In The Zone: The General Photography Tips, Advice & Shop Talk Thread

[Robocon^^]

My camera only has a 28mm equiv. wide lens, so yeah, I have to do a lot of stitching. I haven't gotten around to trying out any automated photostitch programs yet, but I've heard good things. I open up the images and size them down to something workable like 1024x786 and just drag them one by one into a new canvas, rotating and stretching, erasing bit by bit until they start to blend (or not) After it's all put together, I fiddle with the levels and saturation, do a little burning and dodging, and then resample the image down to something screensized. I do a lot of overcorrection and then fade back to something that looks what I want.

The thing I like about stitching is the results are often unexpected since I can't see the whole image at once. Or you can shoot multiples with different exposures and combine the best each has to offer. Or go back to the same place at a different time of day and piece that in.

I think it might be fun to find some old photos and try to reshoot it from the same angle and try to mix the two together or blend 2 different locations into a believable place. Typical Photoshop abuse I guess.

[dimbulb]

Can someone brief me on filters(lenses, not on the enlarger, that I'm familiar with)?

Are they worth the investment and how do they enhance your images?

[ocd]

I do know that if you put a yellow filter on with b/w film it should darken the skies for higher contrast. Other than that, I'm going to have to experiment w/ my dad's old ones.

[YelloKitty]

from my photography class:

color correction/color balancing: warming filters (81/85 series) balances tungsten film with daylight. cooling filters (80 series) balances daylight film with tungsten light sources. 81 filters will also warm up skin tones and other objects shot in the shade. a minus green filter (magenta in color) compensates when shooting in fluorescent light. warming fliters come in a, b c, and d with a being the weakest.

polarizer: darkens the sky in both color and b/w images, can increase overal color saturation by decreasing environmental haze. used to cut down or eliminate reflections in glass.

neutral desnity filters: no impact on color, tonality or contrast but cut down on the amount of light hitting your film. allows you to open up aperture more to decrease depth of field or slow down your shutter speed to show blurred motion without overexposing.

close up filters: cheap way to do closeup without buying a macro lens.

b/w filters: dark yellow (8 or 15) or a red filter (25) will darken the sky and the red filter also increases overal contrast to the whole image. yellow filters are more realistic, the red more dramatic. some people use a green filter (11) for foliage as it lightens it slightly. the rule of thumb with b/w photography is that a filter of a particular color will lighten objects in the scene of that color and darken objects in th scene of complimentary colors.

hope this helps.

[YelloKitty]

question:
my brother just gave me a couple of rolls of kodak plus-x pan 125 b/w film. he says it's the good shit. i says, whats the deal with it?

[golivar]

YK, that film isn't bad. I've shot a roll of it and it looks OK with decent grain (not too grainy). I shoot digital (haven't shot a roll of film in 4 months), but for the occasional "true" B&W I use Tri-X 400 because I'm used to being able to shoot at higher shutter speeds (I normally shoot at ISO 800).

Dim, there are a bazillion different types of filters out there, but the main ones I would recommend as the most useful are a 1) 0.6 Neutral Density Grad, 2) a medium yellow for increasing contrast in B&W work, and 3) a good circular polarizer. Stretching black pantyhose over your lens can give you some cool soft-focus stuff, too.

--G.

[kamenriderv3]

i hardly use any filters any more but i did in the past. what the other bots had to say is good info.

sometimes i use neutral filters as a cheap lens protection. if it get scratched then you can replace it easily.

polarized filters are good for water shots too. it takes off the glare from the surface so that you can get a good view of whats inside the water.

i think the closeup stuff yk was talking about is diopers? i believe you can stack those to add to the + powers. i was going to get some but i wasn't ready to test that out yet.

when choosing among similar filters, try to go for quality stuff that is within your budget. japanese made seem to better than some of the cheaper stuff.

take note on which filters has threads so you can stack them the way you want.

always keep in mind the diameter size that you need. this may differ with different lenses (i.e. zoom lenses). you may need to buy different sets for each lenses.

i bought some filters for my camcorder last year. it was an online store that had good prices and a decent shipping fee. i can look it up if you need it.

[wonki wonki]

Originally posted by YelloKitty
question:
my brother just gave me a couple of rolls of kodak plus-x pan 125 b/w film. he says it's the good shit. i says, whats the deal with it?

i like this film a lot. it will get you really nice lower-contrast negatives which makes it easy to preserve detail throughout the brightness range, especially in high-contrast situations such as bright sun-lit scenes.

i prefer lower-contrast films because it give me more latitude in printing...

[YelloKitty]

thanks wonki and golivar! i'm excited.

[Margin Walker]

Originally posted by golivar
Stretching black pantyhose over your lens can give you some cool soft-focus stuff, too.

Going to a fabric store and buying a chunk of something called Kretalin. That works pretty well for diffusion/soft-focus. It's the stuff that they make veils with. Like others have already said, Plus-X is low grain and low contrast (T-Max can be too 'beefy'). Kinda reminds me of Kodak's old Safety Film. Seeing as most labs develop their B/W film Jobo-style, there's too much agitiation and that adds more density & contrast to the negs. So the good news is that you'll probably get decent negatives (density & detail-wise), but it's a slow film, so you're limited to daylight only exposures.

[ocd]

I think I'm going to get one of those new Polaroids for fun. Anybody know if it's worth it? Film advice? I haven't had a 'Roid in years!

Yes, the main reason I want one is so I can tell people I have a 'Roid.

[angoraphobia]

im not sure if this has been discussed before but....ocd...if you do get one, you should try drawing on the picture after it exposes with a slightly dull pencil, tracing lines of the image, it kinda gives it a neat monet quality to the image....just fun to play with...a photographer friend of mine showed me how....it was kinda neat....

[dimbulb]

Originally posted by ocd
I think I'm going to get one of those new Polaroids for fun. Anybody know if it's worth it? Film advice? I haven't had a 'Roid in years!

Yes, the main reason I want one is so I can tell people I have a 'Roid.

i almost bought an old one from the thrift store for $5 last month... I still really want one, but I don't know if its worth it since the film is super steap for my lack-o-moneyness....
i really love polaroids though... *sigh*

[Robocon^^]

I like those old polaroids that let you squeeze the emulsion around

[ocd]

Originally posted by dimbulb


i almost bought an old one from the thrift store for $5 last month... I still really want one, but I don't know if its worth it since the film is super steap for my lack-o-moneyness....
i really love polaroids though... *sigh*

Yeah, but for $5 that's a good deal! I think the film kind of balances out, since you don't have to pay to get it developed, and you don't have to wait for it either. I've seen Polaroid 690 film, which is supposed to be really good, online for like US$11.

I'm going to have to try this pencil thing, ang. Well, if I get one of these cameras that is.