Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Still Around

If I have any regular readers you may have been wondering what has happened to me. I'm still here but busy, busy, busy. I've been shooting and processing images for someone else as well as myself. One thing that has been reinforced for me is that getting an image ready to be printed is much more time consuming than getting it ready for the internet. Maybe it shouldn't be that way....maybe I'm just being lazy with my internet images. Nevertheless, I have been working at the computer but still haven't processed any of the images I shot of some posadas. I've barely looked at them. Maybe later today.

Some things I have discovered in the last few days as I have worked with images:

While 1600 ISO shots can look okay on the screen, they will not make prints I'm happy with at larger than 4x6 if they have large dark shadow areas.

I can't handhold a camera and get a reasonably sharp image at slower shutter speeds than 1/25 of a second.

I need to work on the technique of combining two shots for highlight and shadow detail.

I need an assistant to help set up shots and check details when I shoot the interiors of houses.

I prefer not to use 17mm apertures on the interior shots in houses unless it is absolutely necessary.

I love the "transform>distort" feature of Photoshop....better than the perspective control feature.

I'm getting better at using a flash on the camera set at aperture control. But I'm still wondering if I should consider using multiple flashes.

I like shooting at night and I NEED the Canon 24-105 L Image Stablization lens.

More later along with some images from the night.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was wondering where you went to ;-0

Calypso Juan

Anonymous said...

On the noise: invest in Noise Ninja, Neat Image, or one of the other major noise-reduction tools. Learn to use it and you'll get ISO 1600 images that you will be happy with, even at large sizes. Your 5D has the best high-ISO performance of any camera out there.

A question: what does "17mm apertures on the interior shots" mean? Do you mean wide apertures at 17mm? Or you're just saying that you don't like the appearance of interiors shot at a focal length of 17mm?

And on Photoshop: do you have Photoshop CS2? If so, learn to use and love the Lens Distortion filter. It blows the transform features away. And, regardless of which version you have, get PTLens (epaperpress.com/ptlens) to perform the first-order lens correction for you -- lots of times that will be all you need.

Billie Mercer said...

Tommy, I have noise ninja and I agree it works really well. But in a large print I feel like large shadow areas do not have the detail that I get at lower ISO's. I'm pretty anal about prints and I'd rather show at a lower ISO if possible for prints.

What I don't like about the 17-40 f4 L lens on the 5D at 17 is that things in the edges get distorted. Most of the time it is okay, I can keep the mail subject out the the edges and corners but in an interior shoot that isn't always the case when I need to shoot at 17mm. And I guess I wasn't clear about the aperture thing....I'm shooting at 16 to 20 aperture.

I do use CS2 and I'll check out the lens distortion filter.

Thanks for the advise.
Billie

Anonymous said...

What you need for the distortion problem is a Lincoln Head adaptor with a wide mogrification setting. If you put that at 5.345Hz and then bend the spectrometer coordinator over a bit to the infrared you can alleviate many of your problems. Now don't let speed/time function of the Lincoln Head adaptor confuse you when calibrating the
X-Y continuity factor or you will not like the color wash.
If you do this, I think you will be fine. See you, Mom.

Doug

Billie Mercer said...

Doug,
Thanks for a good laugh this morning. Just what I needed.
Mom