Announcement

**Kuciwalker** · October 25, 2003, 20:14

As of lately I've been VERY interested about photography.. I'm most interested in taking nature pictures.. I've seen one of the most beautiful things nature can offer and I'd really love to memorize them with camera, but I want to do it good and properly.

Maybe it's just that I'm up late, but that sounds like it could be misinterpreted...

**Pekka** · October 25, 2003, 20:22

Nah, just pictures of nature (no humans) and maybe animals too.

**Chemical Ollie** · October 25, 2003, 20:25

If you don't have a camera, get a digital one. It's more expensive for the same lens, but the idea is that you can take a million pictures for free and only save the very best ones. That's the basic secret of taking good pictures - take a lot of them! Only one picture out of 100 is really good even for a professional photographer.

When you buy a digital camera, look at the lens rather than the electronics. Only buy a digital camera brand that is good at analogue cameras, like Canon, Minolta, Olymous etc. I personally have a Panasonic DMC-FZ1 with a 12X optic zoom Leica lens. I could also recommed any Olympus camera from good personal experience. Just make sure you don't buy a Sony, but if you do, make sure it has a Carl Zeiss lens.

2 Megapixel is enough for any amateur application. Any higher resolution is only useful for enlargements above A3, which I doubt you can even afford.

**Pekka** · October 25, 2003, 20:29

Ok. So how do I know what kind of lenses it should have. I have no idea about them.

**Chemical Ollie** · October 25, 2003, 20:41

Buy a lens that looks like a penis enlarger. It should have a high optical zoom number. 3X is absolutely minimum, but really look at the lens. It should also be 3 cms wide or larger. Anything smaller is crap (IMO). Light strenght should be better (lower) than 1:3. My camera has 1:2.8 over the whole zoom range, while others normally could go as high as 1:12 in the highest zoom. The best digital camera I heard of had 1:1.8, an Olympus. The light strenght decides how much light you need to take sharp pictures without a flash. The lower the better.

**Pekka** · October 25, 2003, 20:51

Yes, that would be important for me. The light strength that is. Good information about the lenses, I really have 0 knowledge of them.. but I'll keep these in my mind.

What does make the difference in photo qualities when we look at these really cool and sharp nature (or animal) pictures ala National Geographic, and the smutty tourist pictures? Sure, lot of difference in professionalism, but the pure quality of the picture, and the sharpness? This is what I'm seeking...

Also, any good information on the technical part of taking pictures, like the lights, angles etc.. I think my biggest problem will be, that I see what I want to capture, but I just can't capture it because of wrong angels, wrong position overall, too far, too close, lights are wrong.. what are the secrets?

**NeOmega** · October 25, 2003, 20:56

For landscape photography a digital will do just great.
I would suggest Nikon or Canon for lens quality.

I would also suggest 4 megapixel. A two megapixel is nice, but sometimes a nice landscape picture can demand a large blow-up, in which 2 megapixels can be pixelated.

Get one with "bulb" function if you want to do any nice night city scapes.

YOu can also get an SLR digital, they are more pricy, but lens quality and range of zoom is better. Ignore digital zoom, and only pay attention to optical zoom... digital zoom is quite worthless if you know how to use your computer.

However, if you want to take pictures of wildlife, especially birds or other fast moving animals, I would suggest an SLR film camera for this task, the reason being digitals have "delay", with the smallest delay on a digital that I know of is 2/5 of a second on Canon's Digital Rebel. That means you see a bird, it starts to fly away, you zoom in, hit the shutter button...... and... snap... the picture is taken half a second later. Film is fairly cheap, only like $3.00 a roll. For bird photography I would suggest 400 or 800 speed film, because you will need a close zoom, and low aperature. Now if you cannot afford to blow through 4 frames a second on one bird, perhaps you should consider digital....

**NeOmega** · October 25, 2003, 21:05

Light is usually not a problem, but really, the instances where it is, are really hard to explain. A lot of cameras will have light settings for like "snow/beach" in which too much light is scattered all over the place, or night, which will take a flash picture of a subject in the forefield, (like a person) and then keep the shutter open a little while longer to take in the light of the backfield (like the eiffel tower at night, or a skyscraper, or stars)

Light is most often a problem indoors, or under artificial lights, since film I think is set for daytime light. Some models of digital cameras have a "white balance" funtion that will compensate for indoor lighting.

Zooming in on a subject is usually not a problem, but zooming in on more than one takes a little bit of p[laying with "focus lock" function, or some cameras have multiple focal points. Quite honestly, a basic SLR camera (means you can remove the lens) with autofocus is built to make amateur pictures look professional, really all that is up to you is messing with the aperature settings, which determines how much of the background, as opposed to the subject, takes up the photo.

I am a camera salesman... hee hee.

**Chemical Ollie** · October 25, 2003, 21:10

Originally posted by Pekka
...wrong angels, wrong position overall, too far, too close, lights are wrong.. what are the secrets?

Take a million pictures. The pros do that. There's no shortcut. Vary the settings a lot, and you will eventually learn which is the best. Zoom in closely whenever taking pictures of people. You don't want them to look like bug crap at the lens, they are the main object, right? Use forced flashlight outdoors to even out shadows. Try to avoid flashlight indoors, or people will look pale and get red eyes (that's why you should have a light strenght better than 1:3). The best pictures will be in cloudy weather outdoors. Try to get as close to those conditions as you can. Press the trigger halfway and aim at the person you want to picture, then move the camera to compose the picture you really want and press the trigger all the way down.

**Pekka** · October 25, 2003, 21:15

NeOmega, thanks for the input! I won't be doing anything that moves very fast... and I think I should go with the digital one. But good things mentioned.. I'll be saving this thread.

One thing I should also learn is the .. I don't know what you might call it.. framing? So that the borders are set correctly.. like in all tourist types of photos, they aiming is too low or too high, zoom is always wrong anyway, but the whole thing what you see in the picture and what you don't see are wrong.. picture of your friends from knees up, and vertically screwed up, everyone has red eyes, colours are messed up, it's messy picture anyway, there's some dude walking by and you can see half of his body, the backround is not looking like it was supposed to look comparing where the people are standing, lack of imagination of different kind of options like different angels.. but then again I'm not thinkign about taking photos of people, but nature and maybe animals.. but I need to learn the 'framing' part too, so I get exactly what I want.

**Chemical Ollie** · October 25, 2003, 21:25

NeOmega has a very important point. The speed of the camera. I've tried a Sony that was very slow. I tried to take a picture of my kid sliding down a skid, pressed the trigger and the kid was already outside the composed picture when the shutter opened. Any Olympus camera is faster, but the problem would not completely disappear. If you will take pictures of moving objects, make sure the camera is fast enough. In extreme cases, avoid digital cameras (but I would think that case very extreme).

I do not agree with NeOmega's opinion about Megapixels. My profession is ink-paper interaction in inkjet printing, and I'm one of the best there is in Europe on that topic. You don't need to go above 2 megapixels to print a perfect enlargement in A4 size. I would at least not see the difference between 2 an 5 Mpixels.

**Pekka** · October 25, 2003, 21:28

Controversiality! Nice

.

I know about the slowness of digital cameras, last winter we were shooting some snowboarding pictures and it was extremely hard to catch good pictures of high jumps, taken from relatively near.... the delay was killing me. But I don't need that kind of thing for what I'm planning on doing so.. it's ok.

Aagh there's Detroit vs Rangers and I'm here talkign about photography? Damn it! Anyway after that sleepy time, but by all means continue posting if you have tips.

**Chemical Ollie** · October 25, 2003, 21:29

Pekka, see my post above on the framing issue. I repeat the basics:

1) Take a million pictures
2) Vary the settings and you will eventually learn by trial and error

**Space05us** · October 25, 2003, 21:53

I thought the thread title was "Teach me about pornography "

I need to get my mind out of the gutter.

Announcement

Teach me about photography

Teach me about photography

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment