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I can see manual focusing with a camera and viewfinder that was designed for it, with a split prism focusing aid or whatever, but with the stock focusing screen on these SLRs designed for autofocus? I can’t see anyone getting sharp shots consistently, and I’d rather eliminate every variable that I can that could keep me from getting the shot. Most of the stuff I shoot is moving subjects where I’m really capturing moments instead of capturing scenes, and if I blow the focus on one of those shots it ain’t happening again.

The funny part is that for video you couldn’t pay me to use a camera with autofocus. Really. Admittedly, video autofocus systems are nowhere near as good as you get in still cameras, you get a lot of focus hunting that really looks bad in the video. Video has to worry about looking good over time while stills just need to look perfect for the instant the shutter is open. Also, you can get away with manual focus in video a lot more because it’s a lot more tolerant of focus errors, the resolution isn’t as high and the depth of field is a lot bigger.

[Analogy]

Most of the shots I took in manual focus weren’t very sharp. I only posted the ones that were.

If you’re a hardcore manual focus freak, you can void your warranty and mod a new focusing screen with manual focus aids into your viewfinder. Downsides: Aside from aforementioned warranty-voiding, may mess up your camera’s metering since it meters through the viewfinder.

Turns out the camera trusts the user enough to assume that if you change a setting, that’s how you want it right away.

You’ll find that all true professional products try and make it so the user is spending the least amount of time in the menu as possible. When people are using your product to make a living and forcing them to go through a couple more button presses can mean the difference between getting the shot and not getting it… Well, you want to get rid of as many of those button presses as possible.

This is part of the reason I refuse to shoot video with even high-end consumer gear. That stuff’s just not designed to have a responsive user interface.

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Analogy
Just to clarify, I meant the simple menus on the LCD screen to adjust shutter speed, ISO, etc.

I’m not sure what “menus” you’re talking about here… In the manual/semiauto modes the shutter and aperture are controlled directly by the dials. ISO requires a button press to get at it but I’d hardly call that a menu.

I used the manual focus mode on the second day of shooting and I like it better.

How are you managing to get sharp results with manual focus?

/What the heck is “Mirror Lockup” and how does it help night shots?

Go into the menu under “Custom Functions” and set #12 to 1.

I’m not sure how much you know about the inner workings of an SLR so I apologize if this is a bit basic… Inside the camera there’s a mirror that reflects the image from the lens up into the viewfinder. When you take a picture the mirror flips up allowing the image to fall on the camera’s sensor. This is why the viewfinder blacks out when you take a picture. The movement of the mirror vibrates the camera a bit, so a good bit of engineering goes into timing the mirror movement and shutter release so that the shutter opens at a moment that the vibrations from the mirror are minimal. For longer exposures, however, the shutter can stay open long enough for some more residual vibrations from the mirror to creep into the exposure.

What mirror lockup does is bring up the mirror well before opening the shutter so the mirror vibration is not a factor in the exposure. How it works in this camera is you turn on mirror lockup, frame your shot in the viewfinder, and press the shutter button to raise the mirror. Press the shutter button again to expose the picture and the mirror comes back down. If you set the drive mode to self-timer (“Drive+ISO” button and spin the top dial until a stopwatch icon appears in the top LCD), pressing the shutter button will raise the mirror and automatically take the picture two seconds later so that vibrations from your finger hitting the shutter button don’t affect the camera. You can also use an external shutter trigger cord to trigger the camera without touching it.

[Analogy]

or it may be that having a true DSLR lens makes more difference than i thought. i have auto focus film lenses mated to my DSLR body so there’s the 1.6 sensor factor to deal with. if i understand all the conversion stuff correctly my lens at 200 is the equivalent of a 320 film while yours is 200 period.

Well first off, he’s not using “crop factor” lenses. Canon’s L-lenses are exclusively designed for full-frame cameras. And 30D is a 1.6x camera, so he is dealing with the crop factor.

Second, the conventional explanation of crop factor (i.e. “multiply the focal length”) causes a lot of confusion because it’s probably the worst possible way to explain it. I came to stills from video, which uses much smaller sensors so focal lengths are much shorter. 9mm in video land is sort of a decent wide. We don’t say that it’s “a 32mm lens equivalent due to crop factor.” We call it 9mm and just know what 9mm means in terms of field of view on a video camera.

You should really think about it the same way on your still camera, don’t be thinking “this 200mm lens is really like a 320 if you stick it on a DSLR.” No, wrong, it’s a 200mm lens no matter what camera you stick it on. Instead just throw away your associations of focal length to field of view from your film cameras and build new associations of how those focal lengths look on a DSLR. You do a whole lot less math that way.

If you have a lens that you were using on film and are wondering what it would look like on your DSLR, don’t think “multiply the focal length by 1.6,” think “take the field of view I remember from that lens and crop it down a bit.”

i noticed you are/were using ISO 100. any particular reason or just testing. since i “grew up” using ASA 400 color film and tri-x i stick with that now. decent speed vs. noise, at least for me.

ISO 100 lets you open the aperture more for depth of field. The amount of visible noise in digital is pretty much zilch up to 400, but if you’re shooting RAW, 100 lets you dig a lot deeper into the shadows for detail.

If I’m trying to freeze motion I’ll boost the ISO for extra shutter speed. Outdoors I’ll go up to 400 and open the lens all the way.

[Analogy]

Damnit, now I want those lenses even more. Holy sharpness batman.

I rarely ever have to go into the menu myself. There are only a few features I need the menu for:
Switching between JPG and RAW
Manual white balance/color temp
Bracketing
Mirror lockup

I highly recommend exploring the custom functions, there are a lot of features “hidden” there that are really worthwhile. It lets you customize the operation of your camera to make it fit your style of shooting better.

You’ll get used to swapping lenses. I have no qualms about doing it in the dark nowadays. Just try and do it quickly to minimize the exposure of your camera’s innards to dust. Dust doesn’t really show up except at f/16 and lower, but if you ever do stop down that far you’ll be amazed at how much is in there.

[Analogy]

Scroll wheel’s pretty true to life actually. It’s made out of rubber and lit from within so there’s no real definition to it even in real life.

For lighting I’m limited to the number of desk lamps I can get my hands on. =D In that shot it was two, one doing rim lighting and one doing key lighting, with a reflector (CD Jewel case) adding some light to the front right edge of the mouse. Very DIY. I’m still working on lenses before I start spending money on lighting, my standard zoom I’m using right now is pure crap.

I’m pretty happy with how the lights came out except for the side rail.

[Analogy]

Hahaha. It’s all good, I actually welcome any advice that makes me a better photographer, no matter how it’s phrased. I actually am genuinely interested in what you meant by those scribbles so I know better in the future.

[Analogy]

I’m not sure what you mean with the “logo work” and “define the wheel more” comments. The other ones are just photoshop magic stuff that I noticed (except “more contrast,” which seemed fine to me) but frankly I was too sick of photoshop at that point to bother with. I seriously hate dicking around in photoshop, the less the better. It’s just so…freaking….TEDIOUS. I’d really rather just hand off the post duties to someone else and just focus on taking pictures.

If I had any tolerance for photoshop I would have taken a “lights out” shot and just let the glow from the lights burn in so I could composite them into the final. As it was I tried to do it in camera by firing the strobes and then keeping the shutter open to let the mouse lights burn in.

If you meant the logo on the mouse pad didn’t have to be included, I could have fixed the border issue at the same time by shooting closer to the middle of the pad, but I figured since the mouse and mouse pad are from the same manufacturer it made a neat shot to get the logo in.
The mouse wheel looks pretty much exactly the same as it does in real life. And actually a good sight better than the mousewheel in Razer’s own product photos (click here then click on “Gallery”), which show it as a solid overexposed white with a red glow around it, though they get the side lights better because they use only overhead lighting and aren’t getting specular reflections off the rubber side rails.

One area both could do better would be in lighting the underside. If I hadn’t been trying to get the mousepad in the shot I could have shot on a white background and masked in a black background. That would have let the underside reflect the white and give it definition.

Meh, maybe I’ll try it again.

[Analogy]

If you have a Google account, sign up for Google Reader (reader.google.com). If you don’t have a Google account, I can send you an invite.

RSS basically lets you put all your periodically updated web sites into one place. Instead of visiting all these sites, they come to you. It’s how I read Fark, all the headlines just show up in my newsreader, I’ve also got a bunch of webcomics, other news sources, people’s blogs, etc. The thing is, it all comes to you. Instead of spending your entire morning visiting a billion web sites, you just visit one site and all the content appears in one place.

[Analogy]

That is a very good point. Even if in practice Fark.com LLC isn’t going to be evil with this, there’s nothing keeping someone else from exploiting the fact that legally we’ve given up our copyright to the image. And if in practice Fark isn’t going to enforce the copyrights they now legally own, well, so much better for people who would steal our work.

I agree with Elsinore, changing the legalese to read that we give Fark a *license* to use our posted content the way they wish would be a lot better than completely handing over our copyright. I’d love to know who the brilliant legal mind that came up with this is.

[Analogy]

I’m no copyright expert, but I believe that for copyright purposes a 100×100 thumbnail is the same work as the original size photo as long as it’s fairly obvious that they’re both the same picture. Remember that the RIAA is suing people over MP3s that don’t have nearly the quality of the original CDs they were ripped from.

It’s probably a legal grey area if you only post a link to the photo and not the photo itself. I don’t think any judge would actually decide that a link is the same thing as posting the actual picture, if it even comes to that. Remember for it to come before a judge would mean that either you or Fark.com were suing the other, and think of the public relations disaster that would be for them.

[Analogy]

Ouch, I’m glad you noticed that. I will not be submitting any further photos under these rules either.

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What shutter and aperture settings is the camera choosing in macro mode as compared to any of the other automatic modes? My guess is, like I said earlier, that the camera tries to stop down for extra depth of field.

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Screenshots anybody?

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Whoa, I’m an “Elite Farktographer” despite only having 10 entries total over 10 contests, only 6 of which I actually entered.

[Author]

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