As a complete novice in photography, but one who has a couple of nice (not SLR) digital cameras, is anyone able to recommend a beginners guide to photo editing? I find I don't even understand most of the terms used in the photo editing software, never mind how to use them.

TT

If you are thinking of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements try the 'Missing Manual' series. Pretty comprehensive and very easy on the brain.

Try:

Digital Camera Tips and Reviews: Photonhead, The Essence of Modern Film and Digital Photography

Photpshop specific: Photo Editing on Your Computer With Photoshop : Beginner Guide : Tools for Adobe Photoshop CS2: A Beginners Guide | TechOnVideo

Gimp guide (probably the best free editor there is): Gimp Tutorials Beginners Guide to The GIMP TipClique Tutorials

Some thoughts before you buy software
Before You Buy Photo Editing Software

As a GA pilot first (when I used to fly and I should I say it I worked for the Oz regulator), I learned a couple of things.

1. All pilots understand technology.
2. Therefore, they normally understand computers (and other electronic devices).
3. When they fly they normally carry cameras with them and take pics.
4. Therefore the best pics of aircraft are normally taken by pilots.
5. But they also use programs like photoshop and manipulate pics to make them real good.

Keep it up.

:E

Foresight & green granite

Many thanks. That has certainly given me somewhere to start. I have to admit that I have always found myself to have the kind of brain (such as it is) that needs to RTFM rather than wing it with occasional resort to the help file.
That lot will certainly keep me out of trouble for a while.
TT

RE the posts on the ND grad filter effects available in CS4 Adobe Camera Raw, the same tool is in Adobe Lightroom, which also uses ACR. It is a very useful feature. For a tutorial on it have a look here:
Workshops-On-Demand

It is about three minutes into the tutorial.
I think the entire set of Lightroom tutorials are very worthwhile. If you were going to download the 30 day trial of Lightroom I would highly recommend looking at the tutorials before starting the 30 day clock ticking.
I attended a day seminar put on by JuliAnne Kost on Photoshop and she is simply excellent.

I must admit to liking lightroom, trouble is the last time i tried installing it into W 7 it screwed up the desk top icons, must try it with RC1 and see what happens.

That's a useful site innuendo thanks for posting it :ok:

Upgrading from Nikon D50?
 

Now that I've got some good glass and a spiffing flashgun, do I upgrade the camera?

Mine's a D50, and the 18 - 200 lens does seem to work quite well with it, but there's a bloke with a D200 for sale on Craig's listy thing, and I'm rather tempted. At a little over half the cost of a D90, it really seems to be a step forward. However, it doesn't seem to have the same 'Auto for Dummies' setting that the cheaper ones have.

$650 is the asking price for the body. There is a battery/grip with it as well. The thing is that the 90 seems to be getting rave reviews, and it has video and LCD sighting option. Quite a leap forward.

What think you?

I think you'd do way better with the D90 than the D200, which is now 2 or 2.5 generations behind depending on how you squint. They all have "auto for dummies", but if that's your criterion I wonder why you're considering leaving the D50, which is also a fine camera.

I see the D3000 has a "Guide" mode that "provides in-camera assistance for making camera settings and utilizing professional techniques"

I think it will be worth waiting for the D90. I mentioned your post to my wife, and she likes you - a lot. "we don't need to be spending money on non-essentials right now."

How do you explain to a mere woman, that a nifty camera is an essential?

To be honest, I think the raw vs jpeg argument will contine until the end of time, a bit like the Mac vs PC. I suppose it depends what you want to do with your images. One thing to bear in mind, if you do shoot in raw, make sure you have a lot of space to keep those files. Having said that, there is no substitute for a well taken photograph. Prepare, know your subject, and know your camera.

I do a bit of bird photography, specialising in a particular bird of prey. I shoot in the highest quality jpeg; I also sell my work, and provide images for publishing, and no comment (thus far!) has been made about the image being in jpeg format.

My one piece of advice would be to purchase the best quality lens you can afford. You won't regret it.

A rough guide to Raw v JPEG but as Helol says it will run and run

When to use Raw

You need to post process the image
The white balance cannot be properly set with the camera
The scene contains high contrast
The image will be enlarged beyond the camera sensor's resolution
You can't decide whether to use Raw or JPEG
You are using infra-red filters

When to use JPEG.

All the Raw files won't fit in your memory card
You don't want to post process the image
You want to print the photos right away before you get to use a computer

Some of those "problems" in the previous post are not necessarily problems at all, and can be viewed as opportunities for creative control of the final image. For example: is there really one "proper" white balance, and why should you be tied to whatever the camera (or photographer) decides at the time?

Analogy: if you make a print from a negative, you can fine-tune the image at that point, while going straight to JPEG can be compared to a Polaroid print: one shot, live with the results. I could put in another way: with digital media, you can easily throw away information, but once it's gone, you can not get it back.

Remember, JPEG uses lossy compression - it throws some information away. I'd reverse that advise: only use JPEG when you can't post-process, or really don't want to. :cool:

One more reason to shoot JPG is the number of frames per second is higher - this is probably due to the time it takes to write the frames and the buffer space available.

On most cameras you can shoot in RAW & JPG at the same time, which is useful when many of your shots are snapshots, but some aren't, and the camera's useless at making its own jpgs (and I'm looking at you, Ricoh GX200).

I know a professional wildlife photographer who does very well thank you very much, and he shoots in jpeg. On the other hand, another photographer shoots in raw. Horses for courses...

My personal opinion, is that (and I'll probably get shot down for this!), it is better to have taken a good photograph to start off with, needing just a little touching up (i.e. unsharp - especially with Canon, and possible levels), than to have taken a crap photo and spend endless hours on the computer trying to make it look good.

As someone mentioned, fps is quite important, more so if shooting action images with a fast moving subject (birds, F1, etc). However, I suppose if you are taking a shot of a castle or what have you, then fps isn't high on the priority list.

I shoot in RAW, then convert in Photoshop........only time i would shoot in JPEG would be when i need a fast multi shoot. I use a Nikon D300, and find my best lens for ground to air stuff is the 70-300 vr.
Photos: Canadair CL-600-2B16 Challenger 601-3R Aircraft Pictures | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BUt i use a 55-200 vr for air-to-air work.

Photos: De Havilland DH-82A Tiger Moth II Aircraft Pictures | !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers

Nice pictures TP, the only reason for I can think of for not shooting raw is either using the auto modes which don't allow you to save in RAW on the Canon, or if you're limited for space on the storage medium.

I make no apologies for posting this I think it's a brilliant piece of animated cad, and absolutely fascinating, you'll see it's relevance when you watch it. :ok:

YouTube - UC Berkeley E128 Final Project - Canon 10D DSLR v2

Canon animated CAD
 

Brilliant GG, think I'll have to retire my can of WD40 now...
DaveD

Oh. :( So that puts paid to my plans for repairing my camera.



I rebuilt a badly damaged Sony Broadcast quality camera once. It had been dropped from 20' onto concrete. It was nowhere near as complicated as that.

Wow! great url. thanks.
That reminds me why I stopped mucking about with car engines. All this 'lectric clevery isn't there to make the cars go better - it's there to stop home engine builds and anything other than basic maintenance.
I suspect that all consumer electronics is designed to be complex so if a tiny bit goes wrong, you chuck it out and buy new.

I'm not sure why this came out of UCB - it's the sort of thing they do in the back streets of Calcutta.

.............now, where's the menu on this bl**dy Olympus?...........

Any one fancy a long focal length lens? :E

Canon 5200mm F14 SLR DSLR Lens on eBay (end time 09-Dec-09 09:57:17 GMT)

Nikon D90
 

As mentioned, there's a bloke that has a second-hand, but almost unused D90 for sale. Body, batts, charger, etc., I have the lens.


He checks out, and has advertised the unit for some months. I'm just wondering if any Ppruners have heard any bad issues with this model. So many good reports came out when it was new that it became a logical upgrade, but there has been time for horror stories to be written.

Remember, I'm taking a great chance buying anything right now, cos the stars are aligned so that almost everything I touch explodes, but there's no time at my age to wait for a year or two for an improvement. :uhoh:

D90's a fine camera. If I remember, you already have a Nikon body and reasonably good lenses. I'm not sure the D90 will necessarily make your photos better. Again, if I remember, didn't you buy then sell an SB800 when the SB400 would have been a better match? But anyway, the D90's a very good camera with no real vices. Better dynamic range than many of its competitors, at any price, when it was released. In terms of "can it guide me to a better photo", you might want to look at the D3000.

Half right . . . I didn't sell it.:}


My wife thinks I've taken leave of my senses. I've become very good at thinking of reasons for buying things, but not so hot with the use or disposal of same. It's called ski-ing. Spending the kid's inheritance.

This was taken with the D50, and an 18 - 70 67mm 4.5 DX lens. It's a pity we can't put the full package on our photos, this one really has a depth to it at 1920 res.

I've just looked, and the focus is not represented here.

You can almost feel the polish on the marble with a picture that hasn't been 'though the bucket'. was 750k - reduced to 195ish.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...opNorth125.jpg


Cavendish tomb at Cartmel.

The D90 is a great camera I used to use one, but have recently made the switch to dare I say it Canon!

I sometimes wish I hadnt made the switch as the D90 is a great body.

The two big things for me with the D90 are excellent viewfinder and great resolution screen ok the Canon is great as well but there is just something about the D90 plus the buttons and ergonimcs for me were great (Im a female though and have small hands) so if you have bigger hands you might not find other bodies a problem

Linda

Just got back from the vendor. Unit looks good, virtually like new. Seems to work and fed into my laptop okay. The trouble is that he has no documentation for it.

I came back with nothing but the serial number.

I explained my concerns were twofold. As a resident alien, I have a lot to lose if I don't 'do due diligence'. Also, Nikon won't register it for warranty without a bill of sale. It may even have been registered by someone. The owner of the shop died, and the vendor lost what little paperwork he had during a house move.

Now, here's a thing. My first Samsung had been registered to someone else before it was delivered to me. It took me about 10 mins to find that out. Nikon don't seem to be so helpful. I spent ages trying to find out about my 18 - 200 lens, which cost exactly the same as the price of this D90 $650. I was able to get a bill of sale for that, but never had any response to my registration - except for a slew of e-mails advertising new Nikon kit. :ugh: It seems that it would be easier to get in touch with the dead.

Anyone know a way to actually speak with Nikon?

1-800-Nikon-UX for tech support on all Nikon products, 8 a.m. - 2 a.m. Eastern. If by docs you mean manuals, they're all available on-line as non-printable PDFs if you don't register, and as printable if you do register. Printed manuals can also be purchased.

No sadly, I mean proof of purchase. Nothing. All the goodies seemed to be there, but not that piece of paper.

Seems a real nice guy, but as I told him, I can't take ownership of anything without receipts. It's surprising how many people become parted from their receipts, so I would have thought Nikon would have had some sort of procedure to cover that.

It seems that I can't even purchase a Mack Extended deal without this paperwork.

Pity, it looked near to mint condition.

800 Nikon UX Just another line to the Dom Rep I would guess. Tried tech just now to see if they would be more helpful. Nope. No way they are going to check out a given serial number. I didn't want the owner's personal details, just whether it had been registered. How hard is that?

I went on to say that if someone dies, and there's a lot of stock to dispose of, the people doing it don't care about serial numbers, or cameras, or even Nikon, in all their godly importance. They just want the kit out. Surely, that shouldn't mean it's all rendered valueless.

Well, that's what I said . . . but it was more for my release than a serious suggestion.

Hang on a moment . . . just got to :ugh: :ugh: That's better.

Camera Lenses...
 

I've been using a Nikon D40X for the last year and a half. It's been great fun using it and it's travelled all over the world with me.

I've currently got the Nikon 18-55 lens and a Sigma 70-300 lens (which has been sent off to Sigma for repair) but I'm really struggling to get other lenses for the camera that offer the AF features and don't cost a fortune. Can anyone recommend any lens/accessories that are must haves?

I understand that the camera is a lightweight/beginners DSLR, have I maybe just out grown the camera?

Why do you feel you need other lenses?

I'd been told that the D40 'doesn't support' the same lenses as the main range. Is this true?

D40 won't autofocus with (very) old lenses. For Nikkor, that means a non-AF-S lens.

I would just like to try more things, like wide angle photography etc.

If you want a wide angle zoom, your choices are are bit limited on the D40 if you want autofocus. Off the top of my head, the Sigma 10-20 is the only non-Nikon wide angle zoom lens that will autofocus on the D40. If you're happy with manual focus, Tokina and Tamron also work.

I have the Nikkor 12-24 and like it. It's pricey, though. The Tokina 11-16 has its fans but it would be manual focus on your camera. That's probably not much of a problem at wide angles, though.

If you want a lot of bang for your buck, and you want to mess around, look at the Lensbaby web site.

I wonder if you can advise? I am finding that the quality of readily available 35mm C41 processing and printing is getting so increasingly and consistently rubbish, that using decent kit is a waste of time, you might as well be using a Lomo.
The camera is available, the film is available, but the quality of cost effective developing and printing is going to be the thing that finally drives refuseniks like me away. Its a conspiracy!

Maybe its time that I considered dipping my toe into digital.
But is there such a thing as a digital replacement for the quality 35mm compact? Contax T3, Nikon 35Ti etc?

I really would like the following spec.

Can bung in readily available disposable batteries in emergency, and not be tied to a future obsolescent sliver of custom lithium.

Must have a viewfinder. A bulky battery guzzling screen I can live without, but I guess you can't halt 'progress'. Still, I want a viewfinder.

A fixed focus lens of 'Sonnar' type quality, and built to last.

Basically I would like a digital version - same size, same cost, same functionality, same build and optical quality as a Contax T3 or similar.


Do you think these will ever re-appear? I know that Canon have the G10 and Olympus have the PEN, amongst others, but they all fall short somehow. Maybe the next T3 or 35Ti is just round the corner. Things seem to be moving that way.

Failing that, does anyone have any good 35mm process and printing recommendations? Anyone still do it the good old-fashioned way instead of some oik roughly digitising your negatives?

Digital camera wise, think about a second hand Canon 350D or 400D, plenty available on E-Bay.

As for film processing just Google "film processing labs" and take your pick, I know it means sending your films away by post but it's probably the best way nowadays.

Camera? I don't know of anything that ticks all your requirement boxes regarding batteries or quality or viewfinder.

Everyone is different, has different needs but at least we can offer a shortlist. You've already mentioned the Oly Pen. I'd offer the Panasonic GF1 with the superb 20mm 'pancake' lens but there's no viable viewfinder to suit you at base level. Both cameras suffer too much shutter lag for my tastes and are, in my view, desperately overpriced considering how much they are leaving out compared to a DSLR.

Other than stepping up to the modern digital Leica range there's no obvious choice without compromises at the moment. It may be you have requirements that suit a halfway house/medium term/interim route to digital. There are interesting offerings from Ricoh, Samsung and a couple of others to consider but the large sensor, high quality compact market is still very immature and it's interesting that in the quality, small sensor world Canon is actually dropping megapixels in the search for better quality.

As to C41 I've got to point you away from PPRuNe. Try a site like Talk Photography which is UK based and has an entire forum devoted to traditional film. There are valuable threads running right now regarding processing.

Film & Conventional - Talk Photography

Rob

Not a compact but the Pentax K100D and K200D (I have the 200) use AA batteries, have a viewfinder, and are excellent DSLRs.

I don't think there are any compacts around today that use AA or AAA batteries. A real shame because the lithium (non-rechargeable) ones last nearly for ever and are very light.

Arguably the best picture quality compact is the Canon S90. I bought one for my GF and am astonished at the quality. Not as good as my K200D but quite scarily close, in any half decent lightning conditions.