Off-Topic - advice, experiences and examples, for images that will be processed in PhotoLab

I agree with Santa

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Mike, this screenshot is from Windows. Certain options are different for Mac

this is a screenshot from the manual, showing PC & MAC

Indeed, but it can be confusing determining which bar is which without any labels

well, reading can help :slight_smile:

Even more off-topic.

In 2011, 11/11/2011 to be precise, I think I took the best photo I have ever taken with this:

Screenshot 2022-12-26 at 08.01.04

https://www.dpreview.com/products/panasonic/compacts/panasonic_dmclx5

Compact camera, with Leica lens.

I re-edited my favorite image yesterday, and smiled.

Original:

.dop:
P1050741.jpg.dop (13.9 KB)

Finished:

No matter how much I buy, and how much I study, and how much I learn, I may never improve on this. (I was in a car, and we passed this ox-cart. I yelled out STOP!!!, walked behind my car, and waited for what I thought was the perfect moment. Afterwards, I had a huge smile on my face.)

I know I had a huge amount yet to learn, and I certainly still enjoy photography, but I don’t want to lose the sheer joy of photography. Technique, and good gear, and now good software are SO helpful, but there’s something much more basic that is needed, the things that put a smile on my face and leave me feeling so excited/thrilled/pleased/satisfied/happy/lucky. That’s what I felt back when I was a young kid.

I’ll reply to the posts up above after making breakfast. And thank all of you for all the help and feedback and information and explanations. I may never catch up with all of you, but I’m very much enjoying the journey. Looking forward to 2023, and wish you all Happy New Year!

More than likely. It’s a great photojournalistic record shot, which you seem to be addicted to :wink:

But, art it isn’t :laughing:

Happy New Year

Ooh! @Joanna you are a hard task master. :grinning: @Mike. I’ll give you that one even though as @Joanna has said. It’s a great photojournalistic record shot. To me, it is a record of somewhere that you have been and possibly you would hang on a wall to keep reminding you of that place.

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Well, there is a bit more to the story.

What you have seen from your older lenses might be good enough to please you now, you might be pleasantly surprised to see what more modern lens designs might do with the D850 if it were possible to adapt them to it (they can’t, unfortunately).

The camera and lens companies say that the shorter lens-to-sensor distance of mirrorless vs DSLR designs, plus the larger diameter lens barrels allowed by redesigned (bigger) lens mounts, makes lenses very much easier to design and optimize. That means better sharpness, less coma, and fewer aberrations for the same or less design effort and manufacturing cost. All good, right? Throw in VR to make hand-held photos even sharper and it gets even better.

And… even better lenses will be needed in the future. The megapixel race has given us incredibly good sensors in terms of definition and dynamic range, and that coupled with sharper lenses has pushed the quality of small format photography so high that I’ll wager that the output quality of small format now matches or exceeds that from the 6x7cm cameras of the film era. And the quality will relentlessly keep getting better and better until the theoretical limits are approached as they have been with current microprocessor technology.

Watch out @Joanna, your big Ebony is going to be even more obsolete before too much longer!

Regardless of the label, I’m happy. Is it a photojournalistic shot? How about the one from HCB? Does it matter?

The point of posting it here, regardless of what kind of photo it is, was to show that I don’t need the very latest high-tech photo gear - that small Lumix was all I needed. By the way, it wasn’t any “place” in particular - we were driving across India to the west coast, going to Ft. Kochi, and passed this ox-cart on the way. I saw it as a great opportunity to get a photo I might love. My eyes are usually “open”, looking for scenes begging to be captured with a camera.

I’ll never be an HCB, but I can do my best, learning how to improve at the same time.

I’m quite used to the D780 and M10, both of which are being used in (M)anual mode, and neither of which has auto-iso turned on. The Df is quite different, and always takes me a few minutes to re-learn. Why do I enjoy shooting with it? Because I enjoy it:
https://ricksreviews.org/blog/2022/03/13/nikon-df-review/
I have put it away as of yesterday, and probably will leave it alone for a long time.

That leaves two cameras, one of which I love (M10) and one of which is perfect (D780). The M10 has the aperture on the front, the ISO on top, the shutter speed (also on top), and has an indicator in the viewfinder if my exposure seems reasonable to me.

You feel so strongly about it that I’ll leave auto-iso turned off. Most of the time, ISO will most likely be at 100 or 400, and ignored unless necessary. Aperture will be set for depth of field. Shutter will be set for a range for what I feel is appropriate, and adjusted if necessary to get a proper exposure (unless I change the ISO first).

I mostly use either the DSLR or the rangefinder - with DSLR everything is as you say, and with the rangefinder, the lens is set on the aperture ring, and focus is manual. For distance photos, I don’t use the rangefinder, if for no other reason than I don’t have long lenses for it. Still, on special occasions, I might well use one of the other cameras. My M8.2 is the only camera I own that can shoot in infrared, and I’ve got an itch to shoot film every so often. I haven’t done so in a year, but I still want to…

Very confusing, and it’s not important really. It is what it is. I don’t see distortion in my images, and mostly use better lenses. The 24-120 I’m curious about, but again, it is what it is. PhotoLab takes care of it for most of the lenses I’m likely to use on my Nikon, and most of my lenses for my Leica are prime lenses, and are mostly free of distortion.

No, I bought a 50’ or 100’ roll of Kodak Plus-X and loaded my own cassettes. I rarely used anything else. For color, I don’t remember there being many choices, and the choice was usually Kodachrome or Ektachrome. The only times I did something different were when I wanted minima grain or very high speed, but that was pretty rare. I mostly stuck with my bulk film and loaded my own cassettes.

I don’t picture much of a difference in grain between 100, 200, 400, and 1,000, maybe not enough to worry about when our new cameras can go to 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and so on using PhotoLab to control the grain at the higher speeds. Now that I’ve learned about “dynamic range”, that changes everything and there is a lot more to think about. If I was going to make a huge enlargement, then maybe I would need to consider this more carefully.

I know you’re right, but I can’t see any physical differences in images exposed at 100 or 500 ISO. I guess with my old cameras, that would have been a LOT more important.

Thanks - I guess I’m out of luck with my old lenses, or at least the ones that need big corrections. I wonder why they don’t - many people might find that very useful.

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Ed, that’s just part of the story - there is more…

The D850 is so big partly because it needs room for the mirror. What happens when we eliminate the mirror? Some lenses can be mounted closer to the camera, and get smaller, along with lighter… but not all. I don’t think this would make @Joanna’s 300mm lens any shorter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMhnsarpZWA&t=52s

…but it certainly means the lenses for my rangefinder camera can be much smaller and lighter.

Not very many photos that I set up to look artistic. This comes closest.
Huge “still life”.

You’ll have to forgive me for being blunt but… It’s not a still life and it’s not “artistic” - it’s just a record snapshot with the highlights over-exposed.

The idea behind continuing this thread was to allow folks to improve their skills, both with their cameras and with PL. It was not to simply share old shots, unless they demonstrate how to use PL to improve an image.

Due to your stated desire to move from photojournalistic (record) photography to something more artistic, some of us suggested you take your best camera (D780) and attempt to make new images that will lead in that direction.

It would be good if you could make a New Year resolution to follow that path :blush:

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I read this page yesterday, to try to get a handle on this:
Find your truth in fine art photography

Since it was cold and wet and nasty outside, I went looking for photos I’ve taken up to ten years before that met that criteria. I guess the one I picked wasn’t good enough.

OK, your challenge accepted: New Year’s resolution to capture Fine Art Photography with my D780.

(This is in addition to the photos I enjoy taking, not instead of.)

(I suspect we have very different ideas about “what is artistic”, but so be it.)

Did you choose this photo after reading OR would you choose the photo now?
Can you explain what you did to ‘set it up to look artistic!’?

[ not that I want you to spend time on it – don’t think it’s worth it with horrible light, no composition … ]

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Be warned, this is an article promoting Adobe products for far more creative post-processing than you could achieve in Photolab.

Since you are surrounded by buildings, try looking for photographs on sites like https://www.saatchiart.com/photography/architecture.

In general, “Fine Art photography” tends to be quite complex to achieve and usually needs Photoshop, Affinity Photo or the like (even I don’t profess to have mastered it).

Stick to “Artistic”, as in composition, framing, colour theming or B&W. But, I really believe that you need to overcome your phobia of still life, because there is a rich seam of art photos that can be made on a tabletop. And you can do it without spending vast amounts of money - lighting can be as simple as a torch. Think long exposure in a darkened room, illuminating different aspects of your objects - it’s called light painting.

It’s no good looking up articles on “how to do” art photography - you need to see what other photographers do and take inspiration from them.

For architecture, here’s an example of a shot I took of some buildings in Brest:

SOOC…

Straight colour…

Straight B&W…

High contrast B&W…


The station at Brélidy-Plouec:

SOOC…

Straight colour…

Straight B&W…

Engraved preset…


The yacht basin at Perros-Guirec:


The key is/are composition, geometry, symmetry, isolation of the subject, control of depth of field, textures - and a few more things that you need to discover.

Yes, I read the first half of the article, then went looking through old photos to find something that would enough like art that I would be happy to hang it on my wall. I guess it doesn’t matter the this was the only spot I could shoot from, that the lighting was already set up, and the composition to me looks great. Obviously, I’m in no position/condition to explain, and I’m unable to put what I felt into words. So I’ll cross this image off my list, along with ALL the images I have stored on my photo drives.

I don’t see anything in the building photos, and never would have taken this photo. It doesn’t look like “art” to me, and the perspective “feels” very annoying. The second one from the top “straight color” looks better to me than the others, but it “feels” very unsettled.

I like the second and third photos, but don’t see this as being much different from photos I take, which is probably why I like it. The close-ups at the yacht basin look to me like snapshots. The last one is pleasing, but I “want” to see more on the sides. I like it because I can relate to “rope”, not because it is “art”.

Think of this as a music recital where I am supposed to give my feelings afterwards. I would be lost. I don’t know enough to have any opinion, let alone a good opinion.

To better put this in perspective, suppose you asked me to post my thoughts in German or French. They would be awful, and probably laughable.

Maybe I don’t understand “art” well enough to create something “artistic”.

If the buildings Joanna posted the photos of are supposed to be “art”, I don’t see how or why. And the photo of the train station - I like that kind of photography already.

The one that comes closest to me as being “artistic” is the last one, the “Engraved preset”, but I suspect a computer created that.

It is much easier to talk about PhotoLab than it is to talk about what is “art”. I suppose we all have our own ideas about “what is art”. Like music, or food, we all have our ideas as to what we “like”.

Despite all this, I will still try to capture an image with the D780 that you all accept as “art”.