26-10-2003 05:06									#1
	Teach me about photography Support Apolyton

As of lately I've been VERY interested about photography.. I'm most interested in taking nature pictures.. I've seen one of the most beautiful things nature can offer and I'd really love to memorize them with camera, but I want to do it good and properly.

I'm really bad at it, I've only taken photos few times with some crappy cameras, mostly tourist type of things, so I'd like to learn about it and also know what kind of a camera I should get. Price is definitely a deciding factor, so the cheaper the better, but I'm also looking for quality, so I can really capture what I want. Also how to use them properly in different situations, what type of film shoud I use in different situations (or should I get a digital camera, maybe that's the best option??).. I really want to take good scenery pictures and I know few good places to take them, which I really want to show you guys. Also I want to do it in dark (at night) and take snow into consideration (lots of white, there needs to be good 'colour separation'.).. so where do I start?

	26-10-2003 05:14									#2
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quote: As of lately I've been VERY interested about photography.. I'm most interested in taking nature pictures.. I've seen one of the most beautiful things nature can offer and I'd really love to memorize them with camera, but I want to do it good and properly.

Maybe it's just that I'm up late, but that sounds like it could be misinterpreted...

	26-10-2003 05:22									#3
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Nah, just pictures of nature (no humans) and maybe animals too.

	26-10-2003 05:25									#4
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If you don't have a camera, get a digital one. It's more expensive for the same lens, but the idea is that you can take a million pictures for free and only save the very best ones. That's the basic secret of taking good pictures - take a lot of them! Only one picture out of 100 is really good even for a professional photographer.

When you buy a digital camera, look at the lens rather than the electronics. Only buy a digital camera brand that is good at analogue cameras, like Canon, Minolta, Olymous etc. I personally have a Panasonic DMC-FZ1 with a 12X optic zoom Leica lens. I could also recommed any Olympus camera from good personal experience. Just make sure you don't buy a Sony, but if you do, make sure it has a Carl Zeiss lens.

2 Megapixel is enough for any amateur application. Any higher resolution is only useful for enlargements above A3, which I doubt you can even afford.

	26-10-2003 05:29									#5
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Ok. So how do I know what kind of lenses it should have. I have no idea about them.

	26-10-2003 05:41									#6
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Buy a lens that looks like a penis enlarger. It should have a high optical zoom number. 3X is absolutely minimum, but really look at the lens. It should also be 3 cms wide or larger. Anything smaller is crap (IMO). Light strenght should be better (lower) than 1:3. My camera has 1:2.8 over the whole zoom range, while others normally could go as high as 1:12 in the highest zoom. The best digital camera I heard of had 1:1.8, an Olympus. The light strenght decides how much light you need to take sharp pictures without a flash. The lower the better.

	26-10-2003 05:51									#7
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Yes, that would be important for me. The light strength that is. Good information about the lenses, I really have 0 knowledge of them.. but I'll keep these in my mind.

What does make the difference in photo qualities when we look at these really cool and sharp nature (or animal) pictures ala National Geographic, and the smutty tourist pictures? Sure, lot of difference in professionalism, but the pure quality of the picture, and the sharpness? This is what I'm seeking...

Also, any good information on the technical part of taking pictures, like the lights, angles etc.. I think my biggest problem will be, that I see what I want to capture, but I just can't capture it because of wrong angels, wrong position overall, too far, too close, lights are wrong.. what are the secrets?

	26-10-2003 05:56									#8
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For landscape photography a digital will do just great.
I would suggest Nikon or Canon for lens quality.

I would also suggest 4 megapixel. A two megapixel is nice, but sometimes a nice landscape picture can demand a large blow-up, in which 2 megapixels can be pixelated.

Get one with "bulb" function if you want to do any nice night city scapes.

YOu can also get an SLR digital, they are more pricy, but lens quality and range of zoom is better. Ignore digital zoom, and only pay attention to optical zoom... digital zoom is quite worthless if you know how to use your computer.

However, if you want to take pictures of wildlife, especially birds or other fast moving animals, I would suggest an SLR film camera for this task, the reason being digitals have "delay", with the smallest delay on a digital that I know of is 2/5 of a second on Canon's Digital Rebel. That means you see a bird, it starts to fly away, you zoom in, hit the shutter button...... and... snap... the picture is taken half a second later. Film is fairly cheap, only like $3.00 a roll. For bird photography I would suggest 400 or 800 speed film, because you will need a close zoom, and low aperature. Now if you cannot afford to blow through 4 frames a second on one bird, perhaps you should consider digital....

	26-10-2003 06:05									#9
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Light is usually not a problem, but really, the instances where it is, are really hard to explain. A lot of cameras will have light settings for like "snow/beach" in which too much light is scattered all over the place, or night, which will take a flash picture of a subject in the forefield, (like a person) and then keep the shutter open a little while longer to take in the light of the backfield (like the eiffel tower at night, or a skyscraper, or stars)

Light is most often a problem indoors, or under artificial lights, since film I think is set for daytime light. Some models of digital cameras have a "white balance" funtion that will compensate for indoor lighting.

Zooming in on a subject is usually not a problem, but zooming in on more than one takes a little bit of p[laying with "focus lock" function, or some cameras have multiple focal points. Quite honestly, a basic SLR camera (means you can remove the lens) with autofocus is built to make amateur pictures look professional, really all that is up to you is messing with the aperature settings, which determines how much of the background, as opposed to the subject, takes up the photo.

I am a camera salesman... hee hee.

	26-10-2003 06:10									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Pekka ...wrong angels, wrong position overall, too far, too close, lights are wrong.. what are the secrets?

Take a million pictures. The pros do that. There's no shortcut. Vary the settings a lot, and you will eventually learn which is the best. Zoom in closely whenever taking pictures of people. You don't want them to look like bug crap at the lens, they are the main object, right? Use forced flashlight outdoors to even out shadows. Try to avoid flashlight indoors, or people will look pale and get red eyes (that's why you should have a light strenght better than 1:3). The best pictures will be in cloudy weather outdoors. Try to get as close to those conditions as you can. Press the trigger halfway and aim at the person you want to picture, then move the camera to compose the picture you really want and press the trigger all the way down.

	26-10-2003 06:15									#11
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NeOmega, thanks for the input! I won't be doing anything that moves very fast... and I think I should go with the digital one. But good things mentioned.. I'll be saving this thread.

One thing I should also learn is the .. I don't know what you might call it.. framing? So that the borders are set correctly.. like in all tourist types of photos, they aiming is too low or too high, zoom is always wrong anyway, but the whole thing what you see in the picture and what you don't see are wrong.. picture of your friends from knees up, and vertically screwed up, everyone has red eyes, colours are messed up, it's messy picture anyway, there's some dude walking by and you can see half of his body, the backround is not looking like it was supposed to look comparing where the people are standing, lack of imagination of different kind of options like different angels.. but then again I'm not thinkign about taking photos of people, but nature and maybe animals.. but I need to learn the 'framing' part too, so I get exactly what I want.

	26-10-2003 06:25									#12
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NeOmega has a very important point. The speed of the camera. I've tried a Sony that was very slow. I tried to take a picture of my kid sliding down a skid, pressed the trigger and the kid was already outside the composed picture when the shutter opened. Any Olympus camera is faster, but the problem would not completely disappear. If you will take pictures of moving objects, make sure the camera is fast enough. In extreme cases, avoid digital cameras (but I would think that case very extreme).

I do not agree with NeOmega's opinion about Megapixels. My profession is ink-paper interaction in inkjet printing, and I'm one of the best there is in Europe on that topic. You don't need to go above 2 megapixels to print a perfect enlargement in A4 size. I would at least not see the difference between 2 an 5 Mpixels.

	26-10-2003 06:28									#13
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Controversiality! Nice .

I know about the slowness of digital cameras, last winter we were shooting some snowboarding pictures and it was extremely hard to catch good pictures of high jumps, taken from relatively near.... the delay was killing me. But I don't need that kind of thing for what I'm planning on doing so.. it's ok.

Aagh there's Detroit vs Rangers and I'm here talkign about photography? Damn it! Anyway after that sleepy time, but by all means continue posting if you have tips.

	26-10-2003 06:29									#14
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Pekka, see my post above on the framing issue. I repeat the basics:

1) Take a million pictures
2) Vary the settings and you will eventually learn by trial and error

	26-10-2003 06:53									#15
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I thought the thread title was "Teach me about pornography "

I need to get my mind out of the gutter.

	26-10-2003 07:23									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Chemical Ollie 2 Megapixel is enough for any amateur application. Any higher resolution is only useful for enlargements above A3, which I doubt you can even afford.

Landscape photography with anything less than a 4 x 5 view camera is just a big disappointment.

2 Megapixel is OK for the oyster model of photography, where you lay half a billion eggs and hope a couple make it long enough to perpetuate the species. That's a good start, and good to see if you have an interest that really sticks, but that's the limits of it.

There is only one digital camera I'm aware of that is truly competitive with even 35mm film, and that's Canon's seven grand top end 11 megapixel model. It is the only one where the recording limits of the medium are at almost at the optical limits of the lens family.

In all 35mm professional film cameras, with the exception of ultrafast films and a few specialty lenses, and common lenses used at maximum aperture, the image quality limitation is imposed by the lens, not the film. In digital cameras except the Canon EOS-1Ds, the resolution of the CCD is the image limiting factor long before you reach the performance limits of the lenses.

As you go down in quality/price, digital performance drops faster than that of film camera.

No digital camera made has even close to the subtlety, depth, detail, and image controllability of large format, but large format is a hell of a lot of work.

I would start with digital, but if you really get into landscape photography, large format is the way to go. You also won't have the 1 in 100 photos is worth a **** blues, either - large format takes time to set up, to compose, it requires a lot of patience, and you bring home a much higher percentage of good images, and the quality is phenomenal.

	26-10-2003 11:00									#17
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quote: Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat Landscape photography with anything less than a 4 x 5 view camera is just a big disappointment.

Yeah, but newbies shouldn't mess with 110 and 120 cameras or they will be just wasting film.

quote: Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat There is only one digital camera I'm aware of that is truly competitive with even 35mm film, and that's Canon's seven grand top end 11 megapixel model.

Leaf makes very good high-end digital cameras. They can be enlarged into posters without becoming pixellated.

	26-10-2003 11:00									#18
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Some starter tips
- Look at the four corners of the viewfinder before you take the photo. Most people tend to only look at the centre.
- Take your time. Think about the picture before you take the shot.
- Kneel down. It will give you a different perspective. Most tourist snapshot are taken when people lift up the camera and shoot.
- Use low-speed film. Just try it. You'll notice a difference. Richer colours, less contrast.
- Shoot early in the morning or late afternoon. The light is better.
- Try black and white film.
- For compostion, think of letters like O, C, Z, V. The photo should draw your eye along the lines of these letters.
- Understand what f-stop (aperature) does. A photo taken with an f-stop of 1.4 will create a blurry background which makes the subject of the photo stand out. f-22 creates long "depth of field" which means everything in the photo will be in focus.
- Buy a cheap manual camera and learn the basics.
- take a photo course.

	26-10-2003 11:11									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Yeah, but newbies shouldn't mess with 110 and 120 cameras or they will be just wasting film.

110 and 120 are radically different film types though. 110 is instamatic crap, 120 is 6 cm medium format roll film. I started with 120 as a kid, but "worked" at it, with some good references, lots of exposure (no pun intended) to work by Weston and Adams, etc.

	26-10-2003 11:27									#20
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Adams

	26-10-2003 11:55									#21
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point and click

that's all you really need to know

	26-10-2003 12:28									#22
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well MTG says 11 pixels is the only thing that can compare to film, and Oliie says 2 is good enough.

Of course I assume your monitor is 1024x768.... roughly 1 Megapixel. A 2 megapixel would be twice the resolution on your screen, compressed down to a 4x6(inches) or 3x5(inches) snap shot. In prints this small, it is indescernable to the naked eye, (allthough it still can be picked out as digital, by looking at fleshtones... sometimes) Your screen is probably around 8x10(inches), and even at that size, the print would look not too bad, (allthough if you got really close, you might notice slight pixelation in high contrast areas, like iris vs. whites of eyes) A 20x30(inches) poster, and you would see that it doesn't look too great.

With 4 megapixels, a poster would have the same resolution roughly, as the 8x10(inches) photo.

Also unmentioned is the fuji digitals. They have a better ccd (the electronic film, so to speak) technology, that uses tessalating hexagons instead of lined up circles, which gives better color accuracy.

Honestly, since you seem to like photography, spend some good money and get a good camera, that way you will not want to replace the $200(American) camera with a $400(American) dollar one two years from now. Secondly, once you get your camera, especially w/ landscape photography, always bring it with you everywhere!

	26-10-2003 12:46									#23
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A friend of mine is a pro. He sell his stuff to magazine. He told me that it is the lens that make a picture. You can have any on the camera below or the other listed in this thread and have a cheap lens and you will take cheap pictures. The better quality of the lens on any good camera body will make a difference.
The guys on this thread gave you some good advice, so start taking those pictures.

Guys which of my cameras would be the best taking a good quality picture?


I have 4 camera.

1. Olympus C-3020, 3.2 megapixe, seamless zoom 7.5X, and a 6.5 to 19.5 mm 1.28 lens. The cost was just over $500.

2. Canon EOS Elan II, 28-80mm 1:3.5-56 Macro made by Aspherical. Also 70-210mm 1:4-5.6 UC II and a 50 mm 1:1.8 canon lens. The body & 50 mm was around $500. The other lens were $300. to $400. for both.

3. Canon EOS 700 with a 28 mm 1:2.8 canon lens. Camera and lens around $600.

4. Canon AE-1, with 28 mm 1:2.8, a 50 mm 1:1.4 S.S.C., a 28-135 1:3.8-5.2 len, a 85-210 1:4.5, a 500 mm 1:8, a 2X converter, a 52 mm +10, +4, +2, and +1 close-up lens. Have no idea what the cost was. I brought them a long time ago.

	26-10-2003 13:04									#24
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I really don't know what any of those models are.... but I don't think there is a lensmaker called aspherical is there? As far as I knew, aspherical lenses were/are used for fisheye view....

	26-10-2003 15:44									#25
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Excellent answers everyone. I got more than I dared to wish for.

	26-10-2003 19:40									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Joseph Guys which of my cameras would be the best taking a good quality picture?

Any of the canon SLR cameras are about the same, and all the lenses should be interchangable. They aren't bad, but you can use better ones, particualrly wrt aperture. At least a 1:2.8 is reasonable, and 1:1.4 is excellent.

One of my camera is a Yashica mechanical. It's pretty bare-bones, but the good thing is it can use Contax lenses. I have also got a 1500mm 1:2.0 Soviet lens that weighs a ton, but it's very good, and it uses coated glass lenses inside.