[thechat] Photography help

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Fri Aug 23 12:05:01 CDT 2002


On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Beau Hartshorne wrote:

> > What I want to know is how to make my digital pics look this good:
> > http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/
>
> Were Simon's photos taken with a digital camera?
>
> I read somewhere that digital cameras have a very deep depth of field.

Same as most compact cameras - it also goes with the wide angle standard
lenses (which is why *optical* zoom is important - which is what I've got
on my Sony. Same model as Mike K's and in the same range as Javier's).

It's also more idiot proof, and selling cameras in a consumer market is an
idiot-proof game of necessity. Given a *large* amount of cash, I'd want a
digital version of my Canon EOS, with an equivalent speed to ISO200 or so.

[sidebar - when Morgan was a couple of weeks old, we had pro pictures
taken at a studio (Bob - they're the ones above our fireplace), and they
used a medium format camera with a digital back, and a Firewire connection
to a G4. We had our selection session as a Powerpoint show, and the final
output is uber-quality inkjet]

That's *way* more important than resolution - I don't use the full
resolution of my Sony now - I regularly do A4 (192x297mm) prints of pics
taken at 1200x800 or so resolution, and you can't spot the pixelation,
even when printed on glossy photo paper at the limit of my Epson inkjet's
capabilities.

> If I took those pictures with my digital camera, everything in the frame
> would have been in focus. Simon's photos would lose a lot of their power
> if the leaves on the trees in the background were just as sharp as the
> person's eyes in the foreground.

Yep. Although you can replicate shallow depth of field in Photoshop. It's
one of my regular tweaks to digicam pics, along with a subtle increase in
saturation if needed.

> Also keep in mind that Simon probably took a few hundred shots and ended
> up with the small selection on his site. He probably touched them up in
> Photoshop as well. 30 seconds with image->adjust->curves

Auto-Levels (or manual if you know what you're doing) is useful too. A fun
game to replicate all those lovely IR monochrome images is to only use the
red channel. Can be very nice for portraits (my standard B/W portraiture
tip if you've got a real camera is to use a red or orange filter - it's
very flattering and smooths out a *lot* of skin blemishes)

Cheers
Martin
---------------------------
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie




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