The *Official Photography Thread*

15 second exposure from my balcony tonight, came out pretty cool.


bought a shitty ass tripod, but it works

 

Thats flippin' awesome Cody!

 

I bought a 4 stop ND. It's done fine for the waterfalls I've done. Most of them are so expensive because of the multi coatings they have on them. I've heard lots of awesome things about the Lee filters but with the filter and holder you're looking at $250+

This is the one I bought. I don't notice any color shifts with it. Make sure you're looking at 10 stop filters while you're looking. Mine says ND16 but it is only a 4 stop. You do know that you have to put the 10 stop on after focusing? You can't see through them.

http://www.hoyafilter.com/hoya/products/pro1digitalfilterseries/pro1dnd16/

I read something somewhere that someone used a #10 welding lens in front of their camera and adjusted for the color shift in post using a RAW pic. Might be something to try.

 

That seems like a defect.

Do you shoot with an older Nikon body by chance?

 

There are actually a few reviews on B&H that said the same thing about this filter.

 

I just read them.

One says it's not a AWB thing but that it's easily fixed. I'm guessing with color temp? I also have the B+W but have not experienced that problem.

I asked about the older Nikon body because some of their older sensors had issues with patchy magenta cast-which are harder to get rid of.

 

This thread makes me want to get back into photography. I used to use a Nikon F100 and FM2 many years ago. Digital photography was just starting to take hold at that point in time. I'll have to do some homework on this digital stuff. I don't know much about the cameras outside of my phone.

 

It doesn't happen with every photo taken with the filter, just the occasional one. Haven't experimented with situations that cause the shift to occur or not occur. But it is very easily handled in Lightroom with a little futzing with the WB and tint settings. Even if it had a magenta shift on every photo, the ease of correcting it would still allow me to say it's a great filter. Everything else about it works great. Nice and sharp and allows for some cool shots!

 

I like the Starling.

 

Simply awesome!!

As much as I dislike this bird species, this is a great shot. Really love the colors

 

While walking around close to midnight in Russia. The polar night is difficult to get used to. The sun never sleeps




Got to shoot this today. Required a special permission as it located inside a national security area in Russia. Allowing anyone in there with a camera is not allowed but a tourist?? Crazy. So I was escorted and allowed to only face one direction. In the end- I had some fun and the guys were all laughing. Sorry low res due to inner web speed

From Noyabrsk, Russia

 

Love the "creature" sculpture. And the first, which looks like a flooded cemetery.

 

The mosquito is pretty impressive when you look at how close it resembles the real thing as far as the details like the claws on the feet.

The flooded area was something I happened to notice once I pulled down a plastic barrier a little to peak over. Its basically a pylon set for a new building. not sure at what stage its at but I too liked the way it came off. Only wish I had a tripod for an extended exposure. i think it would have looked better than way

All I had was my 60D and 24-105mm lens. Couldnt carry anything else on this trip due to weight restrictions and the need to have a lot of cold weather clothing.

 

Thanks guys, still trying to take advantage of the kickass view this condo has

grabbed this one tonight, kinda like this angle more. gets part of my university in the shot too
Im thinking about spot editing the light pollution on the far left but kinda like how you can see punchbowl because of it



also caught the moon just as it set behind the far ridge. With the cityscape, might be my favorite shot of the city so far

 

Took tons of pictures this week in New Mexico and Arizona...

Carlsbad Caverns....



Cruised out and found a fairly dark spot up in the canyon heading to the caverns. The torches in the oil fields ruined the sky in the areas away from buildings and streetlights.

Tokina 11-18mm at 11mm


Vivitar/Rokinon/Samyang 8mm fisheye



And the meteor crater in AZ... 2nd shot is for perspective, the flag is standard 3x5 and the cutout of the astronaut is to scale. They are on the fence around one of the pits in the center of the crater.

18-140 kit lens


200-500 Tamron zoomed all the way in (should be 500mm, but EXIF always reports 400mm)

 

great photos dudes!

i have some questions.

1) Does anyone still have the Camera Raw 8.3 plugin they could zip me? 8.4 won't work in Bridge for some reason?? very annoying..


2) Why are there the odd cross hatch like circles in this photo??

Home.jpg by Monte Nickles Photos, on Flickr

how can i blur the star streaks in this one to get rid of the damn notchy look..

Home-2.jpg by Monte Nickles Photos, on Flickr


these were my choices for the weekly challenge btw over the one i posted.

 

what are you using to stitch the photos together? i've played with "StarStax" and it works quite well and has built-in support for eliminating the "notchiness". i'm on a Mac though... not sure if they have a windows version if you're on the PC side of things.

 

Is anyone still using Magic Lantern on a T3i and how is it working out for you? Any problems? Would you recommend installing it?

 

It's called Moire and it is caused by the optical interference of parallel lines intersecting. Normally, it would be the stars intersecting the scan lines on your monitor, but in this case, it seems the stacking software has introduced a scan pattern that is causing it in the image.
I will occasionally see it on the LCD on my camera, but it is never there in the actual image, and goes away if I zoom on the LCD (spreading the lines apart)... a perfect example is to take a photo through a window screen.

It is because, when your brain sees an "X", the intersection is not perceived as true sharp angles, but rather with a slight filet.
The same thing happens putting pixels together.
The spinning yellow disk on Spock's workstation used this effect.

How to fix it? Once there, I don't think it can be, though if you take the 2nd picture below and scale it up and down you'll see the effect changes as the scale changes. Look for a configuration setting that references Moire.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Sl_Lqpkvo