The *Official Photography Thread*

I am not that good at it either. But you can make your subject be more at ease by engaging them in light chit-chat or maybe humor. It helps if you know a bit about the person's interests and can ask about that.

When I figure out how to better get what I want, I'll let you know

 

Those people were my close friends, and me directing them was actually more easy than I thought it would be, although my game definitely needs to be polished, err shall I say, built from the ground up.

I've already surpassed the uncomrfortable sensation when taking people's shots, it's making them do what you want that is somewhat new to me.

 

Joe McNally and Zac Arias are fantastic at posing people.

 

Yup, definitely never have a problem with being uncomfortable haha I'll walk up and talk to anyone. I just need to keep learning more posing tips and tricks so I have more unique directions to give. I know the basics with ladies, how to keep them looking slim and all that, but not much else. In due time. I don't particularly like the structured side of things haha so it'll probably be a bit.

 

Those of you who make panoramas, I've got a question.
I'm editing the original, RAW photos in Lightroom to get the white balance and colors all similar between images before stitching them together. Then I export them out of LR and use my panorama software (ArcSoft) to stitch them together. From there I save the stitched file and re-import it into LR to do final adjustments.
My question is, should I export the original images out of LR as TIFFs or high-quality jpegs or does it make a difference?
I tested to see if there is a difference but as far as I can tell, once the panorama software stitched them together and I saved the finish product itself as a TIFF there is no difference between one made with jpegs and one made with TIFFs. It seems like there might be a slight difference in the way the software stitched them but the file size and image pixel dimensions are both the same. Does anyone with more panorama experience have any input here?
Otherwise, I'll just use jpegs because the file size is smaller... I guess I could just delete the original TIFF exports after making the panorama, though.
Thanks!

 

I f you want to learn how to get those awesome non staged shot but in reality they are staged, check out What Makes Me Click with Jerry Ghionis if you can find it. I have the DVD and it is truly awesome listening to him and then seeing him put it to use and seeing the final picture. It is probably one of the best how to's on getting that natural look when doing portraits I've ever seen. The DVD was one of his seminars and his on location shoots to show technique. I learned a lot from it.

 

I stitch all mine together as RAW (in PS) and edit it in PS as one RAW file before exporting as a TIFF to edit in LR.

 

Very nice. Lighting is excellent in his shot. Everything is 3 dimensional from the lighting.

 

I don't have PS but I tried stitching the RAWs together but my panorama program doesn't support RAW images.

 

I guess you answered your own question about how you can do it then.

Honestly, I don't know if it makes a difference because that's how I've always done it. I never tried it the other way.

 

I do not have a lot of pano experience but as I sit here migrating more than 5 million TIFF files and associated metadata files from one system to another I feel comfortable saying that I do have some imaging experience.

At one time yes TIFF being a lossless compression format (normally, you can also do JPEG inside of TIFF) was much better than JPEG format. JPEG software has come a long ways since the beginning however. Most document images are still done with TIFF for various reasons but with pictures there is nothing long with JPEG IMO as long as the lossless is set to highest quality, you should be able to keep it at 100%.

 

You can't give an answer like that and not tell us what you do.

 

Usually just say I herd cats for a living, it is close....

Lot of things LOL but officially a Technical Specialist with Enterprise Content Management Systems for Health Information Management and Electronic Medical Records. We are ranked the #1 hospital in the country finally.

 

Help a brother out!

I flippin HATE presets but when I discovered Kirk Mastin's film presets I found that I really really like them. I'm going to get these B&W ones weather y'all do this or not, but if at least 8 of you just sign up for them I get 80% off I don't usually ask for these stupid things haha but his presets are pretty legitimate.

IF you just sign up I think I still get the discount and you don't have to buy them. However, if you like B&W film you may want to sign up. Anyone who signs up early get's 40% off so if you plan on getting them anyway you may as well get a discount.

Anyway, it'd be awesome if y'all could help a brother out and at least 8 of you signed up so I can get these for me for Christmas! Thanks mucho!

Here's the link: Thanks again!

http://beta.mastinlabs.com?ref=ecAzpiPk

 

I do panos 3 ways:

First though, as im sure you know. Shooting for a pano is important. As in how you shoot..keep that in mind.

1) PS, like Murph. I open the images in Camera RAW and do color adjustments and other steps to make them all look uniform. WB and exposure is key there, but same with saturation and such. then use PS to stitch it save it as a TIFF and then i import it into LR for final color adjustments and upload to flickr through LR.

2) Use LR to edit the photos, then export as TIFFs and then open in PS and stich...i don't do this anymore at all though..

3) Use LR to edit and export as TIFFs then us PTgui to stich. save as a TIFF and reimport into LR. I do this sometimes as PTgui is a real damn good tool for panos, better then PS in some ways and not in others..But i don't do this as often.


I have no idea what program you are using, its not familiar to me. That said, i always noticed a difference when i exported as a TIFF or a jepg before stitching. It looses clarity and sharpness to me.

Several things could be not showing you that, your monitor mainly. I don't have a great monitor myself but i am on a Mac which is color balanced OS and Windows isn't and there are other stuff that can contribute. Even just not having your monitor calibrated. So you may not see the difference because you setup can't show you it.

To ME though, it made a difference.

 

I use Camera Raw to sync the raw images. Then stitch in PS.

TIFF and JPEG are both compressed file formats. TIFF allows you to work in 8 or 16 bit which offers an advantage over JPEG. It can also be used uncompressed. I would export the images using 16b TIFF, edit as required and export to JPEG or whatever format you need

 

Seems to me like the highest quality jpeg exports are similar to the tiffs on my computer, too, but of course that might just be my monitor, as Monte pointed out. Thanks!

Alright, so it sounds like what I'm doing is similar to your #2 and #3, just with my arcsoft "panorama maker 5" program instead.
Hmm makes sense that my monitor wouldn't show the difference, I just use my windows laptop for all my photo work.
I did notice that the program did a liiiittle bit better with auto-stitching tiffs over jpegs, but that was easily fixed with manually picking the points. I'll probably do tiffs from now on and just delete the tiffs afterwards to conserve hard drive space. It's not like I'll be using the exported tiffs after I create the panorama anyways and I'll keep the CR2.

I feel like I do a pretty good job at taking panoramas, but I've never read pointers for actually shooting them well. Do you have some quick tips? I know you're busy with school, so no worries if you don't go too in depth or get to this quickly.

Hmmm Camera Raw sounds super helpful, but is it only available as a PS plug-in? That's what it looks like to me from a brief google search.

Yep, that's what I'll be doing! Thanks!

 

Yes. It only works with PS. However, you might be able to get a student version.

You asked about tips.

• I usually shoot in manual mode to make the exposure even across the panorama while shooting and to make it easier when processing (helps avoid banding).
• It might be tempting to shoot with a polarizer. I would suggest not using one since it will make things harder in post processing.
• If you shoot with a longer lens, you can give your panorama much greater level of detail in the final product.
• Overlap by about 30% to make stitching easier. When you overlap, it's helpful to include something that will help you align things if the area is sparse-the same can be said if your subject has a lot of trees.
• If you have a pano with complex detail, overlap a bit more than 30%.
• Shoot more frames vertically and horizontally than you think you'll need for the final product.
• The farther away your subject is, the less you'll need to worry about rotating about about the nodal point. You can read about how to do it here.

There are plenty more, I'm sure. But those are what I can think about off hand.

 

for any kind of panoramic shot, it would be best if you shoot with the camera on on full manual, so you there is less work on the back end. set your WB, exposure for the scene, lock focus and then shoot.

with your stitching hardware, I would do high quality jpegs. I don't know the technical difference with TIFFs or jpegs, but in the end, jpegs are fine. just keep in mind, it will still be a large file.

edit: what Ian said.

also using longer lenses will have less artifacts than wider lenses in the end product.

 

I already have those presets in Silver Efex Pro in the NIK Collection.