The Photography Chat Thread

[GoldZilla]

What do you guys use for lens cleaning? I noticed the other day mine have got little bits of stuff on them. Is just any lens cleaning kit from a photography shop ok to use?

Brett, get yourself a Spudz cleaning cloth or similar, or any micro-fibre cloth that you'd use to clean sunnies or glasses (or TV screens, monitors, etc.).

The Spudz one is good because it folds up into the little bag that it comes in, and it's about 1" cubic, so it takes up very little room in your kit.

http://www.spudzonline.com/

[FST513]

Another question.

Do you give your clients high res srgb format jpegs or rgb format jpegs? Reason I ask is for printing.

What if the clients whats to print the high res. Wouldnt rgb format be better as it contains more colours?

I know srgb is best used for web, but im talking about printing.

thanks for the help.

I don't know why your printing company would use sRGB... sRGB is only about 90% of the colour gamut, whereas AdobeRGB(1998) uses around 97%-98%. Will always be better colours with AdobeRGB, i suggest you change your printing company as 98% will use AdobeRGB or CMYK for printing massive stuff and business cards etc...

BigW etc.. uses AdobeRGB/sRGB/CMYK etc... They will use anything lol.

Brett - I use Apple's cloth they give you with an iPod lol. Best cloth i've ever used because it doesn't have the little pieces of fluff that always come off lol...

[Jay019]

i suggest you change your printing company as 98% will use AdobeRGB or CMYK for printing massive stuff and business cards etc.

wouldnt CMYK mainly be for offset printing instead of photographic printing tho?

have to admit, when it comes to printing of photos i dont have much of an idea, ive only ever had JPG's printed and half the time they were from GIMP which saves in 8bit only, not sure what difference that made, but they looked fine to me.

[siddr20]

The printing company I use have specific printers that only print for srgb format. They do an excellent work and never had any colour issues etc.. But yea most use rgb, but thats the thing. Clients wont know oh wait these pics are in rgb lets not print here or lets go there instead. I do tell them not to go to bigw etc, but sometimes its more convenient for them.

CYMK - is what my company does. Commercial printing. We have 4 massive tanks with those 4 colours. Not sure if this will be ideal for small companies hmmm..

Anyways.. yea i always give rgb to clients, but most dont know the difference.. all they see is high res files (rgb) look different to resized ones (srgb).

So my question is purely based on clients and what you give them!! Im going to talk to some colour mangement experts at work on monday and find out. Will let you know what they say. I just do I.T stuff at work, so never deal with that side of things.

Edited October 22, 2010 by siddr20

[Jay019]

well i did it... convinced my partner to let me use her GE money card and got a canon G11 on 6 months interest free the other night. awesome little camera. small size but so many features. it shoots in RAW, has built in ND filter, full manual control, can macro up to 1cm away from the lens, swivel LCD etc. can even use a 72mm CPL with the extension tubes I bought for it, can use canon speedlights with it including full manual control via menus and when i can afford it I can grab some cactus flash triggers for it too. spewing the mid range canon flash (430EX II) is a good $100 more expensive than the nikon sb600 tho will probably just get a 240EX to start with as you can find them for around $180 delivered.

all in all i reckon its an awesome camera, even if i'll be eating 2 minute noodles for the next 6 months while i pay it off

oh and one of the main selling points. CHDK the 15 second max exposure limit can be extended to over 5 minutes. plus I can write scripts to control the camera so no need to buy expensive intervalometers for timelapse stuff. only limitation so far is that CHDK only works on 2GB cards reliably, will try on a 4GB card soon, hopefully that works, specially for time lapse.

Edited October 22, 2010 by Jay019

[NA_Goodness]

Congrats Jay! Don't worry about the 2 minute noodle thing, they're fantastic source of nutrients! And awesome when you live alone and can't cook like myself

Speaking of time lapse, I was going to start a new thread, but may as well ask here. What sort of PnS should I be looking for? And these "scripts" you need to right for it... Um wtf? Lol. Can someone explain it to me? But talk slowly, I'm really dumb! Haha

[MaTBoY]

Check what zenNon uses, he's put some cool time lapse stuff together. I think he even knows a bit about the Canon hack updates.

Good stuff j. Will be looking forward to see what you throw up.

[GoldZilla]

Any camera that can do interval shooting is good for time-lapse stuff. My little Ricoh R4 can do it, and it's probably at least 3yo.

[Jay019]

here is one script... http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/UBASIC/Scripts:..._Intervalometer

and more info about CHDK etc... http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK including a list of cameras.

its not the easiest thing to work out, i havent really done much with it yet. been a bit busy.

but you can do it with a DSLR too, $50 ebay intervalometer and a nikon D90 made this... http://vimeo.com/11002342

zennon will be able to explain it all a bit better as i suck at explaining things, specially when my understanding of it is sketchy at best, lol

[GoldZilla]

LOL, I love the office clean-up one, Jay. Shame the battery died.

[NA_Goodness]

Holy crap I'm confused... See, this is why I never made it to uni! Use big words and it confuses the crap out of me

So basically you find a script from someone else in a .txt document (I understand that a tiny bit from high school. Never understood it all, but enough to know whats going on. Also knew how to program basic games in a calculator ) then put that in the SCRIPTS/ folder in the camera?

And any camera can do that? I was thinking PnS so I didnt ruin my 1000D, also nice and small so I can mount it externally on the car (like drifters do) and catch time lapses like that.

Maybe I should wait til Zennon explains it a bit better *sits patiently*

[NA_Goodness]

LOL, I love the office clean-up one, Jay. Shame the battery died.

I just went back to watch that one, its classic! Wanna clean my house too? I'm too lazy

I want to set my camera up in the upstairs kitchen at work, facing out into the workshop and let it run all day. I reckon it'd look good with all cars being brought in and and and mechanics running around everywhere.

[Jay019]

Maybe I should wait til Zennon explains it a bit better *sits patiently*

yeah probably, lol.

but in regards to if it works with 'any' camera, this is for Canon point and shoots only. there is a list on their wiki of supported models but apart from the G11 most are models I couldnt find on teds etc, so probably slightly older models. which could be an advantage as you could pick them up cheaper on ebay etc.

and yeah, that office clean up was crazy. i need to do another night driving one tho, as thats still my fav... http://vimeo.com/10483550 all done manually, lol.

[FST513]

Sidd - I always give RGB images. I never give them sRGB. It's a noticeable difference when printed. Get your place printed at sRGB at full res and then print it in Adobe RGB and you'll notice the difference.

I use www.pixelperfect.com.au they use Adobe RGB at 300ppi and i've always had amazing prints.

If i was you i would make the switch to an RGB printer! sRGB is good for big TV slideshows etc.. as they use sRGB. That's actually probably the best way to view the difference. Have you got an LCD/plasma TV at home? My samsung 40" HD LCD TV, if i use adobe RGB images on it, they look CRAP, but if i use sRGB you can see the colours better.

Jay - Congrats on the purchase! Your going to love it. Although a G12 is coming out soon And why didn't you get the S90/S95? did the G11 have features you wanted and the "S" series didn't?

Also - JPEG only supports 8 bit. To use 16bit you need TIF's.

[funkymonkey]

so i just ordered Davis & Sanford's All Terrain Pod legs from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TUYUF6

http://www.tiffen.com/displayproduct.html?...mp;itemnum=ATPG

was on sale for $56USD ($59.50 AUD) but for some reason after I ordered it's gone back up to $160. Methinks they got the pricing wrong

[Jay019]

Jay - Congrats on the purchase! Your going to love it. Although a G12 is coming out soon And why didn't you get the S90/S95? did the G11 have features you wanted and the "S" series didn't?

Also - JPEG only supports 8 bit. To use 16bit you need TIF's.

ah ok, didnt know that. lol.

it was a semi impulse purchase. id researched the G11 and liked the features and when we were looking in JB Hifi I asked to use my partners card kinda tongue in cheek not expecting her to say yes, lol.

the G11 was the last one they had so I got a decent deal on it. they didnt have any S series cameras in stock, the S series dont have hotshoe for off camera / trigger flashes. they also have a smaller optical zoom than the G11. i can also make my own remote cord for the G11 which i dont think the S series offer. the G12 isnt available there yet and apart from HD video (which i dont need anyway, Lumix does that) I cant see many differences in the specs. but yeah, it isnt available there yet anyway.

[GoldZilla]

Holy crap I'm confused... See, this is why I never made it to uni! Use big words and it confuses the crap out of me

So basically you find a script from someone else in a .txt document (I understand that a tiny bit from high school. Never understood it all, but enough to know whats going on. Also knew how to program basic games in a calculator ) then put that in the SCRIPTS/ folder in the camera?

And any camera can do that? I was thinking PnS so I didnt ruin my 1000D, also nice and small so I can mount it externally on the car (like drifters do) and catch time lapses like that.

Maybe I should wait til Zennon explains it a bit better *sits patiently*

You can use your 1000D for time-lapse, but unfortunately it requires you set it up connected via USB to a computer or laptop. The Canon "EOS utility" software can control it to fire off at any intervals you want.

[Jay019]

i think his concern is that it will wear out the shutter faster?

cause thats one thing i was (sort of) worried about.

Edited October 23, 2010 by Jay019

[NA_Goodness]

i think his concern is that it will wear out the shutter faster?

Bingo! Someone buy this man a beer/medal/whatever.

[FST513]

so i just ordered Davis & Sanford's All Terrain Pod legs from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TUYUF6

http://www.tiffen.com/displayproduct.html?...mp;itemnum=ATPG

was on sale for $56USD ($59.50 AUD) but for some reason after I ordered it's gone back up to $160. Methinks they got the pricing wrong

That looks like a sturdy tripod you got there Only thing i don't like about it, is that its connected to the centre column, therefore you don't have as much adjustibility. Depending on what you use it for though, i think this would be great with a nice ballhead!