without flash ↑
with flash ↓
Flash was actually first. I turned the dial in the dark and didn't know I turned it to "figure it out yourself with flash." One more click over is "figure it out yourself without flash," the setting I wanted. Because I hate on-camera flash. Either way I'd have to be very steady and adjust things in Photoshop. On-camera flash dis-goose-tin, i-tiz. I didn't even notice any atmospheric dots at all. I cranked ISO up to 3200 and that is a terrible way to go. Just terrible.
This lens does not have vibration reduction that the 18-200 has. I keep forgetting the zoom lens has that excellent feature and the others do not. This lens is zoom too, but only 14-24. This lens is a monster. It weighs as much as the camera.
High ISO makes photos appear very grainy. You will notice it quite clearly on the real size. Even though your camera can do it doesn't mean that you should. The best ISO is 100 or 200. I usually shoot at 400 because that is not so bad. But on-camera flash is the worst of the worst kind of light. It tends to eliminate shadowing and you need that to round out your subjects, to give them depth.
See what I mean? Make this bigger by scootching with your fingers, or by clicking to see more clearly the grainy McGrain.
11 comments:
We just noticed that it's snowing here, too. Big fluffy snowflakes.
I'm with you on flash. Hate it and don't use it unless there is no choice.
Washes the light out of the subject.
You could push Tri-X to 3200 with Accufine. It was grainy to start with, though, at 400 or whatever its rating was.
Plus-X at 200 was the low-grain compromise.
I've never understood photography. All those ISO and f-stop things never pierced my cranium; not in the least.
I try taking photos, but they never turn out and I never know why that is. I've bought several cameras. Some are very complicated, others are point-and-shoot. I read the detailed, teensy-weensy, instruction booklets dutifully, tinker with the settings and such, and then forget all of it. I pick up the camera at an opportune moment and *poof* every bit if instruction has disappeared from my brain.
What's odd is that I'm pretty good with things that need tinkering. I maintain my own motorcycles. Adjust valves? No problem. Electronics? Let's do it. Fuel system, no probbo.
And I fix stuff around the house. Repair roofing or plumbing? On it. Recently swapped out some old switches and breakers in the electric system, no problem, no shocks.
But make a camera operate in a manner that results in good photos? I just cannot grasp it. It's like there's a hole in my brain where knowledge about cameras is stored in other people's brains.
Wow, with flash is like a thousand times better!
Haz, that's why "automatic" is great.
It's how I learn. Put it on automatic, then see what it did.
The camera selects how wide an aperture and how fast a shutter based on the ISO your camera is already set.
That's 3 ways to allow light to affect the sensor.
Yesterday a woman asked for help adjusting a photo. She cannot email her picture.
Turns out the photo was downloaded directly to her computer and she cannot do anything with it. She mentioned from a Nikon camera.
That would be in NEF format. The best of all possible forms. And the reason she cannot do anything with it. It is the Nikons way of saying "RAW," the highest degree of detail that contains the greatest amount of data and allows the broadest range of adjustments for print, or what have you.
She could make a billboard from her photo.
But she does not need that amount of data to appreciate her photo. And internet cannot handle it efficiently. They eye cannot appreciate it.
So the photos are dumbed down. They are turned into .jpg, .gif, or .png, and then they become suitable for internet use or printing small pictures for framing.
Her picture is of herself and her black boyfriend, and that combination of ghostly white complexion and very dark skin is a problem for a camera's sensors. The camera must decide which way to go. Which ever way it goes, the opposite suffers and compromise is always terrible.
Fortunately, I can manage darkness and lightness in Photoshop. I can make adjustments until details in skin tone show up in both.
Especially if I have the NEF file. Then I can really use the adjustments available.
So that's what I'll do. Transfer the photo to stick memory and use do it that way before optimizing the photo to .jpg for printing.
Resident at the bottom left sure has a lot of garbage cans. Is that Ms. Stout? Sara Stout?
Haz...for a better understanding of f-stops and the like, ... e.g, how light effects a photograph, I'd recommend John Shaw's first book, if you can find it, (I can't find mine at the moment or I'd cite the title ... it is nature photography related) because it is written for those who do not know about light and film speeds and f-stops...and clearly illuminates it all for the ordinary stiffs, like you or me.
The mistress at TOP of course dislikes John Shaw, for his work (she should only wish to be 1/200th as good) and his opinions, as she clearly made plain once when we discussed it(via email). She prefers, for herself and the weasel, to be hack crap photographers whose knowledge of how to utilize a ultra wide angle lens rivals that of one of my dogs....and the dogs are better at it. In fact she can misuse almost any lens.
Listen to Chip Ahoy, who has the actual knowledge. When it comes to adjusting for "light" in a photo, I do use Photoshop, but always with the Kodak plug-in named "Digital Sho." Chip, on the other hand, has refined it to a science all his own...and he is correct. I seldom have his patience for NEF or RAW formats...I demand instant gratification!! :-)
In the samples flash is worse because it washes out balconies. and misses all the rich detail in the background building. The flash reflects immediate moisture hanging in the air and magnifies it ridiculously by X100, dry bits of dry snow disturbed probably by my presence at the railing. It is not snowing. That's what flash does, shows the worst ugly as possible and misses the best.
It seems a better picture, perhaps, because of all the dynamic dots suggesting a snowstorm, but it distorted reality unacceptably.
It is a gentle dark very quiet undisturbed night. The photo without flash is much better.
The person with garbage cans lives right across the hall from the trash disposal on each floor. Those are not trash bins. That is furniture covered for winter. See what flash did? Ew, I just hate that stinking flash.
I think, most people are not looking for art with their cameras. They want to record a memory. Something for their scrapbook. They do not care about composition. Nor lighting. A photo is already flat, already two dimensional, so what's the big dealio about contour and depth, and composition balance, white balance, and mood? All people want when they use flash is the face of a person and the memory of an event captured. They couldn't care less about all those other artistic things that photographers obsess.
Well...stuff just got interesting.
I opened a Christmas gift today...yesterday was busy and I was tired, so some things were put on hold.
It is a GoPro camera. Oy. It's one of those cameras you can strap to your head or chest or affix on a car or a surfboard or motorcycle. Plans are being made for this coming summer's rides, and Mrs. Haz wants some videos of the places where we are going to ride.
SO she gave me the GoPro camera. It's about one-half the size of a pack of camels. Really, really small. And it has more features than the first video cam I bought 25 years ago; the one with the video tape cassette, and all the studio mixing capabilities.
Ugh. I downloaded the instructions. They are 83 pages long. Good heavens, how am I going to figger this thing out?
Better get cracking.
Shouting Thomas, I just read you over at the Other Place (OP). As a Christian and as someone who lived in the Philippines for two years, I understand and agree with much of what you write. But why do you go over there? You know she will just disrespect or disregard you. I sympathize with you but I don't understand.
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