@AJHenderson that is rain, getting wind blown so it is sideways a bit

@AJHenderson and that was a rock in the water

not saying your criticism isn't true, just explaining the scene if you didn't know

@AJHenderson I was personally kind of sad that the foreground sand isn't in better focus. I thought I had it in camera, focusing out to my hyperfocal distance and with a high aperture but it didn't work out in the end. I still like the shot though

thanks for checking out the picture

removing the rock might be a good idea

@dpollitt You'd had to have stacked (or done some major Scheimpflug action) go get that tight and keep the horizon clean. Don't sweat it.

I also thought about removing the streak of light in the top left

@StanRogers ah, well thank you for the comment. that makes sense. I was real low, had my tripod in macro(upsidedown) mode

the original was actually wider and I cropped to show less of the out of focus foreground

@dpollitt Yeah, the rock can afford to go. Doesn't have to, but can afford to. My beef's with the "heaviness" at the left.

what heaviness?

here is the original -

much more foreground and much more out of focus

It just feels like an unbalanced edge burn -- and I ain't sayin' you did that. It's there in the original. But opening the tones up a little about to about a third of the way in to make it look like a deliberate edge burn might balance it better. To my eyes.

For what they're worth.

(Cain't hardly see no more nohow, Ma....)

the 10 stop ND filter added a lot of edge burn

this is the one im working on in photoshop right now. cant decide if im overdoing the crap out of it too much or if I like it though

I think the terrain actually angles off a bit away from the light at the left. I'm pretty sure it's natural shadow I'm actually seeing.

Is that the same one from a couple of weeks back?

ya I've been messing around with the set for 3 weeks now

trying to decide which one I like better, and what to do with it

haven't posted anything on my portfolio from it yet

the colors were unbelievable. I took a video and it looks basically just like the image.

I remember having a play with it when you posted it before. Took a lot of masked NR applied as luminance to lift the foreground and make it look all in-range. I like the darker treatment. Has some mystery.

@StanRogers it is two images, just selectively chosen as layers in photoshop

one exposed for the foreground and one exposed for the sunrise

before it was just one image, and the noise introduced by trying to bring up the foreground was too much, I didn't like it

here is the image with the original horizon intact

Well, I'm votin' for what you have now.

so, same foreground in that image, but the original sunrise and not the added layer from another shot

the one I added in was with a 10 stop ND again, and I just love the color cast it adds

overdid it a bit with the 10 stop ND on this trip :) but it was a new toy...

I'm betting that was spectacular in person, but if the first is a composite, it was worth the work.

I think the point with a new toy is to use it until you find out where it's the wrong thing.

You should see my soft-focus collection from the '80s.

yes it was amazing in person, but really really cold. about 35degrees F and very windy to boot. I'm from Minnesota, and we get much colder, but it was COLD!

yeah that is a good plan, use the toy until you "break it". haha

There's "I can go inside if I want to" cold, and there's "damn, it's cold -- when't the sun coming up?" cold.

yeah, and I was ill prepared with Hawaii clothes. shorts, tshirts, etc

Lovely at the luau, no doubt, but not much good for mointaineering.

My internal speelingh thing seems to be broken...

speedlight thing?

Um, S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G. Couldn't write anything that would compile today if I tried. So I didn't.

ha

i'm a big fan now of SQL prompt for sql server management studio

no need to type that pesky code anymore, it just does it for you!

They told me that by this time I'd just be wiring modules together. They lied.

ha

At keast I'm not writing APL anymore...

s/keast/least

One bad character would be a whole different program.

@dpollitt cool, I figured out that it was a rock, but the rain I did not realize

@dpollitt from the size on 500px it's hard to tell how in focus anything other than the immediate foreground is

@StanRogers I think you can just stop at 80s ;)

even if I'm a child of them

@AJHenderson But the '80s in soft focus!!!

@StanRogers weren't they soft focus by default from the drug induced haze left from the 70s?

That only explains the fuzzy concepts. We were all about the fuzzy execution as well.

I blame it on Bob Guccione.

random double check. Most TTL implementations don't actually independently meter each group right, they just adjust them as ratio's of the total output power?

that's what I recall, but I've been a little off my game today, dentists visit + lack of sleep + still upset about the whole Adobe CC thing have me a little whacked out

Well, the number of preflashes don't change, and I'd think they'd have to for independent metering. The new Canon radio system seems to work with the groups independently, though. Seems. Nothing definitive yet.

well if the # of preflashes don't change, I'm not sure how the groups would meter independantly

since each group would have to pre-flash by itself

I really want to pick up another 600EX-RT to play with the radio

I was able to find someone else confirming that atleast for E-TTL it was metering total output and dividing by the ratio

Haven't had a chance to play with the radio system and optically slaved studio strobes yet. I know that the number of flashes stays consistent with the all-optical system.

(Elinchroms count the preflashes.)

I've only seen the 600s demoed. I was suitably impressed.

@dpollitt Honest critique: Good scene, can't really go wrong with a sunset. Balance is off. FAR too much beach, too little sea and sky. Beach content is ok, but not the most interesting. In all honesty, if I wanted a larger beach portion in the scene, I'd have found a subject...the sand alone isn't really one. I'd have either found something like washed up driftwood, or placed driftwood or a nice log or large branch in the scene to spice it up.

I'll be at ProFusion Expo in mid-June asking the Canon guys some serious questions.

I like the sky and the sea. Looks like there is something, a rock, out a short ways from shore. Without any other subject, I'd have made that the focus of the scene.

@StanRogers Ooh! What kind of questions?

Mostly about the new flash system -- it's different enough to want to know more, and has some compatibility limitations with older cameras. Then there's the whole "what's in store" thing, especially with the 7D. I expect answers with the gear on offer; the speculative stuff will probably be "can't comment".

But if you don't ask, you'll never know, right?

I'll also be on to the Nikon reps about their response to the RT system.

(And asking the PhaseOne guys about free samples.)

Unfortunately, Toronto isn't quite New York or Photokina, so there's rarely anything really big and new. It's just a good opportunity to talk to the tech guys. And droll over stuff I can't afford.

That was "drool". Need new fingers...

@StanRogers Yeah, 7D II is the thing I really want to know about.

@StanRogers I wonder if you could ask Canon for those, too! ;P

@jrista It's due for sure. That last firmware upgrade was a helluva kick, but it's not exactly a new camera.

@jrista But... but... I'm a Nikonian.

It was a kick...not sure if it was a hell of a kick.

The thing that REALLY needed fixing on the 7D was the jittery AF.

When AI Servoing, it just wouldn't ever really lock.

On a 99% stationary subject, it would bounce around by minute amounts, but the results would often be the thing under the point(s) weren't actually in full focus.

REALLY ANNOYING.

They need to stick the 61pt AF system into the 7D II, or maybe a 41pt system if the 61pt one doesn't fit APS-C.

Reticular all the way. Enough if this widely spaced points...it just doesn't work, and sometimes the points fight with each other over who really "saw" focus or locked it.

The AF, I think, actually needs a new sensor, and firmware won't get you there. But you got a bigger buffer and extra FPS; that's a pretty good "tide-me-over" at no cost.

The improvement in the 5D should be an indicator that they actually can do better.

I don't know about more points; they just need to make the ones they have more discriminating (and more sensitive).

Oh, sure. I wasn't talking about the 7D...I mean, they need to add a high point reticular AF to the 7D II.

@StanRogers I am totally sold on the reticular design. Densely packing the points means your much more likely to get a hit.

It is entirely possible to get a subject, like a bird, or even just the birds eye, BETWEEN points on the 7D's 19pt AF system.

That's when you have the real problems...when there is no clear choice, and when the AF sensors strips might not quite reach.

The way the 5D III (and 1D X ) AF system works is amazing. I haven't actually used the 1D X outside of a few minutes here and there in a store.

But the 5D III in the field is just phenomenal.

I come from a different time and don't get al of the new-fangled stuff. I want to pick something my own self. But then, I used to shoot sports in manual focus, and the old muscles still want to do things that way.

A 300mm or 400mm lens doesn't really cut it for birds, but when it locks AF, it LOCKS AF. The tracking, with all that dense point coverage, is AMAZING.

@StanRogers Wow. Manual focus sports is pretty amazing.

I've heard of some of older bird photographers, who were around in the 80's and 90's, doing manual AF on birds. They usually only did that with 400, maybe 500mm lenses.

Anticipation. We used to miss a lot, even on good days.

Even those guys these days will tell you AF is absolutely essential at 600mm+.

@StanRogers Yeah, misses of birds in flight is almost guaranteed unless you have AF.

The 7D did pretty well on this sequence:

jonrista.com/2013/05/07/pelican-flyby

Not necessarily, unless you're tracking starlings. But you did have to be a bit of a behaviourist.

The bird was flying towards me at an angle...probably one of the most difficult scenarios outside of the bird literally flying directly at you.

In the old days, you'd play that bank shot like a macro -- pick a focus distance, and let the bird focus itself.

@StanRogers I think film may have given manual focus a bit of a lead, though. CoC with film was usually much larger than it is today with pixels. 0.15mm, vs 0.008mm.

Unless you were enlarging your 35mm frames by...a LOT.

Or, did you use larger format film?

120?

@StanRogers I still use that trick to find birds in flight and get them in the frame. I'll focus on the clouds, pull back just a bit, then when the bird enters the frame and falls under the AF points, only then do I activate.

@jrista Most of us were a lot pickier than the focus scales. 24x36 wasn't unreasonable. The films I used were more acute than the sensors today, and would easily out-resolve the lenses. (25-32 ASA, mostly.)

MF wouldn't have worked out well; the longest good lens anyone made was a 300/2.8.

The magazine guys (like Moose) were shooting faster stuff. Some of it as fast as 200!!!

yeah, the film days were a lot slower

man, how did you guys shoot ASA 25?

Wouldn't that require very slow shutter speeds?

There was a lot more birding in bird photography; you had to play their game and wait. And wait. And wait. When they wanted their pictures taken, then you could take their pictures.

I can't imagine getting a shot of a bird in flight today at anything less than ISO 400.

25 wasn't that bad. Blurred wingtips look cool.

I could see getting ISO 50 shots of birds that are stationary...would be pretty easy with waters.

ISO 100 if you had good light for shorebirds.

Songbirds? Can't imagine less than ISO 400 for any of them.

Waterfowl probably ISO 400 as well...always on the move.

I'd love to have ISO 25 for my landscape photography, though.

Especially if that came with 16 stops of DR! :D

You learn to work with what you have available, I guess. I still have trouble dealing with ISO 100 during daylight hours.

That was where I went with my f/5.6 lenses.

@StanRogers Do you always shoot full manual mode?

Almost always, mostly because I'm going to play with the dials anyway, even when they're locked out.

Old habits die hard.

I've started using M a lot more lately.

I bought Art Moriss' book on bird photography.

Learned some tips on photographing birds in flight, how to meter for them by metering the sky and "compensating", lock in a proper exposure for the bird, bring the bird into frame, then track.

It's a LOT easier to get a good consistently exposed sequence of a bird in flight when manually dialing in the exposure than when allowing the camera to handle it for you.

With Av mode (what I used to shoot in) and Auto WB, tone and exposure can change...a little or a lot...each and every frame. Lot more work to fix all that in post.

That sounds pretty familiar. I don't even think about it, really; it's all built in now.

That's my goal...to get it all "built in".

LOT to think about when your thinking about it, every time you change subjects or lighting.

@jrista thanks for the critique. I kind of liked the beach as it wasn't just sand and was kind of rocky, but I had wished for a bit more interest. I created a lot more sunset images on that trip with rocks and other objects in the foreground, this was the only one like this. I still like it though :P

I finally settled on a final version(for now) of the volcano sunrise - 500px.com/photo/33370565

@jrista I hate sounding like an old fogey -- I know that photography was frustrating as hell for anyone who wasn't obsessive back in the day, but having everything beaten into you by the school of hard knocks did have its advantages as well.

@dpollitt That's the one.

@dpollitt What did the previous versions look like?

@StanRogers NP. There are advantages to having exposure and the way you control it baked into your mind.

@StanRogers: On the flip side, there are even bigger advantages to not having to think much at all about AF, tracking your subject, etc.

@jrista Indeed, and I wish I could forget it some times. My fingers are forever reaching for the focus ring.

Which turns, reminding me that I'm being an idiot. (Mostly old screw-drive lenses.)

Your depth and breadth of knowledge is definitely helpful to our membership, though!

I wish I knew more about film photography than I do.

@jrista You only think you do. It was mostly worse in real life. Sure, large-format Zone System stuff was amazing, but I wouldn't touch it again without scanning the negs and Photoshop.

Colour was a vindictive witch, especially if you wee shooting commercial. Forever playing with filter packs, worrying about per-colour reciprocity... we're a lot better off now.

"were"

@StanRogers LOL

and Also one from 3 weeks ago with lots of noise in the shadows

@dpollitt How did you denoise it?

@StanRogers they scared me a little when I realized they could burn the pigment out of colored paper, granted I did set it off in direct contact with the flash just to see what would happen

and coupled with the external battery pack, you can do a full power flash 2 to 3 times a second

it is rather stupid

@AJHenderson You should have seen me the first time I ran 9600 watt-seconds through one head. Required new underwear.

It actually caused smoke at a distance. Luckily, no fire.

@StanRogers knowing where we came from is critical to understanding how and why we got where we are

I'd never want to go back to film or have to experience it at a daily use level, but I love knowing more about it. It's also why I know programming languages that went out of style before I was born

oh

I forgot about the day I opened my 600

I was down visiting my parents for Christmas and had had it shipped there

and it was my first time with a flash that has an auto-adjusting guide number

so I'm showing my mom how it moves forward and backward

only one small problem, it only adjusts when you have the shutter half depressed

so here I am, sitting with the flash aimed directly at my mother and my face with the shutter half pressed

care to guess what happens next

mind you it was also manually on full power

for the record, the afterimage of a 600-RT at close range looks remarkably like a double sided AA battery

not one of my "brighter" moments

Luckily, us older folk grew up on flash bulbs. We're used to purple orbs that don't fade for hours and hours.

I remember the first time I used a flash cube

I couldn't understand why it would only work once

I had the same problem with the first time I saww an electronic flash, in reverse.

that was when I first starting getting interested in SLR photography and started looking through my parent's old camera drawer

having started out on the 110 rolls and an electric flash

I had a bunch of 110s along the way. Pentax Auto 100, Voiglander Vitoret... Eventually got a Minox, which was finally small enough. Then I figured out I wanted good pictures, not miniature cameras.

I think the Wisner 11x14 was over-compensating for earlier sins.

yeah, I eventually figured that out and went 35mm and then 35mm with an old SLR and then went digital. But I didn't spend more than a year or two in the 35mm SLR world

I got started back in the really painful days of photography when 1MP was high end

and you were lucky to get 15 minutes of battery life out of 6 AAs

and saving to your 32 MB card

but then again, that held like 200 photos, so it was all good

bask in the glory of really old digital photos ;)

pretty sure that is with my 1mp kodak, don't think I got my 4.5mp HP until college

I'm the one on the right

though that's what I looked like in high school

@jrista used two images instead of 1. the sunrise is one image, and the foreground and rocks another that was exposed more. at first I tried it with a single image and the noise in the shadows was too much. I didn't want to do HDR because it looked like shit. in the end I think just using two images in photshop looked the best.

@AJHenderson I missed most of that time. I had an early 1024x768 (Agfa, I think) I used for one job (it cost like a car, but paid for itself), then went belly-up and left the photo world behind for a lot of years. Production-line catalogue work and $200 weddings get to you after a while, and there wasn't much else during that recession.

this is with 1 image -

and the final composite image(2 source images):

same sky in both images. just different foreground

and i'm out for the night -

@dpollitt That makes two of us.

hey, realize this isn't photo, but anyone know Encore particularly well. For some reason it isn't updating when I update a premiere project that is embedded

never mind, apparently revert to original lets you force it if it doesn't detect it for some reason

good night

@jrista Maybe they at Adobe are trying out the monthly payings method that is in good use in online multiplayer games. Like Blizzard is doing with the World of Warcraft game. I am happily paying 12,50 euros (about $16) every month for generally unchanging online game. They give an upgrade patch once or twice per year and a larger expansion in about every two years.

The paying method is a no-effort system, when I've given my credit-card for them to charge automatically every three months for the next three months of gameplay, so I don't have to constantly keep track of expiry dates, it goes on automatically as long as I don't visit my user-page and cancel the subscription.

Naturally, when I stop paying, the game is totally unplayable, but the things and stuff I've gathered and the characters I've created are still stored in the game, for when I decide to re-open my account it will all be there and ready to continue like I only left the game yesterday.

This has made Blizzard a good deal of money, and I guess Adobe has a fancy to replicate the success. But as I read your discussion here in chat, I presume Adobe has miscalculated.

Anyone around for some feedback? I can't decide which I prefer...

damn hard to choose, I like them both, but this is a good example of why I don't do much postprocessing on my photos. I have no eye for these things, so generally I prefer the scheme I get out from camera and only adjust brightness+contrast+sharpness when needed. Sometimes WB comes a bit off, needing some adjusting, but that happens rare enough.

the first version looks like it might be more close to what you were seeing yourself when you took the photo, yes?

second version looks a lil bit subdued, while in the first one the area of action is saying here is life, here is the job - in contrast to the rest of the space, where life is only a memory of a long forgotten distant past, when the place was new and had a purpose.

@EsaPaulasto Man... That's the kinda stuff i just can't write... The experience that lead to taking this photo was full of adrenaline, we were running about, avoiding people/security (in somewhere we shouldn't be) and i saw this shot, lined it up and fired off a burst and got out of there... The first one is almost exactly what it looked like to me.

@D3C4FF right, I'd choose the first one :)

@EsaPaulasto Yeah I think I prefer the effect of grey-bleak surrounding vs colour centre spot as well.

though this likely is not in a factory, but looks more like an underground of a large building, it has all the feelings I get in an old well-used factory assembly

@EsaPaulasto Yeah, its beneath a very large industrial plant that's -slowly- being shut down... Its very unusual as a place because they've still got power to all the lights, makes for some easy exploring and photos become way more interesting imo.

I have worked in a factory for the last 24 years, doing mostly the same job all that time, working on the same (large) machine most of the time, and known that machine for longer than I've known my wife! And while at it, seen the factory building grow old with me (was not new even when I started working there) and gathering the history of changes and upgrades, new purposes pushing old stuff away, building new assemblies over the old ones until it is a maze of "what's-this?" kind of stuff

This place has got to be one of the single largest places i've ever been in... Its absolutely massive. Not to mention the two 15 storey high smoke-stacks :O

The machinery is beautiful

I'm quite into the industrial stuff :)

cool :)

What kinda factory do you work in?

we produce sheets of plastic for our clients to thermoform the sheets into items like travel-bags, satellite antenna dish, car doorpanels and dashboards, suchalike

quite possible place to see an item made from our production is to open your tv and watch NHL icehockey

the icerink walls are made here in Finland, at the factory I work in, and possibly I have made the walls myself.

Ah, i'm a regular ice-skater here in Aus :D

Not speed/hockey, i just really enjoy skating :)

Montreal Canadiens for example have their icerink walls, including the yellow lower liner, made by me and my colleagues.

Aus, like Austria or Australia?

@EsaPaulasto Australia :P

k :)

I have visited, briefly, Austria but not Australia :)

that's the machine to make icerink walls

Sounds like a very noisy place :P

well.. most likely Montreal Canadiens have already worn out the walls and replaced with new ones, possibly made by another company. But we were at one time doing nearly all of the icerink walls where good quality walls were needed and asked for. Just that the market is open for anyone and competition tends to build where demand is greater than supply.

yeah, ear protectors needed for sure. There is no place below 85 dB but the office wing and cafeteria. Some spots near the mills produce above 95 dB noise.

mobile phone video, bytheway.

Nokia C6-00

Not to bad for a mobile... Haven't used a C6-00 personally but they look cool :p

I love the physical qwerty keyboard :)

hate to type on touch-screen "keyboard" with my big hands

@EsaPaulasto I agree, shits me no end as well.

So i got a nokia n900 ;)

cool gadget, was too expensive for me when it was new :D

I wonder why did Nokia make more phones with Linux OS

^^not make

I know. I wish they'd made more!

Would have been an ACTUAL competitor to IOS/Android i reckon shrugs

Nokia's big mistake was to let the old CEO retire and hire a wrong man in his place, not talking about Elop, but the miserable Finn whose name I already forgot, lol

google found it, Kallasvuo was the CEO since 2006 and even thou Nokia was already in not-in-its-prime condition when Kallasvuo started, he was the final nail in the coffin, IMO

<afk - back later

wokay

(at least they dropped symbian) God that was terrible

yes, I loved my blackberry in america

write much faster on that type of qwerty

back in europe I got a SE xperia mini pro but the qwerty layout was strange. still better than touch screen keys of the time

android and iphone and LG propreitary touch screen are the worst to write on. windows phone touch screen keys are the most responsive I tried, so thats functional

makes it livable without qwerty keys

@D3C4FF Or do something crazy, just for kicks:

<- maternity leave, watching over a sleeping baby.

@MichaelNielsen Ah noo. I can't stand those 'effects'

hehe

it works best on portraits

I've got an old film camera with a filter that 'softens' effects, i hate it xD

I guess you are not dying to get the 135mm canon with a swtich to make soft focus :)

No. can't say that I am (can't say i was honestly aware of it however :P)

the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/…

135mm is the perfect focal length for portraits

on FF, but I have a crop, so I use 85mm

but tehy dont have a 85mm softfocus lens. Id like that

Cant you just put a filter on it?

Wouldn't that be cheaper and make 'all' your lenses soft-focus?

no, softfocus is not just a soft image

lines are sharp

details are blurred

Photoshop filter?

this makes it hard to fully replicate in post, too. cant imagine a optical filter in front that would do that either

I made an algorithm in my own program where I took a image made by that lens wiht and wihtout softfocus and compared results

reulsts posted here

The 135mm-f2 looks like a sweet lens...

I need to train teh dog to watch the baby, instead of licking it

I personally think the middle looks better than the far right

ofc, since you hate the efect and my algorithm "underdoes it" :)

the rape of your photo was done in my simulation algorithm of the orton effect

that is a little more complex than softfocus

Fair enough. To be fair, I spend a lot of time trying to get shots as crisp and rigid as possible, so to come along and blurr it all up seems like wasted effort to me :P

"clarity", "softfocus", dragan", and "orton" effects are all basd on similar principles. layer and blend blurred versions

the babe is yawning now. that means I have 5 min before she cries and then she needs food :)

@MichaelNielsen Nww. Heh. How old anyway?

2 weeks

1 w 1d actually

roundup to integer haha

too bad resolution

Damn! New dad eh?

Congrats!

yes, my firstborn

luckilly it is a girl. as we decided the name 1 y before we got pregnant

Sophia

it works in english danish and italian

Im danish, she is italian and we speak english daily

Good choice!

couldnt find a male name that has that feautre

I have a gender neutral name IRL.

alex?

Nope.

Although Alex is a fair point

which other name is neatral?

Well, i won't tell you my name, but i'll tell you where it comes from. Its the name of a gemstone ;)

Sophia actually has a double name Sophia Alexandra

So if it was a boy it could be Sophus Alexander heheh

Never heard of Sophus...

Sophos? (anti-virus)

In denmark it is a old school name

Sofus

like Ragnar

as in sow-foos?

phonetically speaking

in english it would be pronounced like that

in dnaihs more like soh foos

but "faster"

Are you saying Jasper can be a female name too?

thats the only gemstone name that fits a male

Yeah i think so. But at the very least, i know a couple of dogs called Jasper.

But that's not directly what i was saying ;)

Good guess though

Jade is female name..

But i've done much data mining looking for anyone else in the world with my name

there's just one afaik

(also, i don't actually exist on the internet) >_>

Unles your parents were hippies, then I think the other gemstone names are funky as names for kids. Amethyst, Citrin, Onyx, Aventurine, Topaz, etc..

Actually, my dad's a Scientist :P And my mum is a graphic designer (alright, somewhat hippy tendancies)

Oh man, i'd love to be called Aventurine!

Ruby! but its for chick only...

in denmark there is a male name like it: Rudi

Rudi = Ruddy!

If i was called Aventurine i'd totally go on Aventurine Adventures!!!

Ther is a gem called amazonite

also very adventurous