Messages

1

Canon General / Re: Desired fantasy gear

« on: Today at 12:12:49 PM »

A nice remote control kite rig for aerial photography....

Yep!

2

Canon General / Re: Desired fantasy gear

« on: Today at 12:09:16 PM »

I would love a body with option of full frame and crop with the flick of a switch.
This fantasy stems from something I read in this forum earlier. Was it a Nikon camera?
I do not know Nikon gear at all so not sure.

But something like this would be great for me. Advantages of FF and crop in the same body! While we are at it, let the crop have even faster frame rate.

I believe the Nikon D800 has this. It effectively becomes a built in TC. I would love that too.

It's not quite as good as a TC because with a TC you have more pixels on your subject whereas with the Nikon crop modes you are simply cropping the image in camera.
So yes it looks closer on the back of the camera but it's the same as taking an uncropped photo and cropping it in PP. Less work I suppose but less control over the crop and same number of pixels on the subject.

Really! Wow, I learnt something. I know its basic for some...

3

Canon General / Re: Desired fantasy gear

« on: Today at 10:08:18 AM »

I would love a body with option of full frame and crop with the flick of a switch.
This fantasy stems from something I read in this forum earlier. Was it a Nikon camera?
I do not know Nikon gear at all so not sure.

But something like this would be great for me. Advantages of FF and crop in the same body! While we are at it, let the crop have even faster frame rate.

I believe the Nikon D800 has this. It effectively becomes a built in TC. I would love that too.

You could create an action in photoshop to autocrop your photos from the centre of the frame by 1.5 times and there you go. Problem solved.
However the "higher framerate"-function when less pixels are used is interesting (but not for me). I would like to go in another direction though - less noise! Use 25% of the pixels and reduse the noise by 50% or something by grouping the pixels together 2 by 2 or something, letting those 4 pixels simulate 1 larger pixel. THAT would be an interesting "crop" mode for me (although it would not be a crop mode since it would not crop, it would  be high sensitivity, low resulution mode). I have no need for faster framerates (however I understand that other photographers may need all the FPS they can get.)

22 mpix to use at low ISOs
11 mpix to use at high ISOs
6 mpix to use at superhigh ISO.

Interesting

4

Canon General / Re: Desired fantasy gear

« on: Today at 07:02:26 AM »

I would love a body with option of full frame and crop with the flick of a switch.
This fantasy stems from something I read in this forum earlier. Was it a Nikon camera?
I do not know Nikon gear at all so not sure.

But something like this would be great for me. Advantages of FF and crop in the same body! While we are at it, let the crop have even faster frame rate.

5

Canon General / Re: Desired fantasy gear

« on: Today at 06:59:28 AM »

Self carrying camera bag.
Lightstands that do not blow over when windy.
Speedlights with the capacity (recharge time, capacity and power) of big studio strobes @ 1000WS.
Voice activated controll of speedlights and more groups (A, B, C... to K).
Jet pack for those unusual camera angles.
Weather controll to roll in those perfect clouds when the sky is just too boring.
Laughing gas kit - the lens can emit lauging gas to make the people at the wedding more relaxed and happy thus generating better pictures for the photographer. Or if the weddingshoot goes terribly wrong the photographer can use the gas for his or her own comfort.
Device to slow time. That would make it easier to get the shot when a lot is going on.

When it comes to camera bodies I´d like to have the eye controlled AF back. I´d also like to have the AF points spread out over more or less the whole frame. The 5D mkIII has a larger spread than the 5D mkII but I´d like even more.
I´d also like to set what points I can manually choose - when I use the "all cross type points" preset it takes forever to change AF point from one side of the frame to the other. Perhaps a portrait-mode AF that looks for eyes and put focus there. And a wedding mode that look for four eyes and give a large enough DoF to have them all sharp... From last wedding everything looked good on camera monitor but when I got back to my computer I saw that the groom was a bit OOF, but the bride was tack sharp. Not good and my own fault of course, but that wedding-mode would be cool.

Other than that.... Update the 50 mm /1.4. Give it better USM, better build, better sharpness wide open, better contrast.

Many good ideas here... Really!

6

EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: Am I crazy to sell my Canon gear?

« on: Today at 06:49:14 AM »

You did not mention the kind of photography you do.
Decision depends on that.

7

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:25:15 AM »

Thank you everyone for taking time to comment. I learnt a lot.
Appreciate.

Hi Sanj, as always you bring something interesting to this forum. It made for an interesting discussion without too much polarization.

Pretty much all my photos goes into LR4 where I will work more or less with them depending on what I will use them for. I do some work for my children's school, for website, promotion material etc, then I shoot medium JPEG and only adjust some WB and little bit of exposure sometimes. I am now preparing for my first exhibition and of course for those I spend alot more time on each photo.

I am originally from Sweden. I think it was last year or so, a wildlife photographer won the wildlife photograph of the year or something, the subject was a lynx. There are plenty of them in Sweden, but you rarely see them. People started to question the picture and finally the guy came out and admitted that he had taken the picture of a lynx at a zoo and then pasted it into a regular winter landscape. I guess his career as a wildlife photographer came to an abrupt end.

Having said that, I think we are allowed to do whatever we want with our pictures as long as it's clear what we've done, depending on the purpose of the picture, art, documenting a scene, publishing etc.

Sometimes though, I just accept that the sky was white that day.

thanks
J

I understand what you saying. I looked at the photo a long time and the bland sky kept irritating me so I added the cloud. But the moment I did that I got bit unsure of myself and posted here to get advice from experts.

8

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:22:50 AM »

I found the sky boring and added clouds to make it more interesting.

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

What is your goal?

To create a piece of art or to depict reality?

If you're creating art then adding clouds is fine.

If you're trying to depict reality then obviously no.

I have concluded by now that from the moment a photographer picks up the camera, reality in its true sense fails to exist.

9

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:16:31 AM »

Most of us are not forensic photographers who shoot crime scenes and dead bodies ... photography for me is a passionate hobby and an art form ... I'm no good at drawing or painting or sculpting  ... the closest I can hope to get to any decent art form is making images and manipulating them the way I like ... I am happy to manipulate and change images so they are pleasing and/or compelling to look at ... even if it mans adding a lighting bolt or removing an ugly wire or add an extra cheetah or make a fat person look a little slimmer (in fact I routinely use liquify tool to make people, with a big paunch, look a little slimmer) and as a photographer it gives me great joy to see people feel good about themselves when they look at the images I've manipulated ... I don't give a damn if the so called "purists" think it is unethical ... I thank God everyday that photography is my hobby and that it gives me a chance to look for beauty in the world around me and if I can't see it, I'll just manipulate that scene in photoshop, and I don't need to worry about being unethical coz I am not a forensic photographer shooting crime scenes and dead bodies.

That makes two of us! But in my case I must not enhance nature pictures to much that it is a total lie. In other words if I photograph a running cheetah, I cannot put a lion behind it to create a false story.
Regards and thanks.

10

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:14:01 AM »

If I can do it in the wet darkroom (cropping, dodging, burning, filtering) then it's completely legal

You might not be able to do it in the darkroom, but if someone else with a different skillset can, does it become legal?

Was it legal when Jerry Uelsmann shot all the requisite negatives, built the appropriate masks, and then used a series of enlargers to print this image in a darkroom in 1976?

That's great Artwork than involved good photography but the final product would be classified by me as Artwork.

This is meant to be artwork.

11

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:12:53 AM »

I found the sky boring and added clouds to make it more interesting.

Do you think this is cheating? I really want to know.

Am very confused. I have made changes but not altered nature. Have I done something wrong?

Thx

No, you have not. It looks better. It's not as if you added an extra cheetah. I don't even particularly think you need to disclose it. It looks natural.

There is a common theme on photo forums, with certain people suggesting that a photo should be what the photographer saw. Maybe if one takes that statement metaphysically (as in: saw in his mind's eye type of thing), I agree. Literally? I do not, and I find it funny when those same people then post desaturated images of their dinner at f/1.2 with the camera held at MFD. This isn't that theme, but it's kinda like it.

To me, the end product has always been about what I want it to be. I'm not a photojournalist; there are rules in that realm for good reason. When it comes to art, do what you want to do. Your image is art.

Thank you sir! Yes, all photography is LYING.

12

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:11:36 AM »

As long as the photographer is not entering a competition and not breaking its rules, to me it doesn't matter what the photographer does with the image, it is his image, his vision  ...as far as I'm concerned he can remove/add whatever he wants. Those who are capable of making awesome changes/modifications will continue to do so while those who are incapable will continue to crib that it is unethical.

+10^99999

If I were to buy a print to hang on my wall, I would have chosen #2. Whoop-de-do, he played with the sky, but the essence of the shot remains the same.... three big wild cats. If you want to carry the logic through, people should not sharpen images, or color balance, or crop.... Even the act of pointing the camera or zooming in/out is to modify what is being represented.

Put things in perspective, it's not like Godzilla is walking along the skyline...It's a nice image. I like it.

Lol. Kitty kitty...

13

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:10:41 AM »

My take is that it is OK to remove a few stuff when they were not supposed to be there, but not so much OK to add ... For example i hated that when Stockholm was full of contruction cranes all over the place and i couldn't take a pict without them ...

I doubt anyone would disapprove of what you have done. Not even RPL. Or at least not disapprove the way my photo has been disapproved by some.

I think you did the right thing to enhance the photo.

14

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:07:43 AM »

This is a pretty stupid topic. It's all opinions vs opinions. It's never going to go anywhere. To the OP I like your photo either way, heck put the trees back and add a thunderstorm enter it into a contest and win. Heck if the contest doesn't state you can't edit photos then go for it! Everyone else has access to the same tools as you do. People can take photos of cheetahs if they want to. What's the big deal? No one wants a boring photo, if that's what the OP saw but nature changed before he could get the photo then recreate to how it was in the minds eye. If I bought that PHOTO from the OP I wouldn't care about the edit because looking at it everyday would better my mood. Is the film negative the photo and everything after is a print or copy of the photo? This debate will be even worse 100 years from now, when photography will probably have evolved yet again. How about Instagram are those photos or digital art? Just enjoy life and take photos or whatever you want to call them! Print them share them sell them. Enjoy what you and others create and stop wasting time criticizing!

15

Animal Kingdom / Re: Wrong Photography Ethics?

« on: Today at 06:05:43 AM »

This is the "I remember when......., things were so much better back in the day" argument. We are in today not in the past and today provides the tools to do all sorts of magical things. It amazes me how we torture innovators to desperately cling to the past. Turner, one of the worlds great painters was roundly abused in his day for his vision which was only reality as he saw it, now of course we recognize his genius. Surely photography is art, not just a representation or photocopy of the world around us. Manipulate your photo's however you wish and I for one will judge them purely based upon my own taste and not on others rules of right or wrong.   

Thank you Gary.
One day when there is technology greater than photoshop people might say 'its ok what can be done in photoshop and not in ....'.