Always make the best of something.

Bio's personal thoughts about stuff.

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BioHazard
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Always make the best of something.

Post by BioHazard »

I took a picture of a bottle brush plant (flower?) yesterday, it looked fine on the screen, but it was crap when I downloaded it. Here's the original:
Spoiler: Original picture
As you can see, it's a bit out of focus. I noticed it had interesting composition, so I decided to stylize it. I ran it through a few choice filters and ended up with this:
Spoiler: Stylized picture
It's definitely a little better at least.
What do you guys think?
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Phobus
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Post by Phobus »

Your take on it is much better, though I imagine scaling the original down a little (even in Paint) would have improved the look of the thing :P
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TheDarkArchon
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Post by TheDarkArchon »

Too much contrast there. It hurts my eyes.
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

It's abstract art, it's supposed to hurt your eyes. :)
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Risen
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Post by Risen »

My advice is to take another photo.
I've seen those filters applied so many hundreds of times...
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

Risen wrote:My advice is to take another photo.
I took about 16 pictures and they were all blurry. (though not as bad as the one above). What's strange about it is that I was using a tripod.
Risen wrote:I've seen those filters applied so many hundreds of times...
Heh, I'll bet you have. It's not difficult. :)
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Risen
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Post by Risen »

You didn't include the EXIF data with the photo. I'd be interested in that. (ISO, exposure, aperture, lens, etc)

Having a tripod is great, but when you deal with close-ups, things get difficult quickly. It needs to be a good, stable tripod, that can stand up to the elements in its envrionment. A friend of mine once witnesses an L-series lens go crunch when the wind blew a tripod over. Of course, if you're shooting something in the wind, you need to really crank up the shutter speed in order to avoid blur anyway.

But even with the best tripod and no wind, your hand pushing the shutter release may also cause vibration. You can use the camera's timer for this, but that can get tedious, especially since most cameras have only one timer setting: 10s. The best way is to fire it is with a cable release or remote switch.

You also need a lens that can focus at that distance... but I'll assume you're not completely blind and it looked okay in the viewfinder!
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

Risen wrote:Of course, if you're shooting something in the wind, you need to really crank up the shutter speed in order to avoid blur anyway.
D'oh! Yeah, it was at 1/250, I probably should have bumped it up to 1/500 at least.
Risen wrote:But even with the best tripod and no wind, your hand pushing the shutter release may also cause vibration. You can use the camera's timer for this, but that can get tedious, especially since most cameras have only one timer setting: 10s. The best way is to fire it is with a cable release or remote switch.
I use a cable release for exactly this reason.
Risen wrote:You also need a lens that can focus at that distance... but I'll assume you're not completely blind and it looked okay in the viewfinder!
Well, this is one of those cameras with a seperate viewfinder, so the viewfinder view is totally worthless for close-ups. The screen has a tendancy to look sharper than the image itself. Now that I'm making gobs of money at my new job, I'll be able to buy myself a nice camera pretty soon. (Actually, I might be able to do a bit of photography for the magazine itself too since I seem to be the only one with experience in the building. :) )
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Risen
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Post by Risen »

Oh, it's a rangefinder camera? That's likely to be your problem. Rangefinders are nice when they are medium to long distance from their subject, but at short distances, they really exhibit their weakness. For macro photography, you really need an SLR.

You should look at the recently released Digital Rebel XTi... it's a pretty awesome camera for the price!
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BlazingPhoenix
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Post by BlazingPhoenix »

That stylized picture looks nice. I don't really care if it hurts my eyes.. :P
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

Risen wrote:You should look at the recently released Digital Rebel XTi... it's a pretty awesome camera for the price!
Heh, I totally forgot about this post and that's exactly the camera I bought! Funny how that works out. :)

It seriously rocks. I really need to get a monopod though.
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Risen
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Post by Risen »

I have 2 tripods. One is incredibly lightweight and compact. It goes anywhere, but I don't trust it to actually keep the camera steady. The other is much larger and sturdier, and I can get clean 30s exposures off it even when fully extended. I find this system works pretty well. I never used a monopod... I guess I'm not convinced of their usefulness as of yet.
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

Well, I just need the little tiny bit of extra stability and a lot of places won't let you take full-blown tripods in.

I also have a couple lightweight tripods but setting them up is a ridiculous hassle.
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Risen
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Post by Risen »

What's the gain in stability? (What shutter speed can you go to without blurring?)
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BioHazard
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Post by BioHazard »

I don't know as I've never used one. I do know my hand shakes enough to make anything slower than 1/400 often blurry. Since my lens only goes to F5.6, that's a lot.

If I have anything to rest my camera on, my shots are dramatically better.
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