Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by macdoc » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:36 pm

The tweaking software I use agree the balance was bang on. I just upped contrast and saturation a tiny bit. Depending on your screen it might be too much.

That's a factor you have to take into account. A TN screen will generally not do as good a job on colour as a iPS screen

I noticed my 27" was looking weird and realized I had both contrast and brightness too high. At least the Retina stays relatively consistent tho it can be tweaked as well.

Getting your screen, your idea of what you want, and your camera all in synch.....well....good luck.
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by FBM » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:42 pm

Yep. Rum, I suggest that that practically every image you see these days (except maybe family/holiday shots) has had color, contrast, exposure, etc, enhancement, so I think we're comparing our original exposures these days to high-tech modifications. I'd wager that if you had looked at your original 10 years ago, you'd have been perfectly happy with it.
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by macdoc » Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:47 pm

I just sprang for a Gx1 :dance:

My gx1 was having some issues so will be consigned to backup and GF use.

Alll my lenses work of course and a I scored a 20mm 1.7 pancake with it that will do better in low light than the 14mm.

They put a metal body on the 20 mm and that will be my everyday lens along with the 300 mm in the other pocket.

Image
Panasonic GX7 review: A dream camera for savvy shooters that hits the sweet spot of size, features and performance

by Roger Slavens posted Thursday, November 14, 2013 at 10:05 AM EDT

We've been long waiting for a Micro Four Thirds model with advanced features that does just about everything well at a reasonable price, and the Panasonic GX7 was worth the wait. Other enthusiast-oriented mirrorless cameras we've reviewed lately have generally been excellent, but most have made calculated sacrifices in one area or another (size, price, video, etc.). Not so with the GX7.
more

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/20 ... -the-sweet

Big learning curve ahead tho - I was only dabbling with the Gx1 and this is more sophisticated.. :banghead:
But sensor and rocket speed auto-focus won me over.

In addition it has in camera stabilization which opens other lenses up.

$1k all in with the 20 mm which goes for $420 US alone so happy with the price. My camera guru gave the deal his blessing as well.
I shoot mostly automatic and that's critical to me and the Gx7 is a step up there as well as in the AF and has a usable, tiltable LCD plus built in EVF that tiltls as well tho not sure it does as well as the add on EVF which you can look straight down into.

Image
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by Rum » Fri Mar 21, 2014 2:46 pm

Looks good! Thanks for the comments and advice all. I guess I just like dark pictures!

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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by macdoc » Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:24 pm

That all depends on your monitor and your ambient light how your photos look to you.

It's not a consistent medium the way say photopaper could be dealt with.

Transmissive light is a whole different world.

Graphic artists try to get close to print by working with CMYK instead of RGB on their monitors. It's much darker on the screen.

If you are used to looking at photo prints, then RGB will look "off".

Original
Image

This is an CYMK conversion of the bottom one..looks pretty close to your original eh
Image

slightly tweaked from original
Image

you can play with it here
http://www.rgb2cmyk.org

Especially useful if you want prints to match

There is some artifacting going on with all the conversions but should be enough to get the idea. Had trouble getting the saved CMYK file to match the size of the original
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by macdoc » Fri Mar 21, 2014 4:33 pm

BTW it's pretty hopeless on most laptop screens outside the Retina or some high end HP lappies to even get close.

Even most desktop monitors are not accurate.

You need an IPS screen to work with colour correctly - fortunately they have come way down in cost.
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by MiM » Fri Mar 21, 2014 5:59 pm

And you need to calibrate your screen. There are ways to make an approximate calibration visually, and I recommend everyone at least check their gamma, but if you really want to get it right, you have to pay a hundred bucks or two for a calibrator.
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by Rum » Fri Mar 21, 2014 6:04 pm

How do you do that Mim?

Also - I am aware that a lot of serious photographers use the RAW file format and that they contain less information (I am not even sure what that means) than JPEG. Are there advantages? And what are they?

Incidentally I have Corel Photopaint and Corel Draw graphics suite. They aren't all that commonly used but I like them and have used them for twenty years now in various iterations so I can manipulate images pretty well.

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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by MiM » Fri Mar 21, 2014 6:24 pm

I am sure others here can give you good links also, but I like the Cambrige in colour site. Here is a starting point for understanding gamma http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori ... ection.htm. There is a link in there to monitor calibration. If those don't feel helpful google "gamma correction" or "monitor calibration"

RAW includes a lot more data than jpeg. It is uncompressed, and has more bits per pixel, which gives more colour depth (dynamic range), so the main advantage with raw, is that you can often salvage detail in those overblown or black areas you see in your jpg
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by PsychoSerenity » Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:15 pm

Using RAW is one thing I haven't actually tried yet with my camera. I haven't used it much recently but think I'll give it a go again, as Rum said, spring is a good time for it.
[Disclaimer - if this is comes across like I think I know what I'm talking about, I want to make it clear that I don't. I'm just trying to get my thoughts down]

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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by cronus » Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:39 pm

Pick up a second-hand Spyder II for calibration for less than fifty quid. Also on screen calibration is adequate for most general usage. Unless you are producing stuff to a industrial standard all you need to know is you are in the right quartile with regards brightness/contrast and gamma in R and G and B for printing purposes.
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by macdoc » Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:43 pm

To calibrate tho you really need an 8 bit ips panel.

There is good info here

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

That will explain various panesl and give in depth reviews. At one point IPS was twice the price of a twisted film but that has narrowed now.

The entire industry is gearing up for 4k which has an enormous amount of colour information given it's pixel density. Even 2k screens as with the Retina's have 4 x the information a standard screen does.

It's one thing to bear in mind when getting gear and manipulating photos......what looks okay now at lower sizes and rez will look "not so good" to be charitable as the screen resolutions go up.

So shoot at the highest resolution, don't chintz to much on sensor size and quality and whatever you do - do your editing on a copy not the original unless it's minor tweaks.

One thing with RAW is you have no loss and can always return to the original shot no matter how manipulated.

BUT - the shots take up twice the drive space and you only get half the shots on a card
'
I shoot JPEG - there is a lossless one but that's not accepted in many sites etc.

jPeg loses quality when you resave - not when you just copy or transmit. The loss can be set to be small.../

If you are shooting with decent gear keep an eye to the future, space is cheap these days, redoing a photo that COULD have done at higher rez is impossible in most cases and keep your originals intact. Work with copies especially in JPEG.

Shots to be printed need the absolute max resolution to look good on say a 24x24 panel.

What looks great at the screen resoltion on a monitor will not look good printed at a larger scale.
Colour of a print will differ as the screen is RBG and the print CMYK.

All that said.....a good IPS monitor is as low as $200 these days and eye calibration is fine if you are not printing.

WHen you look at reviews look for good "out of the box" accuracy as that is one thing they test for.
Also keep your contrast in the middle range.

mac users have decent monitor "calibration" ( tho it's really not ) built in - set it up for the basics then alter the gamma and white point to suit your taste.
I tend to whiter whites 6500 or so ( hotter ) - trending to blue - others like warmer tones ( cooler ) and you can save calibrations to see which you prefer or for different purposes - that's all built into the Monitors control panel on Mac OS.

Some monitors like the Dell Ultrasharp have presets for various activities, movies, paper colur space etc.

And just remember it will always look different depending on ambient light... :banghead:
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Mar 22, 2014 12:39 am

Rum wrote: Also - I am aware that a lot of serious photographers use the RAW file format and that they contain less information (I am not even sure what that means) than JPEG. Are there advantages? And what are they?.
Raw contains more info than jpegs. Raw is, not surprisingly, the raw data off the sensor. The camera converts the raw to a jpeg, or you can do it yourself in a raw converter. The best advantage of raw is that it lets you recover blown highlights and has more info in the shadow region. It also allows adustments in 12 or 14-bit as opposed to the 8-bit of jpg. Raw is the way to go if you are serious about your photography, but it takes some time and work.

By the way, there's no point calibrating your monitor unless you do serious print work, or your prints are so far off what you see on your monitor. I've only ever calibrated by hand (i.e. fiddle with the contrast/brightness/colour settings of the monitor by guesstimate).
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by FBM » Sat Mar 22, 2014 1:45 am

Yes, RAW is the way to go, but the problem is that you have to convert the images to .jpg before you can post them online. :lay:
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Re: Photography - Technique and Equipment considerations

Post by pErvinalia » Sat Mar 22, 2014 1:52 am

I shoot raw+jpg.
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