User talk:Fir0002/Guild

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Contents 1 Welcome! 2 No 5D Mk II at PMA 2.1 Latest Rumour/specs 3 Venue Reviews 3.1 Melbourne F1 GP 4 Fir0002: Just a FYI on HDR imaging

[edit] Welcome!

Welcome to the Photographic Masters' Guild Forum. Sorry I can't make it look prettier, but that' just the way it is :) If you can think of a way to do this so that the Guild style is retained and users can still use the "+" edit please contact me I'd love to hear from you! --Fir0002 00:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello, can you notice the French fr:WP:AP (Photographic Workshop)... it's a beta version, but it introduce the idea. I think your "Guild" is a close idea, and it may be welcome that you take a look at the French project [which aim to give the basics advices to "how to take good encyclopedic photo"], and consider to make a english one. I noticed that, on the English wikipedia, they are several skilled macro photographers, and their skills to shoot every-days objects/animals/etc. may be great. Y_g 07:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Yug, I don't think that kind of stuff is within the scope of this project - the primary goal of the Guild is to recognize and honor the best photographers on the English Wikipedia. --Fir0002 09:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Although having said that I guess this forum my become populated with photographic tips and tricks --Fir0002 22:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Just looking at the list of equipment people are brandishing here, most people may become intimidated by only the fixed costs (let alone the years of experience using it!) and simply return to cut-n-paste operations from the mainstream media (argh!). Encouraging and training people to use whatever they have may go along way to getting people off their butts and into the real world. Emulating something like Strobist would not be a bad thing at all. mdf (talk) 03:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Oki -> this forum is primary to recognize and honor the best photographers : that's good too ! I think both skilled graphists and skilled photographers are under recognize and encouraged !

Anyway, keep in mind the Photographic Lab project -> when you talk with other skilled photographers, try to make summaries into a /FAQ page for beginners. Few have your level (photographers to recognize and honor), but many are interesting to learn tips. Just by doing so, you will really help the project. Y_g 12:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No 5D Mk II at PMA

Disappointing - I was hoping it might be announced at the 2008 PMA but doesn't look like it [1]. Anyone else eagerly waiting for its release? --Fir0002 09:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Nah, but from that link it looks like my 400D may be about to go 'out of date'. :-( Having the most recent model was my saving grace. --jjron (talk) 08:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm usually an eager early-adopter (got the 10D when it first came out and likewise with the 5D), but at the moment, there isn't really anything I'm left wanting with my 5D... Well, except 5 and 7 frame exposure bracketing, with +/- 3 or 4 stops rather than just 2, and faster burst shooting. Ok, well I'd like a few things, but not the sort of thing that will likely be high on Canon's priority list. :-) The 5D is indeed a pretty good piece of kit! Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 01:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah the 5D is extremely impressive - the main reason I'm holding back is dust cleaning. With dust cleaning the 5D would be perfect! --Fir0002 12:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

True, but I don't find dust cleaning THAT much of a problem. I just give the sensor a bit of a wipe down every 3-6 months and its usually good to go. But yeah, given that the 5D is probably near the end of its product life, you're best off waiting for the next-gen. But as always, you'll get the camera quite a bit cheaper at this point, so if the 5D is (well almost) everything you need in a camera, it might be a good time to get it. I bought mine for AUD$4700 (then again, it was two and a half years ago now.. time does fly), and now you can get it for AUD2700ish, but partly due to the strong Aussie dollar at the moment I'd say. Still, you can get it for USD$2200 in the US and we're almost at parity with them now! :-(. Ah well, the good news is the next -gen 5D will probably be a great bit of kit, now that Nikon is punishing them for standing still. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 12:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah the 5D is steal... but I'd be kicking myself when the new one comes out with some in-your-face-nikon!-specs :) What do you use for dust cleaning? --Fir0002 23:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Just some eclipse fluid (high purity ethanol) and swaps as per the Copper Hill Method. It does the job although it never does first time. When I do clean it, I end up swabbing 5-10 times at least, before I'm happy I got rid of most of the big particles. Half the time I make it worse rather than better. Definitely trial and error. You? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 16:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a pretty good method - mine is pretty bad really. More or less it involves the vacuum cleaner and an adapted nozzle head. Yeah I know I can year you laughing already!

[edit] Latest Rumour/specs

This sounds pretty good - hopefully it's well founded. --Fir0002 11:39, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Venue Reviews

Add a review of a photographic venue you've visited! Please describe how you would rate in photographic potential and which subjects/which location has the most photogenic attributes!

[edit] Melbourne F1 GP

To be brutally honest the GP is poor in terms of photographer-friendliness (well assuming you like me can only afford a general admission ticket!). Most of the interesting sections are fenced off for corporates or you can't penetrate the heavy fencing - ie it's too far away from your lens and so the lens locks onto the fence instead of the cars beyond it or the fence is too prominent in the photo (doesn't blur out enough). Some corners they seem to have extended the fencing and in one case erected a sheet of black plastic simply to spite photographers!! The best location that I found after trekking around 3/4 of the track (I didn't walk around the turn 13/14 end - it was a really hot day!) was on corner 6. That said they had a massive jutting out section fencing off the general admission (check out the official circuit map on grandprix.com.au) from getting to good a view so the closest you got to the cars was approx 80m. Image:Heidfeld and Rosberg - 2008 Melb GP.jpg was taken from this location. It's not 1:1 of what I got, this is probably what you'd see zoomed in to 66.67% of the original (ie 2/3).
So overall I'd rate it 2 out of 5 - only go if you happen to be an F1 fan as well and even then I wouldn't really recommend it due to the excessive restrictions placed on a general admission ticket. --Fir0002 12:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yah. A lot of these places seem to be working to discourage amateur photographers. I spose they're scared of you cutting into their revenue or something if you can get photos you can sell or use yourself, instead of buying the professional's ones. Was the Heidfeld/Rosberg photo the best one you got all day? --jjron (talk) 07:20, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to the air-show 2009 tho - no fences! :) :) Probably overall it's the best because it shows quite an interesting scene, but I got a fair few which were similar to that one and the one of Lewis on my userpage. --Fir0002 23:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Be nice to see how the 400 goes at the air show; could get some decent shots. --jjron (talk) 07:59, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fir0002: Just a FYI on HDR imaging

I haven't seen you working on any tone mapped HDR images lately, but I've stumbled across a new program called Tufuse that on first inspection does a brilliant job of merging HDR. It isn't quite as snazzy to use as Photomatix (it runs via command line, but you can drag and drop images onto it in Windows which makes it easy if you just want to use the default settings), but the results are almost always cleaner and more presentable/realistic looking - sometimes lacking in contrast, but you can always adjust that in Photoshop without losing quality, if you're working with 16bit TIFF files. I've always found Photomatix extremely fussy, half the time outputting something quite nice, and other half the time out completely rubbish looking, with bizarre aliased artifacts in the highlights, particularly when things like branches and anything else mobile is concerned. Tufuse isn't perfect either, as it doesn't align images if you've handheld, but when it does work, it just seems to do a better job. Oh and it can focus blend as well as exposure blend. Worth a look at anyway. At the very least, try running some of your old HDR projects through it and see what you think. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 16:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the link - I've noticed some pretty nice HDR's appearing on wiki and istock from you, are you using Photomatix or this to do them? I had a shot with it and although it runs through the algorithm it doesn't produce the output tiff for some strange reason. Any suggestions? The way I did it was get my three exposure in folder, copy in tufuse.exe (and the bat - don't think you need that tho) and drag the images (saved as jpgs) onto the tufuse.exe icon and then it runs through. It says it's saving the output but it never seems to do so - I even searched my HDD for it in case it was saving to an obscure output folder and it hasn't... dw realized you're meant to drop on the .bat. My initial test seemed to work pretty well, when I get some spare time (not looking likely for a while yet!) I'll do some proper test. But thanks again for the link as it looks pretty good --Fir0002 06:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

As an addendum, it is now available with a GUI with more control. I haven't installed it yet and it appears a bit buggy judging by the discussion in the forum, but another tool to add to the arsenal nonetheless. Available here. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 15:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)