PHOTOGRAPHIC THREADS: camera queries, any photo tech stuff!

[TC]

Göte

My understanding from other sources is that it will recognise individual Nikon lenses and apply the correction suitable for each lens.

Anthony

If you think on the current timescale for digital cameras, the D300 will have been in production for three years and be due for a replacement about November this year.

[ian mcenery]

Anthony

If you think on the current timescale for digital cameras, the D300 will have been in production for three years and be due for a replacement about November this year.

Tom are you sure that it has been out for 3 years? I bought mine 6 months after the launch and iv'e not had it a year yet. I think the launch was November 2007. I wouldn't put it past Nikon to change again but after this camera received all the accolades it may be premature. After all for those wanting a full size sensor there is the new D700 

Won't be changing mine in a hurry anyway have barely worked out all of the functions

[Anthony Darby]

Göte
 

Anthony

If you think on the current timescale for digital cameras, the D300 will have been in production for three years and be due for a replacement about November this year.

It was four years before, and the D700 cames out last year.

[TC]

I have just checked the release dates for the cameras with a Nikon site.

D200  released in November 2005
D300  released in August 2007

You got it right Ian.  I assumed that with a possible release date of the "rumoured" D400 in November, Nikon's policy seems to be changing and updating a model approx. every three years.  I'm afraid that at my age, I'm never quite sure what year it is !!!

The D700 is the poor man's D3x.  The D400 will just be an upgraded D300 with new, improved features reflecting improvements in technology, and, no doubt, there will be a D500 after this.  It's a bit like car manufacturers, they need to change models to keep us buying !

[Casalima]

My rather modest small Canon Powershot (don't have it with me to check the model) got dropped on the floor by my dear daughter and probably can't be repaired or is not worth repairing. I want to take this opportunity to upgrade to something not quite so modest and I'm considering the Canon Powershot SX10IS. This is a model with a "vari-angle LCD" which is of interest, and a good zoom, but a wee bit heavy. Any experience/opinions?

[Peter Maguire]

Mick, you asked for details of how I colour-corrected the photos; this what works for me (those who are not technically minded may want to move on to the next posting!). 
Firstly I've been shooting RAW files, not JPEGs, which allows you to easily manipulate the colour balance later using computer software. With a hall like the one at Loughborough, where there is an orange interior light and increasing daylight with each row of benches as they get nearer to the windows, the first photo along each row is of a target which has pure black, pure white and mid-grey on it (I use a small collapsable one made by Lastolight which fits in my pocket, but you could probably use a mid-grey piece of card alone for acceptable results). This gives the light values for one side of the bench, and must then be repeated for the opposite side (using Loughborough as an example, the first row of benches is very orange as you enter the hall, the plants which are viewed from the far side will have some natural light coming over your shoulder, and the colour temperature of the light will be different). Then repeat this for each row of plants.
When I get the photos home, I know that each sequence that follows from the target will have a colour balance that is the same. I then open the target photo in my software and alter it so the black is a true black, the white a true white, and so on. These settings can then be applied to the subsequent photos in that run until the next taget photo appears. I'm using Lightroom to do this, but it can be done in Photoshop CS2 onwards, as the picture originally opens in Adobe Bridge and the colour balance can be corrected here, but you have to note the settings manually and apply them to the photos in the sequence up to the next target photo; you can automate the process in Lightroom. I should imagine that you can do something similar in Photoshop Elements or Paintshop Pro, but I'm not familiar with these programs.
This gives you a reasonably good result using the above process, but I somtimes tweak things slightly from there based on how I remember the colours on the day - although the Dionysia hybrid of Paul Ranson's was a challange, as I had no idea what it would look like in natural light.
Well that's all there is to it - simple really when you know how! 

[Mick McLoughlin]

Thanks for that Peter. I thought it would be something along those lines but didn't account for the test card. Would it be possible to use the entry card at the side of the plants for a true white? I think i might have another go with mine for future reference. I think any further discussion should be in Photography thread otherwise Maggi will be on to us.

[Maggi Young]

It is possible to make some adjustments after the fact, Mick. We use ACdSee to process pix and , using just 'Auto-Levels' and other tweaks under 'Adjust' I have come up with this from your pic of Dianes' fab Colchicum....... not perfect but with the orange removed......

[gote]

I tried to do what Peter describes but It did not work too well for me. Perhaps my colour charts were not suitable.
I now rely on Photoshop's automatic 'Level' command.
Residual colours I correct with the colour balance command.
If that does not work I go back and look at the colours individually in order to get a clue to whatis wrong..
I then correct each colour level.
Usually the first automatic step works beautifully but there are certain colours in the purple area that are difficult.
Göte

[Paddy Tobin]

"Auto Levels" and "White Balance" are not one and the same. Auto levels changes your photograph so that you the colours are spread to give a range from white to black. You will see that the petals of the colchicums are very white indeed, over-exposed/burned out, while the stems of those flowers in shadow are black while, in fact, the stems are not black at all. Auto levels has spread the values so that you have from pure white to pure black.

White balance deals with the colour tinge that we get on photographs most noticably from indoor lighting, street lighting etc.

Shooting in "Raw" gives the greatest freedom to later manipulate the image.

Paddy

[David Nicholson]

What is 'Raw' please?

[maggiepie]

David, these should  help.

http://photo.net/learn/raw/

http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_raw.html

[Peter Maguire]

What is 'Raw' please?

David,
RAW files are the files that the camera takes without any internal processing done by the camera software. It allows you to have total control over the picture, and with certain software programmes you can manipulate the image without the manipulations being applied until you export the image to a printer or other software programs which prevents the original image from being degraded each time it is opened up and altered - which is what happens with JPEG files. Think of it as being the digital version of a negative, which can be used again and again.

I tried to do what Peter describes but It did not work too well for me. Perhaps my colour charts were not suitable.
I now rely on Photoshop's automatic 'Level' command.

Göte,
The automatic Levels command in Photoshop will give you a passable average when used, but will often be wrong. What you could do is open up the levels dialogue box in Photoshop, and under the histogram you will see three eyedropper icons - one each for black, white and mid grey. If you click on the black one and find the darkest point in your picture (there's generally a dark shadow somewhere) and click on that area, then that will become the black point. Do the same for the white one (for those at shows the white of the class card can be used) and this will give a you a fairly good approximation of the light as it should be seen. You may still have to alter the hue of the picture slightly, but there will be less of this to do. It's the method that I used to use.

Peter

[David Nicholson]

Thank you Helen and Peter, my education is again improved.

[gote]

If I have a white card and that white is the whitest in the picture I can of course do this but this is what the automatic levels does is it not???
In my case the whitest part is usually the whitest highlight in a petal. I quite often do not want this to be a white point because this usually results in washed out structure.
I often find it necessary to increase contrast in the top 5% or so when dealing with white flowers.
In my belief hue problems will not be sufficiently corrected by using a white card simply because the information contained in the last high bits of information (RBG) is too coarse.

In my case, When photograping in the garden, the problems lie the lacking contrast depth in the camera. The automatic whitness control works beautifully and I rarely correct anything - except as I wrote on some purple colours.
The hue problems occur when I scan old pictures - especially from negatives. My 35mm negative scanner works reasonably well but is very slow. My flatbeds are faster but negatives are more difficult to correct.
I tried the coloured card method when documenting a number of paintings but found the results to be better if I just relied on the whitness control.
Göte