A photography thread

[bykfixer]

There are lots of photography based threads here but after searching high and low there does not seem to be one that is generic enough to discuss the merits of things like focusing, film or digital, digi cam, slr or phone cam, macro, lenses, files size, raw vs jpeg, white balance, editing (or not), iso, and so on.

I'll start with autofocus vs manual. Now, for clarity I don't do much in the way of photogaphy these days. But when I did I liked spot focus and used aperature mode. I usually picked an iso around 200 from my film days. But in the case of those once in a lifetime chances I didn't want my 51 point autofocus to pick the object that was not the focal point in my picture. And more times than not my camera opted for a leaf next to the momma bird feeding the baby leaving the subject matter blurry. At times I'd opt for a smaller apperature to ensure a much larger depth of field to avoid that.

It seemed the fancier the focus system the more it missed the shot. In order to achieve a desirable photo where everything around the object was interesting and have the subject matter off center slightly I'd oversize the scene and crop it later. I did thousands of nature photos with an occasional keeper.

One from work using a Nikon D7000 with stock 18-105 lens

A Nikon D80 with 70-200 lens

A Canon my wife uses at 2.8 aperature.

 

[raggie33]

i still say lenses will be eliminated i truly believe the sensors will get that good and combined with ai them crazy fast and long lenses wont be needed

 

[SCEMan]

My daughter's music & dance studio held their Winter Showcase event at the local
Performing Arts Center and I took shots of the performers with my Pana FZ1000 using my mode settings for theater lighting. People were amazed at the images and wanted to know how I took them and what I used. Everyone's so accustomed to cellphone cameras they've forgotten what quality DSLRs are capable of.

 

[bykfixer]

My daughter's music & dance studio held their Winter Showcase event at the local
Performing Arts Center and I took shots of the performers with my Pana FZ1000 using my mode settings for theater lighting. People were amazed at the images and wanted to know how I took them and what I used. Everyone's so accustomed to cellphone cameras they've forgotten what quality DSLRs are capable of.

I was taking photos with a point and shoot one year of my son's school play and it kept giving me blurry pictures due to it choosing long shutter speeds. Using "sports" mode for fast shutter speeds gave dark images. Choosing "candle light" made blurry pix. I thought "why not try portrait mode since that opens the aperature wide open for blurry background. That worked like a charm. Back then cranking up iso meant polka-dot pictures due to noise.

Your "theatre" mode may have done the same thing knowing light would be dim and actors moving around.

 

[WarriorOfLight]

A Canon my wife uses at 2.8 aperature.

Sure the Picture was taken at F2.8? My guess would be more F8 or even larger. The Focus area is quite large, the wings are almost complete in Focus. A F2.8 the focused area would be only a few millimeters.

But anyway the Picture is great!(y)

 

[raggie33]

its crazy what filters can do digtaly for real like i think even on live video it works now where're they can even replace ya face live scary

 

[hsa]

@bykfixer, I agree 100% with your assesment of multi point focus. Just more chances to screw up focus. After nearly a decade of non use I dug out my Nikon D-60 and one of the first things I checked was making sure it was set to spot focus. I also bought an 85mm f 1.4 lens that I have always wanted and it is great.

 

[SCEMan]

Your "theatre" mode may have done the same thing knowing light would be dim and actors moving around.

It's not a "theatre' mode, it's one of the custom modes you create. I made it years ago for capturing my daughter's dinner theater and night club shows (Spot Metering & focus, Auto ISO, etc.).

 

[bykfixer]

While looking for binoculars in my bag of stuff in my work truck I came across a point and shoot camera I bought before covid to capture photos without having to lug my SLR's around. The Panasonic Lumix series has been a favorite of mine since I first discovered digital photography back around 2006.

This one is a bit of a novelty in that it's a point and shoot with abilities to do some things like SLRs. The ZS100 was a 20mp 10x zoom with a viewfinder and a few adjustment options like point and shoot had before 2014 or so when all things went to the iPhone. See, the big guys made point and shoot cameras with lots of options prior to that but then began only producing automatic numbers with very few abilities to be adjusted. The goal was to coax the market into buying SLR's.

Part of the problem later was how well smart phone cameras could take pictures combined with outdating those SLRs about every 90 days. The SLR market today is in a coma and probably won't return.

Panasonic had stuck with options on their point and shoot but had stayed with zooms of 3x and 5x. Good cameras but you only had ability to zoom to around 100mm. Great cameras with really good lenses but that max 5x zoom thing was an issue. The ZS100 could go from 25 to 250. Yet with all things portable sacrifices had to be made. It could use a f2.8 equivilent on a 1" sensor but that f2.8 is only up to about 35mm. Anything more meant higher f-stops. At 250 zoom the minimum f-stop is 5.9.

Another shortcoming, (well two actually) of the portable Panasonic super zoom was slow focus and lots of noise in the photo. The issues are both solved with the ZS100. One glaring issue was a slick metal body at grab areas. But I used small chunks of grip tape to get past that. No more slippery grab areas with sweaty fingers or with gloves on.

In use it's not a bad little camera for on the fly snapshots but for those stunning photographs it leaves a lot on the table.

Another issue solved was the super slow RAW processing between photos. This one can gobble up 5-10 RAW fast shots like they were JPEGs. I set it for 10mp RAW + fine and it has not bogged down at all.

When I bought it I was feeling pretty mundane about photography in general but bought it for a work camera to replace a malfunctioning Canon P&S. Nice little camera it was but it had been rained on and dropped into mud a few too many times. I figured it had enough geek out features to keep my SLR urges at bay but still portable like a ponit and shoot. About then my company issued me an iPhone that does a good enough job to cause me to forget about that little ZS100 for a few years.

In the past I had only shot about 100 pictures on it and most were practice pix with factory settings. But this week I began trying out some of the adjustments like macro, iso tweaks, and tough scenes with extreme contrasts. Nothing to write home about. Mostly take the photo, look at the results, delete it, tweak a feature and repeat.

 

[bykfixer]

Sure the Picture was taken at F2.8? My guess would be more F8 or even larger. The Focus area is quite large, the wings are almost complete in Focus. A F2.8 the focused area would be only a few millimeters.

But anyway the Picture is great!(y)

The photo I showed was a crop.

 

[Monocrom]

its crazy what filters can do digtaly for real like i think even on live video it works now where're they can even replace ya face live scary

Yeah, too many weird things for my taste. I just snap a pic., and done! No filters.

 

[Fuzzywuzzies]

Sure the Picture was taken at F2.8? My guess would be more F8 or even larger. The Focus area is quite large, the wings are almost complete in Focus. A F2.8 the focused area would be only a few millimeters.

But anyway the Picture is great!(y)

It was taken at f3.5, so must be a cropped image.

Edit: Whoops, too late, apparently! Sorry @bykfixer

 

[SCEMan]

Way back in 2015 before a Med cruise, I picked up a Sony RX100 which was touted as a "DSLR in your pocket". It still works perfectly and with it's aluminum body very durable. Zoom range is 28-100 but very fast at wide angle with sharp Zeiss glass.
This little pocket camera has been all over the world and I'll be taking it again this year on a river cruise in Portugal to capture shots (C-PL filter, etc.) along with my iPhone 15 Pro.

 

[bykfixer]

I had a Sony p&s about then @SCEMan and really liked it. It did a bunch of in camera stuff like starburst effect on shiney objects. I don't think it had Zeiss glass though.
Anyway a coworker borrowed it when his son was born and his talented wife did all kinds of nifty photos with it so I told him to keep it.

Sony makes some really nice cameras.

 

[Monocrom]

Way back in 2015 before a Med cruise, I picked up a Sony RX100 which was touted as a "DSLR in your pocket". It still works perfectly and with it's aluminum body very durable. Zoom range is 28-100 but very fast at wide angle with sharp Zeiss glass.
This little pocket camera has been all over the world and I'll be taking it again this year on a river cruise in Portugal to capture shots (C-PL filter, etc.) along with my iPhone 15 Pro.

View attachment 73817

That thing just looks sweet!

 

[aznsx]

Sony makes some really nice cameras.

An old and good friend of mine who's semi-pro, for many years just had to have the very latest Canon flagship pro DSLR, as soon as they were released. As a Canon user, I was a bit envious, I admit. The last time I saw him several years ago, out of his pack/bag at the coffee counter in the airport came the latest, baddest Sony of the time; sporting a hi-end Canon EF of some sort, screwed to a Metabones adapter. Just sayin'. I've seen some very high quality images from that thing.

EDIT: Important note. My friend already owned and used the previous model of that Sony, so he knew what he was getting.

 

[bykfixer]

When Sony began with the Alpha SLR series I was very tempted but was too invested in Nikon gear at the time. It started with a D80. It was a stripped down D200, but it sure was a fun camera to carry around. Several lenses later I considered a Sony but instead opted for a full frame sensor Nikon. A D700 but I never really gel'd with that one. The D7000 though I did like. It was not like the D80 in some ways but I enjoyed it more than the 700.

By then I had lost the zeal for photography. I worked a lot and part of that role was the unofficial company photographer. My hobby had become a job. Even worse, "they" dictated the subject matter. I did learn the art of photo journalism through that period though. But the thrill was gone.

There was a period between assignments where my boss sent me on missions to photograph bridges at various parts of the state so that was cool. And on one assignment I finally captured a decent photo of the elusive belted king fisher bird. I'd been unsuccesful for years at photographing one sitting still. They are more wiley than a crow and won't get within 100 yards of a human. So everytime I saw one the photo was the bird flying away.

Not my photo.
Mine were usually a photo of the bird's rear as it flew away.

Once I got a decent photo of the belted king fisher my passion for wildlife photography was gone.

 

[SCEMan]

Just picked up a Panasonic Lumix DC-ZS80D 30x optical zoom (24-720mm) for those long shots beyond the reach of my iPhone 15 Pro & Sony RX100. I know it's a big compromise image quality-wise with my Lumix FZ1000 (my favorite photo/video bridge camera); but I ain't lugging that on cruise vacations anymore!

https://www.panasonic.com/ca/support/discontinued/cameras-camcorders/dc-zs80.html

 

[wacbzz]

View attachment 72712
A Canon my wife uses at 2.8 aperature.

Is this setting within the camera itself or a dedicated 2.8 lens?

Edit: I see the answer was already posted. It might help if I actually read the rest of the comments before I posted my question.

 

[bykfixer]

I taught her to use aperature priority and let the camera dictate shutter speed and sometimes iso