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FireGryphon · Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:46 am

Grumpy_Eel wrote:
Can anyone give me any tips on taking pictures of people? My pictures of my friends and stuff always turned out like crap. How do you take candid pictures of people that dont look like crap? Mine were always shaky, out of focus, etc.

I'll give this a shot.

First rule of thumb is to take pics level with people. If you're much below them the picture will be looking up their noses. Also, make sure the lighting is good, or that your camera has a good flash. midtones (skin) are easy for cameras to capture badly, especially if there's too much or too little light in the scene.

Of course, people pictures are hard because people who know they're on camera never act the same as they normally do. So be sneaky...

Aphasia · Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:55 am

Ill continue abit on that. Also, try to catch them in unguarded moments. If that isnt possible, snap away all the time so they will get used to you having the camera. That way they will probably tire of making their camera face all the time.

If your images are shaky or blurry, start outdoors if its the camera that cant get focus indoors. If they are blurry, work a few times at holding it still, having support on your elbows against a table or something else.

Also, if you can avoid a small-camera on flash, do it. That lightning is very unatural.

Solder?

Quite far from it actually. Ill give it one more guess.

LJ · Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:10 pm

Grumpy_Eel wrote:
Can anyone give me any tips on taking pictures of people? My pictures of my friends and stuff always turned out like crap. How do you take candid pictures of people that dont look like crap? Mine were always shaky, out of focus, etc.

Keep in mind that your camera has to be absolutely steady when you finish the shutter release and for a short bit after. Look at your exposure times -- you generally want 1/60th of a second or faster. If people are actually moving in your photos, you want a shutter release faster than 1/250th of a second. If you're using high zoom, you need a fast shutter release.

Show us some examples so we can give you more concrete advice.

jobodaho · Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:40 pm

LJ, although that's a good shot, no more spiders. I'm not a fan, and I'm sure there are some more people around here that share my anxiety.

Hance · Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:58 pm

i hate spiders but could care less if someone posts pictures of them . i found a huge black widow just the other day . it made this really nice crunching sound under my boot :lol:

Klyith · Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:06 pm

jobodaho wrote:
LJ, although that's a good shot, no more spiders. I'm not a fan, and I'm sure there are some more people around here that share my anxiety.

This is what I like to do to people like you: go to an arachnophobic friend's / coworker's computer, take LJ's pic and set it as the desktop background, then leave an innocent program like IE maximixed and go away. Maybe scale it up a bit so that it takes up the full desktop size. When they come back and close the maximized program, *bam* there's a spider! The really funny thing is that on some people this works over and over again.

Aphasia wrote:
Quite far from it actually. Ill give it one more guess.

Is it bubbled or blistered paint? I was also thinking about some kind of liquid beaded on a surface, but water or anything else I've ever seen doesn't bead like that. Maybe alcohol, cause of the low surface tension? That's two guesses, but that pic is pretty mystifying. It looks more like cgi than a real picture.

FireGryphon · Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:17 pm

The mystery pic could be of mercury, although I would think playing with mercury would be pretty dangerous, and not the sort of thing you'd have lying around to take pictures of.

As for the spider pic, I think it's an awesome shot, but it is rather scary, and even though I let spiders stay in my home to catch flies, I still have a healthy respect for them. I can imagine how frightened other people might be by the pic.

While we're on the subject, how'd you get that shot? It looks like you took it as a macro shot, with the flash, at night.

jobodaho · Thu Jul 21, 2005 10:38 pm

I wouldn't say I'm scared of spiders, just very anxious around them. Again I didn't say the picture was bad, far from it. I'll say this too, there is no way I'm getting that close to a spider just for a picture.

NeRve · Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:14 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
A dead dragonfly I found at a friend's house today. I decided to play with the macro settings on my new a520.
2.6F, manual focus.

Damn Usacomp, howd the heck did you get those colors? Im impressed

FireGryphon · Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:16 pm

I'm goin to guess that he did some editing, due, as you noticeed, to the clarity and color of the picture.

Klyith · Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:25 pm

FireGryphon wrote:
The mystery pic could be of mercury, although I would think playing with mercury would be pretty dangerous, and not the sort of thing you'd have lying around to take pictures of.

Can't be mercury. Mercury has *huge* surface tension, such that small drops beads up into almost spherical form. It's kinda freaky, it rolls around like a little ball. If fact it's really easy to mistake for little silver BBs. But then it's really heavy, so if you have more it flattens out into funny looking puddle with rounded edges. Facinatin' stuff.

FireGryphon wrote:
and even though I let spiders stay in my home to catch flies, I still have a healthy respect for them..

I leave spiders in my house if they're smaller than a quarter. Bigger spiders get ejected from the house; I never kill them. But I live in NY, there aren't many dangerous spiders here.

Jumping spiders are the coolest. They're small and non-threatening, but you can kinda play with them because they're curious. I'd love to take macro photos of one, but getting it to sit still would be a problem!

Aphasia · Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:22 am

*Drumroll*

Plain old water

What i did was putting a normal cooking pot (stainless steel) filled with water in roomtemperture, then letting it stand for a couple of days. Condensation forms on the inside of the lid, and thats what the photo is, lighted by a flourescent tube above the kitchen sink.

The funny patters is because the drops are formed slowly, they doesnt react the same way and form those weird form, and also look between the larger ones and you find small microdrops.

But yeah, it looks like metall and shooting at a daylight whitebalance make it look like gold. Will post one of those two when i get home.

Btw, that looks lie a nasty spider, good shot though.

Usacomp2k3 · Fri Jul 22, 2005 7:24 am

FireGryphon wrote:
I'm goin to guess that he did some editing, due, as you noticeed, to the clarity and color of the picture.

Nope, that's 100% stock (well 99.37% as I resized it, but that's it). Sorry.

And Aphasia, I never would have guessed

. Good job.

FireGryphon · Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:52 am

Is your camera set to Vivid, or some other effect? Does the full size image look that colorful?

Usacomp2k3 · Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:50 am

For the full image: http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/3787/img00300ob.jpg

I don't remember setting my camera on any other color option. It was the 2nd day I had it, so I doubt it. The setting was to set the fstop and all other settings automatic. I then manually changed the focus, and voila, that's what I got.

Here's the first one I took from a different angle.
http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/823/img00288po.jpg

satchmobob · Sat Jul 23, 2005 7:42 am

Ok here's 2 of my first pics with new OlyE300...

Think i like this one.

Bit over exposed this one i think but its me first camera an i was only experimenting...!

mikehodges2 · Sat Jul 23, 2005 8:06 am

Aphasia, those are some damn fine photos..(all of them!)

Do you have a larger copy of this pic please? (around 1280x1024 if possible)

Cheers.

Aphasia · Sat Jul 23, 2005 4:00 pm

YGM, had to crop it a bit to fit a 5/4 that was making sense, hope it works for you.

drfish · Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:39 pm

If you want a high res version of one of these let me know...

IntelMole · Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:45 pm

drfish wrote:

Not much of a viewer to this thread (mainly cos I can't hold a camera steady) but I thought I'd say I really liked this picture for two reasons.

Firstly, the whole of the picture is being used, even though you don't realise it. But it's done in a subtle way with the waves and all that.

But also, because of the waves, you can almost see the action in that photo.

Very impressed,
-Mole

drfish · Mon Jul 25, 2005 4:08 pm

Thanks, check you PM...

BTW, I posted this in another thread today, but forgot to post it here:

Took that on Saturday from across the river in Windsor, beware the full version is 13388x1148 and weighs in at 2MB! Sorry I cut of the top of the GM building... :oops:

liquidsquid · Tue Jul 26, 2005 9:23 am

One that came out OK from a dozen low-light hand-held. I had to creep up pretty close. An animal that large is not afraid of much!

Here he is getting a little annoyed by my interruption of mud dinner.

And a destination for a pretty tough day-hike my wife and I took:

-LS

Klyith · Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:13 pm

liquidsquid wrote:
Moose pics

Or is that an elk? Anyways, you got stones to get that close to a moose. They can be very dangerous -- more people are injured by moose every year than by bears. So, where was this?

This weekend I went up to visit my grandfather in Burlington VT. I walked up to "Overlook Park" which true to its name has a good view of the lake and the adirondacks. This is actually not the whole view, there is more to the north (right edge in the pic). But -- my camera batteries died on me while I was setting up my panorama! Time to buy some better batteries. The worst thing is that I had planned to do some photos of my grandfather's tools later on (he collects early american woodworking tools).

View of Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mtns from Overlook Park, South Burlington

This is actually the first panoramic photo I've ever done. Autostich rules.
Link is to 2.8 mb PNG

liquidsquid · Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:36 pm

Klyith wrote:
liquidsquid wrote:
Moose pics
Or is that an elk? Anyways, you got stones to get that close to a moose. They can be very dangerous -- more people are injured by moose every year than by bears. So, where was this?

This was up in NH, the wife and I stayed in a B&B in Snowville NH for a week and had a lot of fun. Yes, defintily a moose, and yes, I have stones, big ones. I was probably 20 feet away since my camera is only 4x zoom. Especially this morning when I snuck up on a racoon which was busily eating old cherries and got within a few feet before he screamed at me (scrared the crap out of me) and took off up a tree. I guess those old cherries were too good to bother listening for sneaks like me ;-)

.

More pics of my trip on my site.

LJ · Tue Jul 26, 2005 11:55 pm

This first one is from my new 70-200mm F/4L. I really like it so far.

Some skating kids let me take their pictures.

My focus was off a bit =(

Usacomp2k3 · Sun Jul 31, 2005 5:19 pm

Ok, I'm playing with the different color types and so took the same pic 3 times. Which one do you guys think is better? (Took these where I work on sat.)

Black/white:

Color:

With flash:

I personally think the b/w does the best to capture the pics.

Grumpy_Eel · Sun Jul 31, 2005 7:30 pm

I liked the b/w one the best as well, Usacomp2k3. The one with flash comes in 2nd, the normal one third.

Your moose pic kicked ass liquid squid.

Klyith · Sun Jul 31, 2005 8:57 pm

I prefer the color one, from a composition standpoint. The B/W image doesn't have enough contrast, it looks flat. The flash is uneven; there isn't enough illumination on the top of the statue. You've got a canon 520, so it has full manual options. You could try taking a longer exposure with both flash and natural light. Use the lowest iso and choke the fstop as high as you can go to compensate.

Also, shooting with that big light in the background may be messing with the camera's brains.

Usacomp2k3 · Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:07 pm

I'll do that, maybe after work tomorrow. Thanks for the tips

FireGryphon · Sun Jul 31, 2005 9:09 pm

usacomp, that pic with the light in the background and a lot of dynamic range (half of the background is dark, the other half is really light) would be hard even if you had a good camera and lots of training. Try blocking the light and taking the picture with a longer exposure. Better yet, frame the statue only on the blue background.

Moose pics and skateboard pics are pretty cool. Nice panorama work all around, too. Good goin' guys. Always a pleasure to view the photos on here.

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