Richard Bernabe
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What a wonderful set of images! It almost makes me want to come out there and visit (which is the intent, right?)
Patrick,
A few things to consider….
1) Get lower for more of an eye-to-eye angle.
2) Fill flash
3) A little more breathing room on the ride side.
4) Angler needs to remove sunglasses
5) Where’s the rod and reel?Then, maybe a cover shot.
Nice fish!
Why not make the right decision the first time?
I am sure the Sony and Pentax DSLRs are fine products, but why limit yourself to their options going in? So you buy a Pentax DSLR and next year you decide you want to do some wildlife or sports photography. Pentax, as far as I know, offers no AF telephoto lenses over 250mm. Canon and Nikon each have at least a dozen lens options that reach out over 300mm. Why limit your abilities (and vision) going into this thing?
If the entry level Pentax DSLR and the Canon 40D are comparable, the choice would seem like a no-brainer to me.
Something that I am ashamed of telling is, it will take me 8-10 months for me to decide on this.
In 8 to 10 months, the camera you are researching will be obsolete. I am joking. Sort of.
Not to offend anyone in here who uses something different, but I would look hard at the entry-level camera models from Nikon or Canon.
When you make a DSLR camera choice, you are buying more than just the camera and a lens or two. You are buying into a system. If you are wanting to grow within that system, I would recommend choosing between the two companies that offer the most options for customizing your equipment to your specific needs. Canon and Nikon simply offer more in terms of lens, flash, accessories, and camera body upgrade options for later. Now, as far as choosing between the two….well… 😉
One of the biggest changes I see is that the printer menu “remembers” your last print settings. This way paper type, preview, and size do not have to be reset each time you select a new image to print.
The upgrade also fixed the centering problems with both my Epson 2200 and the 7600. Both issues needed to be addressed for quite a while.
Will,
I agree with almost everything you said, except you missed my point.
I don’t like HDR because for me photography represents an artistic extension of my personal experiences in the wilderness. Nothing more, nothing less. But once again. Thats just me. If I can make an emotional connection to my subject and communicate that through the language of photography to a viewer so that he or she feels the same sensation as I when I was standing behind the camera, I feel as though I have succeeded.
I embrace technology as much, if not more than, the next photographer. But I use it to overcome the limitations of film and digital capture so that I can better express my experiences in the wild and help bridge the void between the human visual system and the digital encoding of photons onto a sensor.
But for me, it stops there. Once technology pushes the image beyond the limits of believability, it becomes photo art – and there is nothing wrong with that, per se. It’s just not my cup of tea. Computer-generated art and HDR with its 16-stops of dynamic range can create pretty, but emotionally sterile images. Thats not my objective. Others may disagree.
Years and years of observing and being conditioned to see things a certain way tells us that there should be shadows under a shade tree on a sunny day. When we don’t see them, the image fails to trigger certain visual cues and we interpret the image as mere fantasy. A digitally-placed unicorn under that tree is as believable as a tree without shadows on a blue-sky day. Art, yes. Photography? Not in my book, but your mileage may vary.
Cheers
I hate HDR images, but I must admit, yours is one of the better ones I have seen.
Still, to my eye and sensibility, it just doesn’t look right. I guess it all boils down to what you want and expect from your photography. My guiding principle has always been to re-create my actual visual experience to the best of my ability. If this means using ND grads or digital blends in PS to open up shadows or recover highlights until the image retains about 11 stops of usable detail, so be it.
But HDR usually creates more, and it’s bothersome. You went from little or no details in the dark shadows to no shadows at all. The shadows should be there, because I am fairly sure you saw them, right? I think most viewers would expect to see them as well. How about a digital blend with a layer mask in PS to open up the shadows and reveal some more detail? You have so much more control over the final image this way by opening up as much as you see fit. Fully automated software programs give you little or no control and the result is usually very artificial-looking.
Mike,
It seems to me that if you preferred the longer local length on your macro, you are benefiting from the digital crop.
With regard to the 2x teleconverter, what is the max aperture on your 70-210? You lose two stops of light with the 2x and you might lose autofocus if its not a fast lens to begin with. If the max aperture of your 210 is 5.6, you will end up with a 420mm f11. Not very usable.
Mike, you’re right – thats a great book.
Another one is Photoshop Artistry by Barry Haynes. If you had to limit yourself to one Photoshop/Digital Imaging book, this would be it.
Had a good time, Neal. I will be shipping your tripod to you on Wednesday.
The image looks good, but the colors appear a bit warm for the time of day we were there. Reprocess your Raw file with a cooler WB and see if you like it better.
Richard and Seafood, i’m not here to start any arguments and everybody is entitled to their opinions, but i do find it mildly hypocritical and a bit disappointing that guys who support the sport of fishing, where fish die for sport – and i don’t care what people say, even the best catch and release guys still kill a percentage of the fish they release – but don’t support ethical and legal hunting?
But you did post these images and asked for our opinion. I gave an honest answer. The photography is well-done, but the subject matter turned me off. By all means, don’t take it personally.
Aside from the sickening feeling in my stomach seeing these beautiful animals killed, the photography is well done.
I am Richard Bernabe, 42/m from South Carolina. I am an outdoor photographer and dabble in writing as well, married with a 6-year old daughter.
I used to travel a lot, but I’ve learned to find and enjoy the unexplored places close to home now. My latest project is a 250-mile solo canoe trek from the NC foothills across SC to the ocean (while filming the trip for SCETV) and most everything I encounter will be new to me.
http://www.riverventurejournal.blogspot.com
Travel is a bug that can bite hard, but don’t forget about those places close to home.
Phillip,
I like your artistic Photoshop interpretations, but you REALLY need to clean your camera’s image sensor. Email or PM me if you have any questions on how to do this.
I own the Canon 24mm and 45mm TSE lenses and they, with the 90mm as well, both have all the movements of a view camera. From what I understand, the so does the Nikon 85mm PC lens. The older 28mm and 35mm PC lenses only have shift (and rise/fall) but not tilt/swing.
In addition to all of the advantages of perspective control and tilt/swing that come with lens movements, one unexpected benefit was the ease of making stitched panos with these lenses. With the shift or rise/fall movements, you can take three different frames without even moving the camera. Shift the lens to the far left – take an exposure, shift to the center – click, shift to the right – click. Stitch the three efforts together and you have a seamless pano because the camera never moved – only the lens.
Some of those images are definitely LF, but not all. The image of the woman wading into the pool is a perfect example – the trees in the background are all at about the same distance, but the ones in the center of the frame are in focus, yet to the left and right are not. No doubt that swing was applied.
Also look at these two site for some examples:
http://www.marchesiphoto.com
http://www.andyandersonphoto.comI worked with Andy Anderson on a few projects and he uses 4×5, 8×10 and some medium format as well – or he did, maybe he is digital now, I don’t know.
That image is too small for me to tell what is going on there. Everything you mentioned can be done in PS but the effect is not the same. A vignette, for example, created in PS is different than a mechanical vignette. A mechanical vignette is created when the image circle is smaller than the rectangular size of the image format. LF photographers are obsessed with image circles and usually the larger the better to avoid vignetting. By tilting or shifting too much, vignetting can also occur, unless the lens has a very large image circle. The effect is easy to pick out, usually.
Tilt is a huge advantage with non-fixed lenses. With an SLR, the lens plane and sensor plane are always the same and the effect you desire is created in PS with selectively placed gaussian blur, i am guessing. With a LF camera, you can keep the film plane at a 90-degree angle to the ground but tilt the lens plane backwards (for an example). That creates a very shallow DOF that runs horizontally through the frame while the upper and lower areas of the image are wildly OOF. Landscape photographers use this to their advantage by tilting the lens forward while leaving the film plane unchanged, thus changing the focal plane and getting more of the image in focus, near to far, without resorting to DOF and stopping down to a smaller aperture.
The image you have shown looks like it was focused on the angler, then “swing” was applied (same as tilt except swing is horizontal and tilt is vertical) throwing both the left and right sides OOF while keeping the angler in focus, as well as everything at the same distance in a narrow vertical focal plane.
Its too small for me to discern, but the effect is difficult to duplicate well in PS.
