Foggy morning framegrabs.

[Dylan Couper]

Alex. I have a challenge for you, here it is, in front of the forum:

Try going the whole summer without posting anything that's been colour corrected, or altered in post in any way. Only original stuff, as it's been captured by your camera.

Lots of people can take a so-so picture and make it interesting or better with a computer. Taking an awsome picture in the first place is much harder. Don't rely on the computer to fix stuff, it'll become a crutch long term.

What do you think?

[Alex Knappenberger]

Eh. I can't do that, heh, sorry. If I can make the stuff look better (atleast to me) then why not? Maybe I should post some side by side comparisions of the "corrected" stuff to the original framegrabs, and let you judge. I guess some people call that cheating...

What about people with the in-camera "S curve" adjustments on their DVX100's? Thats the same thing...

[Trey Perrone]

summers half over...besides...how can you turn down a challenge from a fellow countryman?

[Mark Moore]

I went to an Epson printing seminar a few months ago (more digital stills than video) and the instructor worked quite a bit with Photoshop. He said that he used to believe computer manipulation was 'cheating' until he talked with an elderly photographer who had been in the business a long time and switched to digital.

The photog told him that using computer photo-editing wasn't really cheating because photographers that use film will also manipulate photographs in the dark room (more or less exposure in printing, more/less time in developer/stop, etc.). Therefore, manipulating a photo in a computer editor was no different. It made sense to pea-brain!

So, if it looks better, is it really cheating if you found the subject, framed the pic, snapped the pic and then made it look good in post?

I don't really know, but I will agree that as a learning tool, you should learn to take the best photos you can. I'm just not sure how good an unretouched still can be out of that Pany. By the way, I think that retouching photos to make them look better is not wrong, but I'm willing to listen to other opinions. I certainly may not have all the info!

There's a great thread in the "Anything Goes . . ." topic about photographer vs videographer or something like that. I do believe it helps you be a better videographer if you have that experience/talent for stills. When I was in the 8th grade I wanted to learn to take pics, so my dad (a pro news photog/camera man at a TV station) bought me an Argus C-3 - a very cheap range-finder camera with no meter and told me take pics and learn how to gauge light and speed. I was soooo mad that I didn't have an SLR or meter, but I found out later it taught me a lot!

The last pic of the cat has him seemingly saying either "Get that camera out of my face" or "Can't I even take a crap in peace?"!

Just random thoughts. Sorry for the ramble.

[Dylan Couper]

Using a computer isn't cheating, but it's a hell of alot easier than learning to take a better picture in the first place.

I had a math teacher once that wouldn't let us do any equations or formulas the easy way until we could prove that we could do it the hard way first. Taught me a valuable lesson about the real world. Build a solid foundation of skills to fall back on in case all your shortcuts fail.

[John Locke]

Zac,

According to Webster:

"grey" - acceptable variant of GRAY

And while we're at it...Hemingway insisted on keeping the "e" before the suffix "-able" when the root word ended in an "e"...hence "A Moveable Feast."

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? The message is...break the rules and you'll become a legend. That's why I jaywalk daily.

[Mark Moore]

Oh, I agree that learning the fundamentals of photography is a very good thing. The more you can do with the camera, the less you have to do in post! But it is nice to be able to get that perfect adjustment in post, when needed.

I should state though, that I do not encourage the type of manipulation seen in mags where they take the 130 pound, female celebrity and make her pics look as if she is 105 (I think I saw that brought out on Leno one night)!

[Dylan Couper]

<<<-- Originally posted by John Locke : Zac,
And while we're at it...Hemingway insisted on keeping the "e" before the suffix "-able" when the root word ended in an "e"...hence "A Moveable Feast."

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? The message is...break the rules and you'll become a legend. That's why I jaywalk daily. -->>>

Hemingway becam a legind cause he cuden't spel wurth shet? Dam, im gunno be famus sumday! i think mabe it was becus he was a relly good riter, not becus of hes speling, dont yoo?
Braking the rules dusent make yoo a legind, beeng reelly gud at somthing mite thoh.

As far as the use of computers in photography, if you don't have it to touch up your photos, then you are FORCED to improve your fundamental skills.

[Mark Moore]

<<<-- Originally posted by Dylan Couper : As far as the use of computers in photography, if you don't have it to touch up your photos, then you are FORCED to improve your fundamental skills. -->>>

Seems logical to me.

[Alex Knappenberger]

Dylan, here's a few untouched framegrabs.

http://www.freewebs.com/alexknappenberger/untouched.htm If your wondering about the yellowish look, thats because I white balanced on the sky to take some of the blue away, it makes the greens and reds stand out more. Plus it was sunset.

If these were 35mm photos, and not digital camcorder photos, I wouldn't need to do much to them, to make them look how I wanted, such as mess with the color curves and bump up the saturation a little bit.

Also, you want your pictures to be as simple as possible right? So if that means taking out a stray object in the background, or something, in photoshop, then I don't see a problem with that either.

[Mark Moore]

That's kind of what I was trying to say, but in a nice way!

If you had a NIKON Digital SLR, then it would take a much better pic than your Pany DV52, so less manipulation would be needed.

I see nothing with using post to make pics looks better - especially if the cam is letting you down. However I do agree with Dylan that one should learn all aspects in order to make themselves better.

Nice cat, by the way. Looks like the one I had before she, ummm, went to cat-heaven! But mine was fatter.

As soon as the National Park Service gives the "ok", I'll post some pics from my GL1 of the making of the Wright Brother's statue. Hopefully, they will be interesting.

[Nick Kerpchar]

Alex,
Going back to your first post with the frame grabs on a foggy/misty morning. You should have numbered them Dude to make it easier to address specific ones.... but anyway, here are my comments starting from the beginning or top: #7 interesting shot; #10 love the red in the foreground; #12 nice misty feel to this shot; #15 really good shot, could almost smell the dampness of the mist, maybe a little different framing; #16 loved this one and it would have been better, IMHO, if you were standing in the middle of the road with your back to the camera and perhaps your hands clasped behind your head.

I looked at each one to see if it told a story. Actually, each one could tell a story but I didn't get that feeling from all of them (to each his/her own).

They were all interesting but I had several favorites as listed above. Keep on working out Alex, and thanks for sharing. Nick

[Alex Knappenberger]

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Moore :
Nice cat, by the way. Looks like the one I had before she, ummm, went to cat-heaven! But mine was fatter.
-->>>

Well, sadly that cat and many others (like 20 of them, that come around here) would probably be really unhealthy skinny, but my mom feeds them twice a day, and they "hang out" in our garage, even though they are all pretty much stray cats, and you can't even get close to them. We have to inside cats (simease and some other really retarded cat) and a african grey paret, and another paret that we took in from this lady that wanted rid of him (unfortunately, I wish we didn't, I can see why she didn't want him anymore).

Also, thanks for the comments and stuff.

I was pretty much just messing around with all them pictures, since my friends are lazy and have lost interest in doing videos, I am supposed to do a video with these dudes that I haven't seen in awhile though.

I am interested in saving up some money and buying a digital camera now. I was playing with a relatives Fuji S602Z earlyer, and it was a pretty interesting digital camera, felt good, and had lots of features, it's "only" 3MP though, even though you can interpolate that upto 6MP, plus I am pretty sure it's discontinued. Something like that would be nice. I could always pick up a 35mm SLR camera on ebay for pretty cheap, but I'd rather have a digital camera, to save money on film, developing, the ease of use, and the fact that you can take lots of pictures and just delete the ones you don't want.

[Mark Moore]

I bought a 'cheap' SONY Malveica digital that uses a floppy disk, but the resolution isn't very good. I bought it for three reasons: (1) it was on sale for $199 and (2) for web photos; and (3) I didn't have to use USB - I could use a floppy to put them on the computer.

I would love to have a NIKON or CANON Digital SLR. The artist that is creating Wright Brother's statue has a brother that is a pro photog (shoots for TOPS baseball, NFL, PGA, NHL, etc.) and he has several CANON digital SLRs with huge photo cards (like 512 or something). I love photography and would love to have one of those!

Twenty cats, two birds . . . no dogs rodents or fish? You said you couldn't get near the cats - a couple of the pics looked like the cat was getting away from you and the camera!

[Trey Perrone]

if you can....try and get a digi SLR and the ability to change lenses....SLR makes a huge differnce between point-and-shoot digis.

my EOS-10D has a 1GB card....lots o' pics!