[LeicaLens]

That Saturn shot is nice, ravnostic. You can see the rings! From Earth!! I like the way it’s a small speck in the vast night sky, yet clearly identifiable as Saturn because of the rings.

[LeicaLens]

No so worried about the votes as I am the skills. But dayum–camera lenses are SO expensive!! I can’t believe the costs for high quality optics (my 11 inch telescope costs 3 grand, and I’ve seen friggin camera lenses that cost that much–how can this make sense?)

You can still get some decent lens for under a $1000. For example, there’s a 85mm F1.2 lens from Canon that costs about $2500–too pricey, right? But there’s a 85mm F1.8 from Canon that costs from $420 upwards. Not so bad, right?
Also, apart from Tamron, Sigma lens tend to be cheaper than Canon makes. I have a film EOS 3 (secondhand), and I am considering the Sigma 50mm F1.4 for it. I have seen it on sale for about $450 here.
Canon brought out a shiny new 70-200m F2.8L IS USM II lens recently, so the secondhand stores have been flooded with the older model, which is still a great lens.

Which brings me to another good way to get good glass: secondhand. Also, depending on your needs, you could consider getting, say, old FD lens for your Rebel. There will be no auto focus, and the mount may be a bit of a pain, but it’s cheap. I have an FD 100mm F2 for my Eos 3. The lens cost about $130 (very good condition), and the conversion mount about $100 (that was pricey for what it is). Mounted on the Eos, the lens turns into a 150mm F2.8. I have just put in my first roll for development, so we’ll see how it goes.

I satisfy my craving for lens by buying cheap OM lenses for my OM camera. No auto focus, but I can great great lenses for little outlay.

I am not sure what’s available in the States, though. Most mass-make camera and lens makers are Japanese these days, so I don’t have a problem finding equipment here. Also there is a very vibrant secondhand market–too vibrant, really, as it means demand keeps prices relatively high.

/off to look at a secondhand OM4Ti body

*prices are estimates, because I am converting yen to dollars, based on the old 10,000yen=$100 rate.

[LeicaLens]

Adjusting saturation and stuff when converting from RAW is definitely OK because it’s done across the whole image.
As for equipment, rather than buy a new body, upgrading your lens will probably affect your pictures more.

As for getting more votes, well I am certainly in no position to give advice there. I am thinking of changing my login to u-man, though. That *might* fool a few people 😉

[LeicaLens]

Never mind; it’s a beatiful flower, and a beautiful picture.

[LeicaLens]

Damn, there’s some great stuff this week.
Love the daisy through the pine sap, U-Man, and I see it’s already the early leader.
I’m No Big Deal‘s weed in sunset picture is really beautiful, too. Great shot.
And SilverStag, what’s the name of that purple flower with the purple-tipped stamens? I see lots of photos of it in articles about Macro lenses. It’s a very photogenic flower.
In fact one of my ambitions is to shoot it with the 90mm F2 OM macro lens. First, I have to find the lens though…it’s very popular on the second-hand market.

[LeicaLens]

hm. I hadn’t consider that personally. There’s one or two I’d like to consider, but hadn’t because of the insects or whatever that are in it – even if they are ancillary.

Actually, I flet like a little bug amidst the flora would be cool. It doesn’t happen that I’ll use one, but only because I figured everyone and their mother would be posting them. I strived for unique this time. (Okay, except for that one shot…)

I’m not a mod or anything (not even a punk…), so my opinion won’t count for much, but I don’t think that spider in the photo you posted in the gallery forum would disqualify your picture for this week’s competition.

Let me put it another way: after you mentioned it, I spent FIVE minutes trying to find the damn thing 😕 [/b]

[LeicaLens]

I think seed pods (and dead plants for that matter) are fine..they’re plant parts and part of the plant life cycle.

As for living things being in the photo, I guess that depends on how central they are to the photo. The theme description doesn’t preclude other living things specifically, but I don’t think a kid smelling a rose or a macro of a bug chowing down on leaves (or mating on said leaves, for that matter) really is about the plant at that point, and that doesn’t really seem to be what the theme is going for. If the bug, animal, or human is truly incidental to the point where the composition does not depend on them, I’d think that was fair game.

I think that answers the question I was about to ask: are fallen leaves OK?
Or should I save those for an autumn competition?
😉

[LeicaLens]

Photograph plants, things that grow and don’t have a brain.

Things that don’t have a brain? You mean Democrats?

/with apologies to Bob Hope http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k

[LeicaLens]

Just be glad aarkieboy isn’t still PSing. I had fears of his retarded kids and naked-with-a-goat-isms back in the day when I did PS contests.
/2003ish
//it was a Tuesday.

Ah, yes, aarkieboy. Apparently he went off to post on more photoshop-centric forum. Compared to rugbyjock, though, aarkieboy was subtle.

[LeicaLens]

you can also make a free account at tinypic.com and store pictures and do some minimal editing like resizing etc.

I noticed quite a few people were using tinypic. My image of them is slightly warped by the ghastly images gorgor used to post on Fark using tinypic.
I have this irrational fear that any photo of mine hosted with tinypic will suddenly be gorgorized, and turned in a shot of an naked albino pygmy doing unspeakable things to a dung-covered elephant-aardvark crossbreed.

[LeicaLens]

Curious, ravnostic,
I think I used used irfanview in the past. I shall have a look at them. Not sure about the pro account though; if it means paying with a credit card I am stuffed, because I don’t have one.
And my photos barely count as “rank amateur”, let alone pro…

[LeicaLens]

LeicaLens: You can get GIMP, which is free, and it has a similar option for saving your images at a quality you specify. It even has a preview option so you can see exactly what the saved image will look like at the quality you’re setting and what the resulting file size will be.

I actually have Photoshop, but I have yet to “get” it. That is to say, I have the Academic version, which means I have to jump through some hoops to dowload it from Adobe. Unfortunately, I can’t find the important bit of paper with the something-or-other on it (my office is a tip).
Anyway, I signed up for Flickr in the end, and managed to post some pictures. Nothing amazing. Been busy here with stuff, so I haven’t been out to photograph for the last month or so.

[LeicaLens]

I have a question about file sizes.

a lot of us use the “save for web” feature in photoshop. it allows you to select the file size in kb by selecting the quality. with a simple photo, subject against solid background, you can get a small file and decent quality. with a detailed photo you are going to have a bigger file for the same quality setting.

Ah, thanks. No photoshop here. My image editor (which came with the camera) doesn’t have the feature, at least I don’t think it does.

While I appreacite how busy a photo is will affect file size, I was seeing a substantial difference for relatively similar pictures (bar and booze pictures!), which made me wonder.

[LeicaLens]

I have a question about file sizes.
I resize my horizontal pictures to 600 by 450, and my file size is then around 140kb. Most farkers resize to around teh same size, yet there file size is much smaller; a couple of guys seem to have slightly larger dimensions, yet very small file sizes. How does that work? I would be delighted to reduce my file sizes if possible, unless it means shooting the original picture in a low quality format.
(And was Fark down for anyone else a few hours ago?)

[LeicaLens]

I wondered about Flickr. That means getting a Yahoo account, right?

Actually, there appears to be a bigger problem: Fark is down…

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