mbird

Hi Simon I know exactly what you mean, and I went through exactly the same hoop. I used to have photos I had downloaded and just not bothered doing anything with as taking them through Paint Shop Pro seemed such a long winded way of doing things. I have only just started using LR2, and infact the 21/12 walk was the first ever time I had used it "in anger", but even so I think I found a reasonable workflow as follows: 1. Upload images into a specific catalogue 2. Scan through the previews and hit either X to reject the photo, or P to pick 3. Delete all the rejected photos (can't have crap clogging up the hard drive) 4. Review again those left in the library and X or P them a second time to weed out those that were on the borderline and delete those rejected. 5. The pictures that are left, preview and see if any minor tweaks are necessary 6. Export the good ones as jpg to your archive Now I realise that this is very basic and I could probably make good use of presets etc, but I am only a beginner at this LR lark and have yet to explore that area. However, using the above, I managed to get 250 pictures taken on the day down to an inital 40 or so (a lot of the pictures were in triplicate as I had used exposure bracketing). This reduced to about 20 on the second pass. The only tweaks I made were to adjust levels, using the sliders; add graduation filters to the sky, or add a bit more saturation and sharpness if the colours were a bit washed out. All in all the photos I posted in the walk thread took around 2 hours from start of the upload to the finished set. I was so pleased with some of the results, I had 8 enlargements done by Photobox and have framed them to put on my wall. To those who think this sort of process is "cheating" a bit, I offer the following example: In certain lighting conditions, it is impossible to get correct exposure if you do not have grad filters to hand. You can see from this photo straight from the camera that the sky is exposed about right, but the foreground is therefore too dark. By sticking it through LR, I have added a grad filter to the sky and then lightened the whole picture to get the exposure right (oh and I also straightened the horizon because it seems I can't hold a camera level!). This took about 4 minutes but results in a much better image. If I knew what I was doing, I obviously would have put a filter on in the field to get the picture right in the first instance By the way, this isn't one of the pictures now on my wall! So in short, Simon, Blessing all the way I reckon!

Hi Simon I'll bet the pro wasn't too happy in the church eh? My thought for the technical ramble was more aimed at those that maybe have just upgraded from a compact to SLR and want to explore more creative photography than simply pointing and shooting. It may well be there aren't many people from the forum like that, in which case such a theme would be a bit of a non-starter, as you say Simon. Having chatted to Bob (Happy Days) on the last one when he was wondering why his autofocus would not work, and explaining about selecting individual focus points, I think it became a little clearer for him. That was really my basis for the idea. Obviously I'll go with the majority. A couple of people have expressed an interest, and the last couple of wanders we have had have been more about content and composition. I'll go with the majority of course, but I guess we don't really need a reason to get together and take photos, we can just do it for the enjoyment! However, if anyone does want a bit of help I'm happy to oblige

Perry Thanks for those links, and they certainly do describe what I have been experiencing. One of the photos shown as an example is exactly what I get. This morning I took a few dawn shots from my bedroom window, but when I imported them into Lightroom, I used a USB card reader instead of the one built into my PC. There were no corrupted files this time, but I do not know whether this is down to there only being a dozen shots, or if the different card reader really did make a difference. I have downloaded the memory test program mentioned in one of the threads and mine checked out okay, so that's one less thing to consider anyway.

Hi Jonny You'd be surprised! Basically p&s compact cameras still have the same adjustments inside them, but the camera has control, not the user. The various settings available on most compact cameras do have an effect though. Try taking a close up portrait photo of someone using the portrait setting on your camera, and then take the same photo with the camera set to landscape mode. You will find that in the first one the background is blurred, whereas the background is in focus in the second. The camera achieves this by adjusting the aperture for you, just like you would do on an SLR. The night-time setting can also sometimes be used in the daytime to force the camera to use a slow shutter speed to capture movement in water, for example.

Hi Jill In the situation you have shown of the deccies, you can clearly see the depth of field is very shallow as in there is only one of the decorations in focus at any one time. If you were to take the same shot again, but this time set the aperature to, say, f11, you would notice more was in focus. Then take another pic at a higher f number, and compare the difference. That's exactly the sort of demonstration I was thinking about if we get a technical ramble together. The lens you have is a perfectly good everyday lens too. It's only 1mm less wide angle than the one I use, and I rarely have it that low anyway as you start to get some distortion at the very extremes of zoom. What you must remember with all but the most expensive digital cameras is that the 18mm lens you are using would give a totally different result on a film camera and be far more wide angle. This is because the sensor in the digital camera is smaller than a piece of 35mm film. This means the image from the digital sensor is magnified (by a factor of 1.6 I think) to get the same size photo. Consequently the 18mm wide angle setting on your camera is actually about 29mm when compared to a film camera and so isn't really that wide angle. However, this does mean that to get a true wide angle shot from a digital camera needs some rather expensive lenses. You could always do what I do though, and ignore all the crap above and simply move back a bit further !

Yes, thats the sort of thing I was thinking, Trevor. Maybe wait a few weeks until we start to see some life from the spring bulbs and see how many people are interested. It would probably just be a morning or afternoon session to demonstrate the basic principles.

Hi Jill I've personally never needed a macro lens, as I can get close enough for my tastes with my standard ones. However, if your penchant is for taking pics of the hairs on a gnats danglies, then you would certainly need one! I have a rucksack for carrying my lenses, filters and flashes, but you certainly don't need that if you just want to use your camera with it's kit lens. A lot of people use tripods so you can use the slower shutter speeds without getting blurring, particlarly early or late in the day, or for capturing movement of water etc. A good compromise could be a mono-pod which I know Lord Paul uses, as these are a lot lighter, but obviously you cant leave the camera on it's own. It's all really a question of what you want to do with your photography, and how much disposable you have! I do have a couple of spare tripods (bought a new one last week) if you are interested. One is a very light tripod that was only a cheapy from Aldi if you want that, or a slightly dearer one that I used to use for archery. PM me if you want to know more on these. I bought and sold a couple of lenses very successfully on ebay, so it's certainly worth a look, but make sure you know what you want. My lens of choice that is always on my camera now is a Canon 17-85 which gives a good compromise being quite wide-angled but also capable of zooming. It also has image stablisation to help reduce camera shake, and I got that on ebay about 100 quid cheaper than Jessops.

Hi All It strikes me that there could be a few keen photographers out there, who may not necessarily ever move away from the automatic settings, and therefore may not necessarily be getting the most from their camers. I am most certainly not the most gifted or expert here, but I am one of those sad gits who reads instruction manuals! If anyone would be interested in maybe setting up another wander with the focus more on explaining things like Depth of Field, motion blur, shutter speed, ISO rating, focus points, exposure lock etc etc, then let me know and we'll see what can be sorted. Again, this would be applicable to both SLR and compact camera owners, although with compacts, a lot of the functionality is removed or hidden.

No problem Jill As a fellow EOS owner, if there is anything you need help with, just ask and if my knowledge stretches that far I'm happy to help.

Hi All I have been having a problem over the past few weeks when I come to import RAW files. It doesn't matter whether I use Windows picture import wizard to copy the files to my hard drive, or do it direct from Lightroom, but a percentage of the pictures end up with corruption. If you look at the pictures in Lightroom along the filmstrip, they all appear okay to start with, but then at random seem to get bright coloured blocks at the bottom (usually the bottom right corner). Occasionally the whole photo turns yellow and magenta. I thought originally this was Lightroom, as when I viewed the photo thumnails in windows explorer they seemed ok. However, when opening one of the affected files to view full size, it seems to be okay until windows has finished rendering it and then gets corrupted. I have checked the files in the memory card, and they are fine as if I delete the dodgy files from the hard drive and then re-import them they are ususally okay. Has anyone had any experience of this? It seems the corruption is occuring at the time of transfer from card to hard drive, so next time I am going to plug in the cameras USB cable rather that using my card reader.

Hi Jill This is in no way meant as a ctiticism, but to help you understand your camera and get more enjoyment out of it, but you will notice that the rim of the tin at the top and the cherries in the foreground are ever so slightly out of focus in your photo (maybe entiltled "A study of Chocolatey Loveliness"?). This is controlled by something called "depth of field" which basically means the part of the picture that is in focus. If you imagine that the camera has focused on one central point, which looks to be the bottom of the tin perhaps judging by the grain on the table. The depth of field is the distance infront of and behind this point (nearer the camera and further from the camera). In your photo the cherries at the bottom are only just infront of the tin, but are slighty out of focus, which indicates a very shallow depth of field. This can be evident sometimes in close up portraits where you can see someones eyes in focus, but their nose is fuzzy. The depth of field in controlled by the aperture size (or how big the hole is that is letting in the light). Without getting all technical, the bigger the hole, the shallower the depth of field, the smaller the hole, the larger the depth of field. So for something like a landscape photo you would normally need the smallest hole possible. To control the aperture size, you need to move the dial on top of the camera from it's current position (I would assume one of the Auto settings) to "Av" (Aperture value). This puts you in direct control of the size of the aperture, but lets the camera take care of everything else. If you look in the viewfinder, or the screen on the back of the body, and you rotate the finger wheel in either direction, you will see that one of the numbers changes. This is the aperture size and will probably go from something like 4.0 to 22 depending on what lens you have on and how far you are zoomed in. The thing to remember is that the smaller the number, the bigger the aperture (so the smaller the number, the shallower the depth of field). If you were to take the same photo of the cherries, or your lovely flowers, with the aperture number as small as possible, and then again with it as high as possible, you will see a marked difference in the pictures. Be warned though, that the higher the number (ie the smaller the hole), the slower the camera will set the shutter speed to get the same amount of light in, so you could start to get a bit of camera shake. Also be aware of where you camera is focussing. You can tell this when you half-press the shutter button by looking at which little red dots light up in the viewfinder. Again you can control this, but it is a whole different subject. I hope that is of some use, and I apologise in advance if you already new all the above guff, but it might help someone else out. As I said earlier, this is in no way intended as criticism, but simply an attempt to shed some light on this photography lark. Have fun and take oodles of pictures! I use the scatter bomb approach in that if I take a hundred shots, one might be okay! The beauty of digital I call it (sorry Bruce!).

And finally the sunset. After last weeks expedition with Bruce and the guys, I took the plunge and bought some of the cheapo graduated filters. They make such a difference to the photos, I wondered why I hadn't discovered them years ago! Unfortunatley I was too late to get to where I wanted so I has a bit more foreground interest, but I thought it better to capture what I could from the top of the dunes, than nothing at all.

Taking a leaf from Lord Paul's book, we decided to have a Boxing Day stroll at Horsey gap to see if we could spot any seals. What we didn't realise was that half of Norfolk was going to be there! Anyway, far from the madding crowd, I managed to get a few snaps of the beasts (and don't worry, although they are close-ups, my zoom was at full stretch and they were not disturbed by me). And to top it off there was a lovely sunset too!

Ooh Looka at you going all hi tech. We'll soon be seeing you on the rambles then! Congrats, puts my old 350D to shame now I suppose Seriously though, it's a great bit of kit you got there, so start taking photos!

And finally ! May I take this opportunity to wish you all a fantastic Christmas and Happy New Year, from Myself, SHaron, Jack, Harry & Ivy the Grey Hound. See you all afloat in 2009

And a few more.....

Hi All I can only echo what has already been said, that despite the early start and the mother nature deciding to keep her dawn splendour to herself, I had a great time, learned loads, and was actually quite pleased with at least 2 of the 250 shots I took!!!! The bacon butty at Potter was welcome, and it was good to renew aquaintances as well as make one or two new ones. My sincere thanks to all involved, but especially Bruce who even chauffeured me around! So here goes. Most of these have been through Lightroom (now I am starting to figure it out) but only minor tweaks hear and there.

21st is fine for me Simon, weather/workload/SWMBO permitting of course!

Hi Paul Saw the weather forecast last night and it looks like huskies and a sled might be more the order of the day. They reckon 25mph winds from the arctic with snow showers over the weekend. I guess like most things we'll have to wait and see eh? I must confess though, if theres more than 0.5mm of snow I shall stay tucked up in bed (fair weather photographer? you bet!)

You may be right Guys, and it's just a band wagon the manufacturers have jumped on. Having said that, there do seem to be a lot of people who know a lot about it, but it could just be one of those urban legends like osmosis killing GRP boats I suppose. What I do know though, is that the fuel I can see in my glass seperator bowl does look very dark indeed, so I might try some of this stuff see if it makes any difference at all!

Hi David Maybe there are different types of Starbrite, as the stuff in Norfolk Marine was also an enzyme treatment, not the biocide I have seen advertised on various websites. This makes me think it would be no better than the Soltron. Would you have any links etc to the tests you were referring to by any chance? (piccy of the stuff I've seen in Norfok Marine below for info, and I think this is the only additive they stock).

Hi All Over the recent weeks, we have had more and more trouble starting our old 1.5 BMC. She used to take a few heats to get going, but then started only firing on a couple of cylinders when turning her over. Taking advice from Darren at DRL marine, today I whipped out the glow plugs and reamed the holes out, and hey presto - instant starting! However, whilst in the engine bay, we also noted the fuel in the separator bowl (yes it is glass, yes I know i will need to replace it for the next BSSC, and yes it did pass last time!) has got very dark. We knew we had a bit of a diesel bug infection a while ago but have not done anything about it to date, other than keeping the tank topped up. I think, though, the time may have come to start using an additive. Norfolk Marine only stock "Starbrite" additive, but ASAP stock "Soltron" which I have heard elsewhere is supposed to be quite good. Does anyone have any experience using these additives, and if so which are the best?

You are soo! right if Grandkids are anything like kids. BTW happy birthday, and don't let anyone tell you you look a day over 99.

Hi Colin Paintshop Pro Photo X2 is my current software of choice, simply because I already have it and can't yet afford Lightroom! PSP is perfectly capable of producing the desaturated images you are talking about, with coloured areas brought back in, as in the example below. This one has been desaturated almost to the point of B&W but not quite and her eyes I changes from their natural brown to a vivid green. I know it's not everyones cup of tea, but I was aiming for the plastic model look, and thought it turned out quite well. This was my first ever attempt at this type of photo, and also my first ever experience with a professional model in a studio.

Okay, so I know this forum area is called Photos of the Broads, but this was taken in my back garden, in Rackheath, within the Broadland area, so technically it's in the right place I s'pose? Just a couple of piccies from Saturday evening with the kids and a slow shutter speed. And this one is me trying to write my name - well it was backwards after a few beers!