[Curious]

yesterday i had an epiphany. years of thinking of photos on film had blocked the obvious here. the light strikes a SENSOR which has different qualities than film.

here is an interesting article on sensors. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm

sleeping probably knows all this by heart but it explained a lot to me.

we had been talking lens quality, auto focus vs manual, etc but not both the size of the capture device but the arithmetic calculations that make those ones and zeros become your photo. that i could adjust the “sharpen” feature in my new camera brought this aspect of the discussion into focus 🙂

to quote jeff from fark; “you get over it”. i better understand the limitations of my equipment now and until i win the powerball and can replace my amateur stuff with professional stuff will be happy with what i have. despite it’s limitations i love digital photography if for no other reason than i can take virtually unlimited photos. and i love taking photos.

thanks to all for their input.

[Curious]

last weekend i bought a nikon D3000 w/18-55 kit lens and also the new nikon 55-300 zoom. wouldn’t have got the camera except it was $350. brand new in the box full warranty. as you may know that model is being replaced by the D3100 so the retailer was getting rid of existing stock. and it was a display model. as far as i can tell being a display has no downside. it did reduce the price $180 from the best i found online. all the camera features seem to work as advertised.

anyway i have spent a couple of days shooting test shots. roughly 300 images. final judgment — ok to good. these suckers really like to have a nice bright day. or my hand held 300 zoom days are past. as with my last DSLR setting the focus to spot seems to help.

[Curious]

what bothers me nowadays about the less expensive (i won’t say cheap) zoom lenses is the poor F stop. 3.5 on an 18-55 or 18-70 and 4.5 or worse 5.6 on a long zoom is crap. film lenses (and now the much more expensive digital zooms) were 2.8 usually and 1.8 for premium.

grumble grumble

[Curious]

A focus prism with manual focus will give you the absolute sharpest image.

my konica/minolta maxxum 7D has a prism not mirrors and in manual is is sharp even with less expensive lenses. plus it has a handy button right behind the shutter release where your thumb is that deactivates the auto focus. and for those images i really want the best focus i use it. but that sort of defeats the point in buying auto focus. not that you can get manual focus only DSLRs.

[Curious]

i know dead animals are not allowed on fark but how about skeletons? in this case a (mostly clean) deer carcass.

If it’s clean, it’s probably ok. If it’s got chunks of flesh still on it, it might not fly. If you have any doubts, feel free to PM me.

it has a faint trace of residual hair but no meat. basically it’s sun bleached. it will be posted by a friend* and if you don’t think it’s ok smite it. we saw it when visiting lock 1 on the pearl river.

*my friend doesn’t have a farktography account hence me asking.

[Curious]

i know dead animals are not allowed on fark but how about skeletons? in this case a (mostly clean) deer carcass.

[Curious]

Probably…as long as the camera made you do it.

i most likely would have taken a picture of the first object* but it combined with the second was a juxtaposition too good to pass up. and while i have stuff from my archives for this contest i was hoping to find a new image.

*when i shot film there was the tendency to take a picture or two of out of the ordinary. with no cost constraints shooting digital i have gobs of images that are very close variations of each other. or that simply wouldn’t have been taken on film.

what i don’t understand is why cameras have a delete feature. unless the image is completely out of focus or otherwise unusable why wouldn’t you wait until you could download it and see it full size before deleting it? flash memory is cheap and unless you are on extended vacation with limited memory …… well you can see where this is going.

i once had a friend tell me his granddaughter went to europe and shot all her vacation photos at 640 pixels to save space on the memory card. WTF? a few grand for the trip and they couldn’t pop 25-50 bucks for additional flash memory? to say nothing of not being able to make a decent print later.

[Curious]

i was over on the gulf coast today and came across something and another something and combined them for my shot. while i like the results it was set up. will that count?

[Curious]

I was talking to someone the other day – don’t ask me who because it’s 1:30am and I’ve given up on sleep, and just hope I pass out soon – about photographers versus ‘picture takers’ because someone was being all “I could take those shots” to them, and my retort-by-proxy was “but you wouldn’t have”. That’s my take on this one, but I’m not sure how to shore it up in contest words :/

got a “I have picture just like that.” from a woman at an outdoor arts and crafts show where i was trying to sell some prints. for a bunch of technical reasons there is no way in hell she could have replicated that photo.

i have got lazy and lost my photographer’s eye but it’s what separates a snapshot from a photograph. or i’m splitting hairs 🙂 but like all good art we know it when we see it.

while i’m ranting what’s up with folks who think nothing of demeaning your photo by insisting they could do as well but never say that about a painting. or the folks who ask “did it come out?’

on topic i like this theme.

[Curious]

Pope, I understand your emotions. And no, having emotions doesn’t make you a ‘bad person’. 🙂 If I could do it without being a jerk, I totally would have taken some shots of the homeless guy. I am really, really attracted to that gritty stuff.

my sister has a sort of symbiotic relationship with a homeless guy near where she lives. she likes street shots and had seen the guy regularly and finally ask if she could take his picture. a series of shots from that resulted in a couple of local art show prizes for her and a few bucks for him. a win win.

in her case a grab shot wouldn’t have worked since she wanted close ups of his face 🙂

[Curious]

Does that make me a bad person? My first thought wasn’t ‘poor guy living between an industrial building and a railyard’, but rather, that the planned shot was gone.

In the end I walked away quietly without any pics. I had to go with plan B, which I think will work out fine.

short answer no. you were in your “photographer” mode not your “help the homeless” mode. photo journalists face this regularly.

overall i think you made the right choice but mostly because IMO the shot wouldn’t have worked as well for this theme with the guy in it.

[Curious]

I’m sorry about your health troubles and boy do I know what you mean.

thanks. i shouldn’t (and usually don’t) complain. my health is the direct result of too many bad choices over too many years. when i first started getting treated for the COPD the schedule was inhale from a nebulizer every four hours for 15 to 20 minutes. that sucked. now it’s once in the morning and again in the evening for the inhalers. and a pill at dinner and one before bed. pretty easy all thing considered. and i feel better and can work two days a week.

so remember kids eat right, exercise and save some money for later or you could end up like me 🙂

[Curious]

curious – I forgot that was an OBO post when I commented on it. So, uh, nevermind. lol

my friend who had breast cancer and has heart trouble among other things has a medicine cabinet like that.

i lived for 67 years pill free and now with high BP, high cholesterol and COPD have a total of two pills and three inhalers and feel tied down.

[Curious]

ok i did the OBO thing and used his captions since he had them there and i hadn’t heard back from him re to use them or not.

nice to be able to post even if it was OBO because i got noting tonight.

[Curious]

And I think it might just be a slippery slope thing. If account sharing is allowed in certain cases, it’s too easy for people to do it under other circumstances, so it’s just outright forbidden. Also, making it outright against the rules lessens the chance you get someone Farkbacking saying, “Hey, I got banned, but it was my brother using my account, I *swear*!”

i understand and agree but there are times it’s a pain.

and it tickles me that you can have alts but not share an account.

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