Home Forums Gear Photography A Tide of new Photo Posters

seems to have shown up here at the campfire. Very nice to see all the beautiful pics. My question for all..How many of you tweak your photos in an editing program before posting? Besides croping and resizing so they do not take up a ton of space.

With the new breed of cameras one hardly has to do much in relation to editing, except when taking RAW photos. However, in order to post the pictures here, one has to size the photo to perhaps under 1 MB of space, something like 600 x 600 pixels or a tad larger. Larger photos are automatically sized by PhotoBucket, but one can do that ahead of time.

Now, there are simple things one can do with photo-editing software. For example, to lighten/darken the shadows, make the subject softer/sharper, etc. However, one can make a photo look unreal if one goes too far.

Some of mine are tweeked but usually not more than adjusting the brightness or sharpness a little. That 'blazing sunset' one I posted is 'as is'. Somewhere on a CD I have a purple sunset that you won't believe is real. I'll dig it out and post it. I get some great sunset shots from my back step. I'm in a desert area and when we have a storm brewing, they get wild sometimes.

Dick

So Ray what your saying then is you don't have to think about your photo much because you know your cam is going to do a wonderful job for you? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I know about the size for posting pics here. I've posted one or two times.

That's true. My new digital camera can set everything for me. But they all need good lenses, and these are extremely expensive. I can only afford the kit lens on my Rebel XT (for the time being), and the next one I will buy is a Tamrom 70-300mm for around $180.00. A Canon "L" lens of the same power costs quite a lot. Some of the Canon lenses cost from $600.00 to $6,000.

Yup sure isn't a cheap hobby by any means but some times it's just as fun to see what you can produce without all the extra bells and whistles.

Cheap? I just bought an Olympus E500. So much for the kids' inheritance. If I set it on auto and use jpg or tif formatting, I don't have much else to do except crop. Olympus uses a 4:3 photo size ratio while some others use 3:2. That means that I have to crop for a standard 4x6. PS makes that very easy, though. I can do several dozen in a few minutes.

This one comes with a 14-45 lense (28-90 equiv in 35mm). For an extra $100, they toss in a 40-150 (80-300 equiv). With that one and a high resolution setting, I can do a lot. While they're not professional quality lenses, they're really pretty good. They're coming out with a 40-180 this spring that's supposed to be really good but it will cost close to $500, a bit over my fun and games budget.

Dick

Nope didn't say it was cheap....I know for a fact how expensive it can be. Just was wondering how many went out with just the basics to see what you can capture. Not help from auto settings. Does your eye see the beauty? Can you reproduce that same image with out fancy settings, lenses and filters?

Don't take me wrong( i love all the photos I've seen pop up recently) I'm just wondering out loud as I recoup from my accident. Haven't had the ability to go out myself and picture take.

When I look through my Leupold Vary-X III rifle scope set at its lowest power at dusk, the image is clearer than looking out my eyes. The sensor of my 8MP camera can capture quite a lot more detail than my eyes can. One always "sees the beauty," I guess, but it's much easier with a digital than a film camera to immediately see if one has captured the beauty one sees. If i don't like the picture I just delete it right after.

But one can experiment with the digital camera and change things manually, except that doing so requires lots of fidgeting with it.

I've been trying to get a really good picture of the moon. I haven't had a good clear night since I bought my SLR, though. I've tried many times with my older Olympus c-750 but it never works out right. I've found that none of the auto settings will work well. It always meters on the moon and I get a bright blob. Manual shutter speed and aperture settings are necessary. I'm looking forward to giving it a try with my new one...if we ever get a clear night. I set the f-stop about anywhere, then take a doz or so shots, each on a progressively faster shutter speed. Somewhere in there, hopefully I get one with the right brightness.

Dick

Do you have a time delay setting? Set it for x amount of seconds and see what you come up with. Just punt don't think and you might be surprised what you come up with.

BTW..Do you boys ever crack a joke? Think outside the box? or is it all technical 24/7? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

i have spent about 850.00 in the last year on digital ,but when i think about buying film and developing cost with my old 35mm. i've takin over 3600 shots with the fz20 in one year ,thats 150-24exp rolls of film.

Well...last fall my brother had knee replacement surgery. I made him a card. I found Mo, of the 3 stooges, dressed as a doctor. Then I added a photoshopped photo of my brother...with one leg turned backward.

My camera will handle setting up to 60 sec. That's why I just set the f-stop and took a bunch at different shutter settings. I'm anxious to see what my new SLR will do. It's 8mp vs 4 for the old one.

Dick

elf: In this photo, the only things I did with Elements to change it was to bring the size down to around 500KB, and also to lighten the shadows 30% to show the tree at the left a little more, as well as to lighten the houses at the right. All the colors are natural, exactly the way they looked the day I took the picture. Since the sensor can "see" through the darkness a little better than my eyes can, even though the detail in the shadows or dark areas don't show in the original photo, they do when I increase the light in those areas.

very pretty

Mount Baker...... 1/5/06

Wow! Beautiful photo!
It's so cool you can see Mt. Baker from SE Alaska!!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
M

Alaskan454: I ran your picture through Photoshop to lighten the shadows in front of the mountain by 100%. I had to upload your picture to Photobucket so it can show here, but plan to delete the link tomorrow afternoon. It means that it will show here only until tomorrow afternoon.

Ray

Thanks Ray but its kinda nice to not see all the friggen houses...