News For camera nerds only

[old.user4556]

Lightroom.

 

[TdC]

after much faffing and dithering, I went and bought Lightroom about a year ago. Imo it's great.

 

[caLLous]

Lightroom is great (having said that I still use ACR/Photoshop) but for the casual/hobbyist user I can see it being pretty daunting at first. If it's just for basic stuff maybe Photoshop Elements or something like ACDSee 16.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Pixlr Editor, similar tools and layount to Photoshop in your browser:

http://pixlr.com/editor/

completely free, but is jpeg only, no RAW. It does crop, unsharp mask and clone tools etc. which is fine for me.

I haven't used it much, but will probably use it on my netbook when I'm away. I have been using Gimp up till now but it isn't easy.

It does rely on having internet though, and that can be a problem some places.

I have Lightroom for the RAW files when I get home though.

RB

 

[Fast]

Thanks for the suggestions, I decided on Lightroom. I spent a few hours tinkering last night, certainly appears to be very good. I now have to put the time in and learn.

 

[milou]

Useful: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom.html

 

[Tom]

I went camping with a mate and took a load of great pictures. I also took about 20-30 raw images of the night sky, which was beautiful, but I can't stack them and see the Milky Way because the stars rotate too much (no trails).

Anyone know how to get around this? Here's one of the images, ramped up, with obvious sensor noise. The stacking programmes get rid of that noise, but they also get rid of the Milky Way and most of the stars.

 

[TdC]

ssssend us the RAW Tombacon there's a good chap

re the rotation, there is no stopping the earth moving, however there are some sums you can do to see what your maximum exposure is for a given lens without getting motion blur. you *could* set up a few exposures that are fractions of that time and stack them.

 

[Tom]

I've tried stacking them with a variety of bits of software and it just doesn't work. I think I probably need a new camera, the 20D is quite old now.

 

[milou]

It lives! http://seafeverbook.co.uk/

 

[TdC]

ooo pretty!

 

[TdC]

23 pounds to ship the special ed to NL :-(

 

[milou]

Thanks. I'm outside all those arrangements - I have to provide images and text. And maybe pimp it out a bit.

 

[TdC]

milou, book pimp. has a nice ring to it! I *may* get your special ed, but I'll have to eat a lot of sugar to soften the pain of nearly 30 euros of postage

 

[milou]

Cheers. You could contact David Breen (Triplekite Publishing) to see if anything could be done. He's also the publisher of Dav Thomas's With Trees: http://withtrees.co.uk/

 

[TdC]

you're a prince amongst men Milou! I've fired off an email

 

[TdC]

result!

 

[milou]

Good stuff.

 

[TdC]

this book better be full of nekkid pictures of you or I'm returning it!

 

[milou]

Special gatefold edition with tripod fully extended.

 

[TdC]

mmmm

 

[old.user4556]

I went camping with a mate and took a load of great pictures. I also took about 20-30 raw images of the night sky, which was beautiful, but I can't stack them and see the Milky Way because the stars rotate too much (no trails).

Anyone know how to get around this? Here's one of the images, ramped up, with obvious sensor noise. The stacking programmes get rid of that noise, but they also get rid of the Milky Way and most of the stars.

I've done plenty of Milky Way shots and here's my advice for best results:

- if you want to avoid star trails and get the Milky Way, you need to limit yourself to 30 seconds at 10mm (or 16mm in 35mm full format money) otherwise you'll see earth's rotation
- you need as big an aperture as possible, one of the best lenses for this is the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 (for crop sensors). 11mm at f/2.8 will get a lot of light in.
- you'll need to use ISO 1600 to ISO 3200 on a camera that has good high ISO performance (in the crop world, the Nikon D5200 will give you the least noise in the crop segment)
- you'll need as little light pollution as possible
- shoot and adjust images in RAW mode

If you've got deep pockets, you'll get excellent / best results from:

- Nikon D600
- Rokinon 14mm f/2.8

Here's what I managed with a Sony NEX7 and a Canon 10-22mm with Topaz Denoise (10mm @ f/3.5, ISO 3200 and 30 seconds):

 

[Tom]

Cheers G, on another day I could easily afford the D600 but I've spent a fortune investing in my business, doing my house up and fixing the suspension niggles on the car, and I still have to buy a new sofa and big fat telly.

A mate has a 60D he might flog me for cheap, I may borrow it to see what sort of star images I can take. The 20D clearly isn't up to the job, being too old.

 

[TdC]

nice one G-bacon. I'm giving that Topaz stuff a trial in my LR4 based system. so far looks pretty sweet.

 

[TdC]

nice one G-bacon. I'm giving that Topaz stuff a trial in my LR4 based system. so far looks pretty sweet.

ooooo

le lightroom4



le Topaz

 

[old.user4556]

Cheers G, on another day I could easily afford the D600 but I've spent a fortune investing in my business, doing my house up and fixing the suspension niggles on the car, and I still have to buy a new sofa and big fat telly.

A mate has a 60D he might flog me for cheap, I may borrow it to see what sort of star images I can take. The 20D clearly isn't up to the job, being too old.

You've also got the rental market if you knew you were going somewhere ultra dark and also getting the weather.

Nikon D600 and the Nikon 14mm-24mm f/2.8 and you're all set, try somewhere like hireacamera.com

 

[Raven]

Didn't want to make a new thread so asking here.

I am making a small green room box at work, the idea is we are taking pictures of all our spare parts so we can put them on quotes, the website etc and don't want a background.

Things I need!

A cheapish camera that takes a decent macro shot
If I buy some green paint and spray the inside of the box, talking 4 foot wide or so can photoshop and whatnot filter it all out and give a transparent background?
If the pics taken are 4-5mb can I reduce the size down and keep a good quality picture?

Colour I am looking at is RAL 6018

 

[caLLous]

There's all manner of programs to deal with green screens (or backgrounds of any colour) but photoshop can do it. I've only done it in Vegas with video with the Chroma Key filter but the principals will be the same (add subject with green screen as new layer on top of whatever new background you want and make the green transparent).

You only need a background, you don't need to have the subject inside a box.

What sort of "spare parts" are we talking about here? Probably a cheap off camera flash with a DIY diffuser (greaseproof paper and a rubber band) over it to soften the output would be sufficient to make it look good. Without proper lighting it might look a bit shit.

 

[Raven]

Mostly mechanical and electrical so limit switches, PCBs, bit of cabling, gears, electric motors and whatnot. The only reason I made a box was because of the variance of size, a few inches to a couple of feet.

 

[caLLous]

All the box will do is obstruct light. A big bit of background paper (1m wide by 2m or whatever) that runs under the subject (so it has a green floor under it) will suffice.