Nature Shots

Nice, Andrew. Did you take that with a phone camera?

paul1598419 said:

Nice, Andrew. Did you take that with a phone camera?

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Thanks Paul, no this was with my Canon 20D DSLR and a high quality macro lens, the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8, 1-5x Macro Lens.
It's a fully manual lens the gives you from a 1:1 to 5:1 life-size image.
Quite difficult to focus as the Depth of Field is so shallow.

RB

RB astro said:

Oh Snow !!!
I love it, I've only ever seen it once in my life.... :cryyy:

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Really?! I couldn't imagine only seeing snow once in my lifetime! Snow skiing is possibly my favorite sport, I've always thought to myself that we grew up in the wrong country

RB astro said:

Well I hope I'm not posting too much but I love this thread.

How's about a hanging dewdrop?

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Dude seriously you've got amazing talent! My eyes are trippin' right now is that a form of algae??

Please post to your hearts content Andrew I'm sure no one is complaining

RB astro said:

It's a fully manual lens the gives you from a 1:1 to 5:1 life-size image.
Quite difficult to focus as the Depth of Field is so shallow.

RB

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No kidding right! You must have super steady hands or I'm guessing you use a tripod? :shhh:

will manners said:

Really?! I couldn't imagine only seeing snow once in my lifetime! Snow skiing is possibly my favorite sport, I've always thought to myself that we grew up in the wrong country

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You're lucky Will, I was around 35 (I think) when I first saw snow up at Kosciusko and I cried I think !

will manners said:

Dude seriously you've got amazing talent! My eyes are trippin' right now is that a form of algae??

Please post to your hearts content Andrew I'm sure no one is complaining

No kidding right! You must have super steady hands or I'm guessing you use a tripod? :shhh:

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That was a small Cactus plant that my daughter had outside so I setup the tripod and focused in to get the shot.

Thank you Will, I appreciate your reply.

RB

RB astro said:

Thanks Paul, no this was with my Canon 20D DSLR and a high quality macro lens, the Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8, 1-5x Macro Lens.
It's a fully manual lens the gives you from a 1:1 to 5:1 life-size image.
Quite difficult to focus as the Depth of Field is so shallow.

RB

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I thought it was too nice a quality to be a camera/phone, but people have been getting some pretty nice photos with some new ones. I know in the macro mode the depth of field disappears on you. I have a Canon digital camera too, but would have to drag it out to find the model number. I haven't been taking a lot of photos lately.

paul1598419 said:

I thought it was too nice a quality to be a camera/phone, but people have been getting some pretty nice photos with some new ones. I know in the macro mode the depth of field disappears on you. I have a Canon digital camera too, but would have to drag it out to find the model number. I haven't been taking a lot of photos lately.

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Oh absolutely Paul, the phone cameras have come such a long way, as the lovely shots that Will took attest to, I grab my iPhone 6s usually for quick shots and am amazed.
Having said that I still love my DSLR because I'm so used to setting everything up manually with total control over everything.
Also my astro-photography demands that all the settings are fully configurable.
You should get your Canon Camera out and enjoy getting some nice beam and general photography shots.

:beer:

RB astro said:

Oh absolutely Paul, the phone cameras have come such a long way, as the lovely shots that Will took attest to, I grab my iPhone 6s usually for quick shots and am amazed.
Having said that I still love my DSLR because I'm so used to setting everything up manually with total control over everything.
Also my astro-photography demands that all the settings are fully configurable.
You should get your Canon Camera out and enjoy getting some nice beam and general photography shots.

:beer:

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I did a lot of beam shots years ago, but always had problems trying to resize them to post. I have many from countless days and nights of taking beam shots of all my lasers.

RB astro said:

Having said that I still love my DSLR because I'm so used to setting everything up manually with total control over everything.
Also my astro-photography demands that all the settings are fully configurable.

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These are the kind of skills I have absolutely no clue about. I'm really looking forward to learning how to adjust the myriad of settings that are present on DSLR's and what those controls actually mean.

paul1598419 said:

I did a lot of beam shots years ago, but always had problems trying to resize them to post. I have many from countless days and nights of taking beam shots of all my lasers.

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Likewise Paul, I have many fond memories of braving the cold foggy winter nights in search of the perfect beam-shot :beer: I don't think I'll ever outgrow that incredible pastime.

Dark purple Iris

This one required a few tweaks in the manual configurations on my phone. In auto the image was severely washed out
due to direct sunlight. I adjusted White Balance to 6100K and Exposure to -1.5 (whatever that means) to compensate.

Hey RB,
What a GREAT shot! Macro photography is something I never got into. Looking at your photo makes me wish I did.

paul1598419 said:

I did a lot of beam shots years ago, but always had problems trying to resize them to post. I have many from countless days and nights of taking beam shots of all my lasers.

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Paul, here you go, try this site buddy.
Just dial in the file size and dimensions and away you go.

Image Re-size Online

will manners said:

These are the kind of skills I have absolutely no clue about. I'm really looking forward to learning how to adjust the myriad of settings that are present on DSLR's and what those controls actually mean.

Dark purple Iris

This one required a few tweaks in the manual configurations on my phone. In auto the image was severely washed out
due to direct sunlight. I adjusted White Balance to 6100K and Exposure to -1.5 (whatever that means) to compensate.

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Will, the adjustments you made are perfect, White balance to 6100K and lowering the Exposure by 1.5 Stops brought out the colours and detail beautifully.
Exposure to -1.5 means you reduced the exposure by 1.5 Stops.
Camera exposure compensation is commonly stated in terms of EV units; 1 EV is equal to one exposure step (or stop), corresponding to a doubling of exposure.
A -1 EV corresponds to a halving of the exposure.
So by reducing your image by -1.5 EV, you 'reduced the glare' by 3/4.

A "Stop" is defined as a unit used to quantify ratios of light or exposure, with each added stop meaning a factor of two, and each subtracted stop meaning a factor of one-half.
The one-stop unit is also known as the EV (exposure value) unit. On a camera, the aperture setting is traditionally adjusted in discrete steps, known as f-stops.
Each "stop" is marked with its corresponding f-number, and represents a halving of the light intensity from the previous stop.
This corresponds to a decrease of the pupil and aperture diameters by a factor of 1/2 or about 0.7071, and hence a halving of the area of the pupil. (Quote from Wiki).

See the diagrams below:






If you would like to read a bit more, here's a quick rundown of DSLR Camera Controls for Aperture, Exposure and Depth of Field.

https://au.pinterest.com/pin/469852173604818254/

brucemir said:

Hey RB,
What a GREAT shot! Macro photography is something I never got into. Looking at your photo makes me wish I did.

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Cheers Bruce.
You're photography is a true inspiration to me my friend, I love browsing your wonderful imagery on Flickr and of course here on LPF.

:beer:

Thanks, Andrew. I also have image shack.

paul1598419 said:

Thanks, Andrew. I also have image shack.

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ImageShack is good I've heard, Bruce uses Flickr, all these are good to host your images.

The site I posted for you just resizes the images for you in case you want to upload them here directly.
Image Re-size Online

What I do is use my Dropbox account to directly link them in my posts.
I resize them in Photoshop and save them to Dropbox.

RB astro said:

Will, the adjustments you made are perfect, White balance to 6100K and lowering the Exposure by 1.5 Stops brought out the colours and detail beautifully.
Exposure to -1.5 means you reduced the exposure by 1.5 Stops.
Camera exposure compensation is commonly stated in terms of EV units; 1 EV is equal to one exposure step (or stop), corresponding to a doubling of exposure.
A -1 EV corresponds to a halving of the exposure.
So by reducing your image by -1.5 EV, you 'reduced the glare' by 3/4.

See the diagrams below:

If you would like to read a bit more, here's a quick rundown of DSLR Camera Controls for Aperture, Exposure and Depth of Field.

https://au.pinterest.com/pin/469852173604818254/

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Wow, a lot of really great info RB. Thanks for explaining all this photography jargon I've heard of Stops before but never
knew what they referred to, the diagrams really help as well. I'll check out that link on camera controls and read up :beer:

paul1598419 said:

Thanks, Andrew. I also have image shack.

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RB astro said:

ImageShack is good I've heard, Bruce uses Flickr, all these are good to host your images.

The site I posted for you just resizes the images for you in case you want to upload them here directly.
Image Re-size Online

What I do is use my Dropbox account to directly link them in my posts.
I resize them in Photoshop and save them to Dropbox.

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For some reason I've found I don't even need to resize images for them to be view-able on the forum. I just upload at their original size (approx. 12MP)
and the forum seems to allow them to be viewed at a reasonable size, rather than being astronomically large that you have to scroll to see one photo.

For image hosting I recently started using 500px and it seems to work perfectly for what I need. It doesn't have any of the editing functionality that photobucket
has, but it's much better in terms of its simplicity, ease of use, reliability (photobucket was always slow and buggy) and it has a great photography community!

Thank you, Andrew. Will, you must be living an exceptional life as i have never been able to post any photos directly to this forum. I've even tried resizing myself by downsizing the photo with poor results.

paul1598419 said:

I have never been able to post any photos directly to this forum. I've even tried resizing myself by downsizing the photo with poor results.

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Sorry, I should have clarified my post a little better :shhh: I don't actually upload images directly to the forum, but rather I upload them to 500px (for the reasons stated above :beer
without resizing them. Once they're uploaded the image hosting site allows you to grab direct links to the JPEG files uploaded and I use those links in the 'Insert Image' function on LPF.

The embed option on the hosting site has a lot of unnecessary embed code so I only use the URL that's highlighted to insert images on LPF.



The main thing I was pointing out is that even though I didn't resize any of my images, once uploaded to a hosting site they can be inserted into LPF without any of the
resizing issues I used to have. Bear in mind this is only based on the experience I have with using 500px. I can't comment on how any of the other hosting sites work.
I hope you can find a way to sort out this image uploading issue Paul :beer: I'd love to see the photos you've taken over time.

RB astro said:

Lazerman121 that's a great MilkyWay shot, well done.
Post some more when you can.
RB

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will manners said:

Excellent MilkyWay shots Lazerman, as RB said, we want more!!!

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Thanks I have lots more panoramas I need to upload.
Did you see my other panoramas on there.