The *Official Photography Thread*

Leftover from the weekly challenge. A drop of grenadine into a pool of milk, stopped by a short pulse of light from a flash at 1/32 power.

 

Damn it! Just found a bird picture I should've used for symmetry...it wasn't taken for the challenge, but it has some good symmetry in the bird's body shape and positioning in the frame. I'll post it here later.

 

I've been wanting to try doing this for a while now. Did you use a drip set to do it or any of the timing devices? What was your set up like, such as backdrop and all?

 

My setup was pretty simple other than a wireless flash trigger. I didn't use a drip set or any timing device and actually I was surprised at how bright the room could be, which was good because otherwise I couldn't see what I was doing. For the "dropper", I just repurposed an old travel size contact lens solution bottle. I had to create a foam seal for it though, otherwise the liquid just came out in a steady stream. Then it was just pre-focusing the camera, try to get the drops in a specific area, and guessing at the timing for when to release the shutter.

Here's a pretty good tutorial on a basic setup, and the embedded video has tips on how to change the "color" and look of the photo. I'll probably give this a shot this weekend if I have time:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-photograph-water-drops-with-one.html

It suggests using an off-camera flash, but I don't see why an on-camera unit won't work as long as you direct the flash beam to bounce off the background.

 

That's pretty cool. The setups I had seen they used 2 strobes to eliminate the shadows. Some even used a diffusion material on the sides to soften the light.

I guess they suggest off camera to deal with the shadows. You could use something white opposite the flash to reflect light back also.

 

Yeah, I took the pic before watching that tutorial video so now I have new things I want to try for next time. I do have another flash that I can use off-camera so I can try that also.

 

awesome

 

2013 Sony World Photography Awards

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-an...ony-world-photography-awards#overlay-context=

 

Challenge is for current pics. Must be taken after the challenge is issued Monday.

 

No, I know. I took it on Sunday before the symmetry challenge ended, but was just taking photos of birds, not actually challenging myself to take a photo of symmetry, if you get what I mean. I like to set up and take a photo specifically for the challenge, and this bird one wasn't, so I didn't even think of using it until after I submitted my other photo. It actually isn't the best for symmetry anyways, but whatever, the red-tail's wings are symmetrical. I s'pose I could have cropped it in a bit to make it better...but here it is without any cropping:

Red-tailed Hawk by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

sooo..... Just got lightroom installed. what settings do you guys use to export your pics//where do you guys usually export to?

I'm playing with it but my export to hard drive pics look like shit, so im doing something wrong. lol

 

What specifically is lacking in the exported image? Dull colors, not very sharp, lack of contrast? Exported images should look the same way that they do in Lightroom so if they look bad then it probably needs some additional post-processing.

When I export as jpeg, I set the quality to 80. There's a section in the export dialog about sharpening that by default is set to None. I set that to Screen (Sharpen for screen), and set the amount to High. It makes a huge difference if you're downsizing the image.

 

Get a Flickr account.

Then use the Flickr app in light room to export. It'll do all the work mostly for you. And save your hard drive space so you won't have multiple copies of the same thing. As LR is non destructive it doesn't actually alter the RAW file.

If you want stuff to go to your hd. You'll just have to pick depending in what you need.

Tiff will have the highest quality with no compression selected. Jpeg will look good at highest quality setting. Wouldn't use any other formats really.

Size wise..take your pick

I use sRGB

then you can make your own water mark too that'll get added.


But the easiest way is just use Flickr.

 

I keep the quality at 100 and also do sharpen for screen. But not at high. Can't remember what it's at.

 

Gonna get tons of snow pictures today.

 

iPhone but still love this pic

 

The default setting in Lightroom is 75, which is good enough for posting images on the web.

You can read about how Lightroom handles the quality slider and see some examples of how the different quality settings affects the final image below:

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

Basically, setting the quality to 100 significantly increases the size of the file on disk for a negligible increase in quality. I would only use that for printing but even then I would prefer to send a TIFF or PNG to the photo lab.

 

I'd have to check but I believe I set mine to 80, if not 85. Didn't see much improvement (except photos I print) at 100.

Also, some photos I took of my grandmother are being shown at the school's art gallery here with some other photographers work. I printed those after exporting it on 80 and then opening and doing some final touches in PS in the lab here at school so it had been saved as a Jpeg 2-3 times before being printed at 8.5x11 and 13x19 (with some slight cropping) and the quality is still more than 300ppi and looks great from real close up. I'm a RAW shooter and try to get the best quality possibly out of my camera but sometimes I think we worry about it too much haha I see no difference, even in prints, from changing my export quality and all that. Might be just my untrained eye though.

 

Yea as you said probably untrained..not saying my eyes are trained..ha...but like for audio, i bet all of you are perfectly happy with mp3s........






mp3s suck ass so bad its not even funny. But i have trained ears. most don't.

so good point.

i know id never print a jpeg, id only do a non destructive format mostly cause of my audio roots and i know it does make a difference...even if its small.