Messages

16

Technical Support / Re: Photographing paintings for a Catalogue help please

« on: February 20, 2013, 03:41:10 AM »

All of these settings can be changed when exporting your files from light room. To check this, open lightroom, look at any picture, and choose File > Export. Under file settings, choose TIFF, and look at the options.

Tiff: That's the file type. Seeing as you have a 5d3, your images will come out of the camera either as RAW (.CR2) or as JPG (.jpg). They are wanting TIFF files (.tif or .tiff).

Colour Space: RGB : This is basically a formula for how colors look. Since you're exporting to TIFF, you can just choose Adobe Rgb (1998) and kill two birds with one stone.

Colour Ratio: not a clue. They are likely referring to the bit depth. You can set that to 8, and probably keep them happy.

Since this seems like the gallery's specifications rather than your friends, I think you'll be fine. Basically, you'll want even lighting across the painting. If it were me, also having never shot this type of photography, I'd look for very diffused lighting, avoid any highlights anywhere on the work, and shoot it at f/5.6-f/8. Hope this helps.

*disclaimer* These are the thoughts of someone that has never shot this kind of photography. If someone has shot this type before, feel free to correct me.

Now... As a further note about the flash, when I think of flash, I think about it's purpose as "accenting the depth of a scene". Since your scene is a painting, you don't want to add any depth, but just show what's there. You want the scene to be pretty "flat" because you're reproducing something that is in two dimensions. Diffuse lighting will help to keep shadows from adding depth (darkness) to parts of the painting that aren't actually there when viewed. The biggest challenge you're likely to face is making sure that ambient lights aren't making hot-spots on your image. Flagging or diffusing those, and keeping the environment very controlled will likely be your best bet to keeping everyone happy.

17

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: What camera for walking/staggering in a St. Pat's Parade?

« on: February 09, 2013, 03:22:43 AM »

GoPros are great, and I love them... but they don't have much in the way of battery life. I even have the external battery pack, and don't get much more than an hour of use, no matter what the card size you're using.

18

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Shutter count on a new 6D

« on: January 28, 2013, 09:21:30 AM »

The default setting is to continue the numbering from the last camera that the card was used in. If you had another canon camera before your 6D, it's just continuing that numbering scheme.

19

Lenses / Re: Dust Donut - Add Weather Sealing to Any Lens

« on: January 18, 2013, 12:26:46 AM »

So it's not perfect, and it's misleading... but just because it doesn't take it ALL the way, I don't know if it's fair to toss it out entirely. To my way of thinking, it adds SOME protection to lenses that don't offer it. As to the amount of protection, that part is a bit unclear, but something is better than nothing, right?

20

Lenses / Re: Dust Donut - Add Weather Sealing to Any Lens

« on: January 18, 2013, 12:17:34 AM »

Sure, I agree that a $20 ring isn't going to do everything that an actual weather-sealed lens would, and especially for those cheaper lenses, I'm not sure where the largest problem point is on the lens in the first place. For me, I'm more interested in adding an additional layer (albeit unkown) of protection between my 85L and 5d3. I don't have any illusions that I can take it swimming with me, but it should be better than without.

As far as the patent infringement is concerned, that's more of the creators problem than mine

21

Lenses / Dust Donut - Add Weather Sealing to Any Lens

« on: January 17, 2013, 10:05:08 PM »

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/77243737/dust-donuttm-add-a-weather-seal-to-the-mount-of-an/

I just backed this project. Apologies if everyone else knew about it, but adding weather sealing to all my lenses is a big "yes"!

22

Software & Accessories / Re: What's your workflow for the Eye-fi Card ? Fun uses?

« on: December 18, 2012, 07:35:41 PM »

I was frustrated with mine at first with the 5D3. Here are a couple of hints that I've learned over the months that I've been using it. Now I love mine!

1) Use with small JPG.
2) You need to use the Eye-Fi app on your ipad/iphone for the initial setup. Afterwards, go to the homescreen and shut off the app. Next, download Shuttersnitch. You'll love it. The Eye-Fi app sucks, but Shuttersnitch is great.
3) BIG HINT: Most people don't know this, and I sure didn't when I started, but you DO NOT have to have your ipad or receiving device running while shooting. You can turn on Shuttersnitch AFTER all your shooting is done, pop off one shot, and the eyefi will send all of your pictures over to the ipad at once... That's huge for me, because it means that after a shoot, I can have my wife do the first proof on the way home in the car.

Eye-Fi solves several problems for me:
1) If i'm "out and about" and I take one snapshot for someone with my DSLR, maybe a friend, or stranger, and I want to send them that photo, I don't have to remember to do it later. I can just pop it over to the ipad, and email it to them right away in JPG form.
2) By looking over the JPGs before I get back to my computer, I already have an idea of what photos I like, and want to do work on. I also have an idea of a certain number of photos that look good already in JPG.
3) I like having those small JPG files. Even small JPG is enough for a lot of the web work I do, and I use those JPGs straight of of the camera, and straight off of the ipad in those situations. For my personal work, I still use all RAW, but having those small JPG work fine for the work that I am not so personally invested in.

23

Lenses / Re: Problem with EF-S 10-22mm Image Softness

« on: December 13, 2012, 07:31:19 AM »

I bought this lens brand new about two years ago, and soft corners have persisted ever since. Stopping down doesn't seem to help at all. So I don't think yours has any real hardware issues. Most probably just a general character of this lens.

Softness on one side is definitely not a characteristic of this lens, but a decentering issue, as Neuro mentioned. I personally find my 10-22 on a crop sensor to be MUCH sharper in the corners than every 16-35L I've used on a full frame...

24

Contests / Re: Gura Gear Giveaway!

« on: December 07, 2012, 12:21:20 AM »

I want to win!

25

Third Party Manufacturers / Re: 4K 15 FPS

« on: November 29, 2012, 07:22:21 PM »

It may be an option for people that want to set it up at an event on a tripod and pull stills from it? 4k is about the resolution point where I'd be thinking it's nice to have wide-angle stills that record a 'strategic angle' or position at an event. Especially if it's an angle or position that I won't have the chance to go near very often. (If that makes sense?)

26

Lenses / Re: Help me decide; keep my 35L or get a 50L?

« on: October 20, 2012, 05:43:27 AM »

It's quite a bit more, but in my opinion, with the 24-105, and the 50 1.8, and looking at the fact that you do portraits and weddings, you'd get that "magic" into your photos from an 85 1.2 more than the 50 or the 35. Just my 2c.

27

Lighting / Re: Question about color temp of strobes

« on: October 14, 2012, 09:17:58 PM »

The reason it works to use a cooling gel when you want to warm the background becomes clear only AFTER you white balance your subject. You make your subject more blue, then have either the camera or your software white balance. It looks at the scene and says "This subject is too blue," and pulls blue out of the entire scene, making the clouds more orange at the same time as it "adds orange" to your subjects skin tones.

28

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Renting 5DIII for a wedding, would like advice

« on: October 04, 2012, 01:40:15 AM »

I hear you, and I've heard that argument before... But I think it's way easier to lose a memory card during a rush of a wedding than it is to lose pictures from a faulty memory card. ESPECIALLY in a camera that already has two memory card slots. If you're that worried, just get a 32gb Compact Flash card, and a 32gb SD card, set the camera to record raw to both cards, and not worry about it. Obviously, you'll want to put a 32gb CF and SD in your backup camera as well. Then, bring dinky 8gb backups for if your 32s are 90% full. Again, WAY easier to drop and lose a CF card than have it corrupted, especially with a backup SD card.

29

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Advice needed: shooting at an animation festival (low light conditions)

« on: September 08, 2012, 10:54:57 PM »

Your biggest challenge to shooting during the show is that the audience will be really dark. The thing about renting camera bodies is that they are expensive, and it takes time to get used to the features. If you are used to a 5 year old entry level camera, it's going to take you a decent chunk of time (days or weeks) to get used to the 5d enough to reliably shoot. Now, knowing that this is just as a favor for a friend, maybe that's not that big a deal, but since you'd be paying money to rent a camera, you'd want the shots to be great. If I were in your situation, with your equipment, I would look at lenses rather than a body. I'd simply rent an 85mm 1.4 for reaction shots of your audience, and I'd rent a 15mm 2.8, and get permission to get as close to the screen as possible.

You have a camera body, and the odds are that you aren't going to go out and drop $7000 on a 1dx when you currently have an older entry level body. My advice is to use what you already have, rent a couple of lenses, and figure out how to take great shots with your equipment. Yes, you can get a 5d3 or a 1dx, and get great shots, but the next time you're in a difficult situation, you'll want to go out again and drop a few hundred dollars on renting a camera body too. You can do these shots with your 450d.

Your main limitation is that you're not going to be able to get a shot of the screen showing what's going on while ALSO showing reactions from the audience. Since this is just for fun, and to help a friend, I would recommend trying things you don't normally do, it's a license to play!

If it were me, I'd be looking at these shots:

• People reacting positively to the show, laughing, smiling, crying, especially two people together with a similar reaction.
• Shots from the back of the place with the screen exposed well, and rows of peoples heads
• Wide angle shots from close to the screen that are exposed for the screen. (the rows of people will be pitch black)
• Wide angle shots with the screen AND some of the people in the front rows. (Same perspective as before) Later, you can composite shots of people watching with shots of things on the screen.
• Any sort of detail shots that are pertinent to the situation. Tickets, popcorn, heads on the shoulder of their date, etc.
• And most importantly, talk to your friend, and figure out what shots he's hoping for and expecting.

30

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: 5D3 Second Curtain Sync - Design Flaw?

« on: September 08, 2012, 10:40:08 PM »

This isn't so much related to the 5d3, as just a workaround to the shot you're wanting. The point of the second curtain is to fire right before the shutter closes. Since this is a long-exposure shot that you're wanting to stage, and it will be in bulb mode, you know when the shutter is going to close. You could always just manually fire your flashes right before you end the exposure.