photography

[g4ghb]

I used Photoshop. If you have it, just write your text and then just turn the opacity of the layer down.

Doh! - of course! ....... and there was me thinking it was a seperate application / feature of your downloading software

cheers mate! - I'll be doing mine in future - then again they ain't a patch on yours!

 

[leon-b]

have you made any money from your photos yet or are you going to sell them when you have your new camera ?
how long have you been taking pictures for ?
leon

 

[jon r]

have you made any money from your photos yet or are you going to sell them when you have your new camera ?
how long have you been taking pictures for ?
leon

Unfortunately i havnt made any money yet! Its a really hard market to get into!

But i am really going to try and sell some when i get my new camera.

I have been taking photos for a few years now and have got to know my camera really well. even when i have my digital SLR i will still take photos with it.

When you get your camera i suggest taking loads of photos and playing around with the different settings to get to know your camera better .

 

[leon-b]

i will try some macro photos of flowers, i regularly get alot of different birds in my garden so i will practice on these
i have read all this talk about shutter speeds and i dont know what it is, please could some body explain it to me
leon

 

[jon r]

Well, i have never dealed with shutter speeds but i will have to when i grt my new camera. Here is a really good website which explains it all
http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/enjoydslr/terminology.html#shutterspeed

So if you were taking a picture of a bird flying in the sky you would use a really fast shutter speed to capture ut without blur.

But if you were taking a pic of a waterfall you could use a sloww shutter speed to capture the motion of the water.

 

[ArkAngel]

A good idea at some point would be some photo editing software for the computer.
These days digital photography is so easy with something like paint shop pro or my favorite Adobe photoshop elements. It's about £80 but well worth it. It's a chopped down version of the full photoshop program (which is about £700) but still has most of the functions that most photographers need.

What it used to take me hours to do in a darkroom can now be done in a hour or so on the computer.

I seem to remember you said you had a "dell" printer. Again if you want to print out your photo's you WILL need a new printer as well.
I work with printers all day and get a funny twitch when people mention dell printers
A canon would be anyones best bet. About £70 for a photo quality one, loads of ink in the cartridges and the cheapest to run.

 

[leon-b]

i dont have any editing software at the moment, i will use paint at the moment just to crop and attach my name to them. i will need to get some softwhere though, i will build up my photography kit over time
whats wrong with dell printers ?
leon

 

[jon r]

They are Lexmark printers in discusie! And the ink is very expencive!

But i dont know what the print quality is like, cant be too bad

 

[ArkAngel]

Well, i have never dealed with shutter speeds but i will have to when i grt my new camera. Here is a really good website which explains it all
http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/enjoydslr/terminology.html#shutterspeed

So if you were taking a picture of a bird flying in the sky you would use a really fast shutter speed to capture ut without blur.

But if you were taking a pic of a waterfall you could use a sloww shutter speed to capture the motion of the water.

Thats a fablulous explanation i couldn't of done it better myself

There will be 3 main programs you should use on your camera
Full auto: The camera decides on the aperture and shutter speed

Shutter priority: You decide the shutter speed and the camera decides the aperture. this is usefull for stopping action dead (fast shutter speeds would be a true freeze frame, ie a waterfall would be stopped dead and you could see every drop of water frozen)or a long shutter speed where it would look like milk.

Aperture priority: You decide the aperture and the camera works out the shutter speed. Aperture controls the "depth of field" which is the amount of the picture in focus. Large apertures mean the iris in the lens is wide open, shutter speeds will be fast but the depth of field will be small (my meerkat photo is a good example, the subject is in focus the background is fuzzy) or a small aperture when the iris looks like a pinhole. The shutter speeds will be long but the photo will be sharp from front to back (usefull for landscapes)

These are the settings and the tools that photographers use to create a good photo. It is up to you to experiment and find out the best way for you to take these photos. That is the advantage of digital....shoot like a maniac and it doesn't cost anything.

 

[leon-b]

will it be ok if i use full auto at first and then move on to the others when i have learnt more? or would the pictures not turn out right ?
leon

 

[ArkAngel]

They are Lexmark printers in discusie! And the ink is very expencive!

But i dont know what the print quality is like, cant be too bad

I repair and sell printers for a living....i wont touch Dell or lexmark printers with a bargepole. They are not worth the plastic used to make them. They are cheap, nasty, poor quality, slow, expensive to run, with no ink in the cartridges. I wouldn't use one to prop open my garage door

<phew> damn that was nice to say for once i normally have to be a bit more diplomantic with customers

Seriously the quality is shocking, depends on the model but you would get maybe 3-4 A4 prints out of it before you needed ink. Comparethat to the tests we do on the Canon's we sell, they will do 50-60 before the first ink tank needs changing (they are all seperate tanks, black, cyan (blue), magenta and yellow) single tank systems are the most efficiant way if you are printing photo's

 

[ArkAngel]

will it be ok if i use full auto at first and then move on to the others when i have learnt more? or would the pictures not turn out right ?
leon

Nah mate use all the settings from day one. After all if it's not to your liking delete it!
That is the beauty, from day one play with the camera. Use all the settings on it, get to know it inside and out.
You will soon find what you prefer to use to get the results you want.

 

[leon-b]

maybe i will get a printer for my birthday (april), what do you reccomend ?
leon

 

[leon-b]

thanks AA
leon

 

[jon r]

i have an Epson printer and i have got on fine with it so far (Epson R240)

The only thing that really annoys me is that the computer says that the ink has ran out before it actually has. I got an ink cartrige chip resetter off ebay! You just hold the chip on this gadget, put it back in the printer and the computer says the ink is full again!

I did this and the ink level went down by half again before it truely ran out.

The chip resetter is well worth the investment! only cost about £2

 

[ArkAngel]

maybe i will get a printer for my birthday (april), what do you reccomend ?
leon

The range may have been updated by then but at the moment i would recommend a Canon pixma ip4300. They cost about £70
They have 5 cartridges in them.
Black (Double size for text printing and photos)
A separate photo black and then seperate yellow, blue, and red cartridges.

The quality is the best on the market there is nothing to touch them (and yes i will defend them to the hilt, i don't want to hear about HP, Lexmark or Epson. The canons are the best hands down)

Your dell will have 12ml of black ink in the cartridge tops. The Canon's have 26ml
Your colour cartridge will have 3-4ml in each tank. The Canon's have 16ml

There is loads more ink which equals more prints. Most modern Epsons only have about 8ml in per cartridge, and some Hp's have only 5ml in. Now that's bad enough in the black, but if you apply that to the colour (which is split into 3 tanks like your Dell) then that equates to 1.6ml of ink per tank....IT'S PATHETIC! :aargh4: how do HP designers sleep at night?

Phew rant over...it's good to get that off my chest

 

[leon-b]

i will go for a cannon then
leon

 

[ArkAngel]

i will go for a cannon then
leon

Thats good to know, mate excellent choice.


**NOTE** i do not work for Canon or have any affiliation with the company. I work for an idependant computer company and the information is based on my experiences alone and the technical data available from the companies. I rarely have to fix Canon printers apart from normal seviceing. If they break it's because they are worn out due to a very heavy usage. It will not say however that they are infallable like all machines they will wear out in time. In contrast i must fix10-15 Epson printers a week and condem maybe twice as many. HP's and Lexmarks are normally broken beyond repair when they arrive. It's the nature of the design.

 

[leon-b]

have i got this right
to get rid of chicken wire you put the camera close to the wire (touching) and then focus the camera on the bird or whatever you are photographing, this will put the chicken wire out of focus and make it invisible
leon

 

[ArkAngel]

have i got this right
to get rid of chicken wire you put the camera close to the wire (touching) and then focus the camera on the bird or whatever you are photographing, this will put the chicken wire out of focus and make it invisible
leon

Yes if the bird is a fair distance away from the wire. Then using a wide aperture (for a narrow field of focus) The bird will be in focus and the wire will be too close to the camera and thrown so far out of focus that it becomes as good as invisible.