guess I’d call myself a highly skilled amateur. 🙂 Having those lenses lets me experiment with everything from portraits to sports to landscape/nature to macro, etc. I haven’t really decided what genre interests me most, but I’m leaning towards landscapes and nature being fairly close to the mountains where I am.

Obviously, I’m a Nikon gal, so I can’t really comment on the Canon 6D. But I’d suspect that’s Canon’s answer to put full-frame into the hands of the budget-conscious enthusiast, much like Nikon is marketing the D600, since they are similarly priced, but I could be wrong about that though…

[Sharra]

OK, since I started this, I thought it only fair that I contribute…

Nikon D300

Nikon D800 (sold D700 for this)

18-200 3.5-5.6 DX VR II

16 2.8 D fisheye

14-24 2.8

24-70 2.8

70-200 2.8 VR II

50 1.4G

80-400 4.5-5.6 D

135 2.0 DC

300 4 D

17-35 2.8 D

105 2.8 VR micro

200 4 micro

2 x SB-910 flash

R1C1

Elinchrom DLite 2 strobes

Gitzo GT2542 tripod

Lowepro Flipside 400 AW bag

Thinking about the 85 1.4G

[Sharra]

Archy, I never saw that one til just now. Wow to that one, too! 🙂

[Sharra]

Just my two cents…I also think browneyedgirl is too pompous for her own good. Just because someone doesn’t show any portraits does not make them mediocre. Travel and nature photographers may never shoot a portrait in their entire career—not because they’re no good at it, but they may not have any interest in shooting portraits! I also think some lessons in humility are in order and not always insinuating, “My photos are better than yours because…”

Lexi: Speaking of Zack Arias, have you or any other posters here seen Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera? I had to say “Wow!” when I saw that. 🙂

[Sharra]

@EvilDaystar: Yes, that’s true only if you use Photoshop and nothing else. Even adding Lightroom would still be less cost as many photographers use both. But if you want to use Flash, Dreamweaver, or Fireworks for your web site, InDesign instead of Word, Publisher, etc. for marketing materials, those costs can easily add up on an individual basis. Even getting Creative Suite CS6 Design and Web Premium, which includes Photoshop CS6 Extended is $1900. If you use your kid’s student ID, you can get Master Collection for around $900 like I did a couple years ago. Then there are upgrade costs to consider. If you can’t or are to busy to design the website yourself, you hire a web designer, which will easily cost over $1000 if you want to reflect your professionalism for your online presence, thus $725 + $1000 at a minimum is near $1800.

Granted, Creative Cloud plus outsourcing web design would push the costs much higher. But the initial cost of the website would not be reflected in “upgrades” to it. Plus if CS7 comes out tomorrow, you have instant access to it, with no upgrade costs. As I mentioned, new subscribers may even get the first year for $30/month = $360/year.

I’m not saying Creative Cloud is for everyone, but I use enough Adobe software to justify the cost for me.

[Sharra]

@Stef: You may be aware of this, but Adobe’s Creative Cloud is $50/month for as long as you want it and you’ll always get access to the latest versions of Photoshop without upgrade costs. If you’re using any amount of Adobe software, it may be a worthwhile investment. You may even get a $30/month for a year promotional offer like I did.

[Sharra]

Just copy and paste the Spanish text into Google Translate. Not a perfect translation, but you’ll get the gist of it.

[Sharra]

CC, $1750 AU is about $1815 US. Questionable photos aside, I think the pricing is too high for the quality.

[Sharra]

@browneyedgirl89 Other than your lenses focusing on what it thinks is in focus and throwing the rest of the image out of focus, your lenses might be guilty of front or rear focusing. A tool like Datacolor’s Spyder LensCal might be worth checking into to see if your lenses aren’t calibrated. Even some of my lenses weren’t calibrated for perfect autofocus, and even though it was minor, simple adjustments can be made by entering the required values into the camera, if it supports that. Nikon calls it AF Fine Tune, Canon calls it AF Microadjustment. There are other tools that do the same thing as LensCal (about $70 or so), but it might be worth considering if you want peace of mind about your lenses or to test any new ones you get.

While my D800 and a multitude of fast full-frame lenses serve as the gear I use for “professional” stuff, it’s the D300 with 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G DX VR II lens that I use for my walk-around camera. It has served me quite well for being 5 years old and no longer in production. 🙂

[Sharra]

@Soaring: I had always thought the lower the ISO, the less noisy the image, so I found your reference to multiple of 160 interesting. I’ll have to try them when I shoot again.

@browneyedgirl89: Megapixels are way too overrated. It’s a marketing gimmick to get unsuspecting consumers to buy into the idea that more MP is better. I’ve successfully resized a 6 MP image at 240 PPI to a 16″ x 20″ with amazing results (no pixelation even when viewed from just a couple inches away). Theoretically then, you could take 10 MP to 20″ x 24″ or even 20″ x 30″ and 18 MP to 48″ x 60″ or even larger. Since one rarely views such images closer than a few feet away, some pixelation is not going to be noticed except by the most discerning of photographers or artists. I’ve used OnOneSoftware’s Perfect Resize to scale images quite large (300% – 400% in each direction) and the results have been amazing. There is other software that does the same thing but PR has been great for me at an affordable price.

I shoot a lot of sporting activities, so the first thing for me is shutter speed, then aperture (usually 2.8) and then ISO (topping out at 1600 but only when ABSOLUTELY necessary). This is usually done in low light indoor arenas from the stands. I find that the 36 MP Nikon D800 with the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II (VR being Nikon speak for Canon’s IS) 1/500, f/2.8 and ISO 800 to be fantastic for this given the D800’s noise handling at higher ISOs. The D800 tops out at 5 fps with a grip, but I get the shot more often than not.

@rrjo: I know exactly what you mean about anyone with a camera received at Christmas setting up shop on New Year’s. It happens here too. Continue to practice, shoot for free, develop your own style and in time you’ll have people outside of family and friends who recognize the value of your work and be willing to pay for it. Many aspiring photographers these days aren’t willing to put the time investment into building a business when all they see is dollar signs.

@everyone: Google “photography what I really do”. Note that in the “six perception” images that come up, the last step is post production, even if it means just a little bit after striving to get it right in camera in the first place.

[Sharra]

@browneyedgirl89 I took at look at some of your images and I think they aren’t bad for the most part. I’m not a pro, so I’m not going to give you a very detailed review—there are others better equipped to do that. I know about RAW, ISO, shutter speed, aperture, lens designations, etc. However, I do think you tend to use tilted horizons and walls a little too much for my taste. It’s the first thing I notice in shots that do have it before I can concentrate on the real subject matter. I also wondered if some of the shots were composites because of the titled horizon and other elements of the photo that should have been tilted on that same plane, but were not tilted. But that’s just my opinion and if you’re using that technique to make you different that the rest of them out there, faux or not, that’s fine, too. Good luck to you on further refining your photographic techniques.

[Sharra]

IHF, I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. I’d start with your family computer by putting your photos from there on to an external without any thought to organization. It can then be attached to the new computer when you start going through them, knowing that they are still on the family computer if either one crashes. I’d also consider having a copy on the new computer as well since many photographers I’ve talked to or read about advocate having at least 2 backups of everything, even to a couple USB drives when your memory cards fill up while in the field. Then as your organizing continues, you can copy your efforts to 2 other sources. Using a backup service is a good idea although it can literally take days to upload everything the first time if you have thousands of files, but most can be stopped even in the middle of copying a file because they can remain in sync as the service determines there are new files to backup.

I also organize by year, having only 12 folders of personal photos taken from 2001 to 2012. In addition to the backups I mentioned before, having a hard copy thumbnail catalogue in addition to one created in Lightroom with keywords adds a bit of sanity to my organization efforts and makes images much easier to find.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

 

[Sharra]

I, too, have thousands of digital photos which I have backed up on two internal hard drives, two external hard drives and a dedicated NAS (network attached storage) with redundancy in case one of those mirrors goes down. Thus, I have a minimum of 6 on-site backups. I also have three off-site backups—two external hard drive at a two different family member’s houses and one with one of the many cloud services that are available these days. These three backups serve as peace of mind in case my house goes up in flames, God forbid. I used to do backups to DVDs, but at 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB each, these can add up in a hurry and aren’t really cost effective in terms on time required to create them (possibly with printed labels) when they are compared to 3 TB hard drives (equivalent of about 640 single layer DVDs) that are about $120 or less each. I don’t worry too much about prints because anything can be reprinted, but I do keep a catalogue of thumbnails organized by year and/or event to help facilitate locating images.

Maybe I’m being a little anal in my backup strategy, but I feel that having having too many backups is better than having too few because these files represent precious memories that can never be replaced. It’s quite easy to drag and drop folders from one location to another for on-site backups and you can do several at once if you can handle the computer being that much slower or you can go do something else while it does its thing. The off-site backups I make a point of doing quite regularly so the amount of files from one time to the next are not excessive and don’t take all day to copy over the Internet.

In short, you should back up all those digital photos that are important to you, which from your description sounds like just about everything. 🙂 I would start with at least two on-site backups, at least one of which should be an external hard drive that you can quickly grab if you can when you are faced with a disaster of any kind. Then I would consider an off-site backup, either through family or friends and even a service like Livedrive, Carbonite, Google Drive, or Microsoft Skydrive. Each have their own initial storage capacity and price structure for additional space.

Once you clean up your current computer, you can also use it as a backup source if it’s on your home network. That’s my 7th on-site backup which I forgot to mention above. 🙂 Having that extra computer with your photos means that other family members can access those photos and videos without being at your new computer or hogging its resources.

Your new computer should be fast enough to handle the largest of your photos or videos. Having a fast processor means nothing without sufficient system and video RAM to back it up. What you choose to spend in that regard depends on your preference for Macs or PCs, too. 🙂

Anyway, any or all of what I’ve said, you may already know. Good luck in your backup strategy and may you add many more digital files of memories for years to come.

 

[Sharra]

MBC, I have to agree. Books are almost always better than the “movie” (workshops, blogs, online tutorials, etc). I have some books from the people I mentioned and some parts are OK, while others not so much. If there are any book resources that you recommend, let us know.

[Sharra]

MBC and anyone else who would like to comment, what are your thoughts on resources like Scott Kelby, Joe McNally, Brian Peterson, and others for learning photographic techniques, etc?

[Author]

Posts