Notice: Undefined variable: splityear in /var/www/vhosts/fredmiranda.com/httpdocs/forum/viewtopic.php on line 99 Manual Focus Nikon Glass - Nikon Forum - Photography - FM Forums
He! I'll tell that to the ducks next time. They will appreciate it, I'm sure.
Yes, they are beautiful, also skittish and reclusive. There were actually two pairs. One pair flew off immediately. I had time to get three non-burst, manual-focus pics before these flew off too. They were below us and too far away for a good close-up even with the 300mm. An uncropped version:
As for the light, the sun was in fact behind us but the sky was overcast, flat white. With bright sun the trees would have put the ducks in shadow, and from that angle the only difference would have been blue sky reflected in the water. So no win there. When we are out walking, pics like that are opportunistic, no time to swap lenses, no setting up, no careful composition, no asking the subjects to step a few feet to the right and move closer together. Though I confess it never occurred to me to ask. Maybe next time I see them...
Ya have to deal with what you have. With Photoshop's history brush you can adjust just the ducks. Gimp has some work-arounds to approximate the history brush, and Paintshop pro may as well. The idea is to adjust the photo just for the ducks, then paint that adjustment onto the original photo. The original remains the same, and just the ducks get fixed. It's a rabbit hole, because you can divide an image into a bunch of pieces and make an idealized version of the scene - something your eye never saw. Did i mention I was a marketing photographer? It's an affliction
James Markus wrote:
From the first roll of Kodak 2238 film I've ever used
Nikon N90S with the Nikkor 16mm f3.5 ai Kodak-2238 film at 25-iso Rodinal 1+50 16min 70-degrees
James Markus wrote:
Ya have to deal with what you have. ...It's a rabbit hole, because you can divide an image into a bunch of pieces and make an idealized version of the scene - something your eye never saw. Did i mention I was a marketing photographer? It's an affliction
Yeah, I know. I've done some image manipulation. F'rinstance, we once had a nice real band photo on our website. Then we had a personnel change. Rather than find an opportunity for another photo shoot, fiendishly difficult sometimes, I found a photo of the new guy with the light coming from roughly the right direction, resized his head to match ours, and PaintShopped (not PhotoShopped) him into the photo. I then painstakingly pasted tiny patches of background around his head to completely hide the fact that it wasn't real. More than one person wanted to know how I did that. IIRC, the cover photo on our DVD was the same thing, a pic with a different band member from a different concert. I don't have the patience to do that now!
But more to the point, I'm partial to the concept of the pic being more or less as seen. You marketing guys can create idealized pics because that's what you're supposed to do. I'll do some sharpening if necessary in conjunction with resizing, every so often play with brightness/contrast (which I could have done with those ducks, tried a little but it didn't help much). A tiny vibrancy tweak on rare occasion. I rarely do much else. I don't want it to look enhanced. Not sure how well that succeeds to experienced eyes though.
[This note is growing long but I might as well finish the thought.]
Shortly after I joined FM I read a thread in the Wildlife forum in which a guy asked for opinions. He had taken a well-executed though static hawk portrait, totally modified the background to look like it was in deep woods or jungle instead of the suburbs, changed what the hawk was sitting on etc. He even showed how he had done it all. The result struck me as an example of 19th century idealism in art or literature, but not a hawk photograph at all. It might as well have been painted, or composed by AI. Another guy had changed an awesome, dynamic hawk pic to have it landing on a tree branch instead of a power line. But the power line is now part of that hawk's environment, natural or not. I watched a "how to" video in which a guy modified a great mountains & lake landscape shot to be what he thought it should be instead of what the scene actually looked like. It might have been great for a travel agency ad. But I've seen and walked over lots of mountains and that didn't quite look real. Had it been my vacation pic I would have preferred the original. I certainly wouldn't show the result to friends as what it looked like when I was there. Then some months later I read an interview with an editor for Nat Geo about what was and wasn't acceptable. Besides the fact that the landscape and that first hawk pic were static and uninteresting, all three would have been disqualified immediately for exactly the editing their creators had done.
It's a personal preference. I was never a Marketing Photographer and never played one on TV. I kant even spel fotawgrafer most of the time. So I just try to record what I see, sometimes things we all look at but don't see, and anything I especially want to remember or share. I'll close by sharing a pic from today's walk, a pic I want to remember.
L to R: My sweetie Sharon and two friends who happen to be sisters. Taken with the 55mm f/3.5 AI Micro.
Yeah, I know. I've done some image manipulation. F'rinstance, we once had a nice real band photo on our website. Then we had a personnel change. Rather than find an opportunity for another photo shoot, fiendishly difficult sometimes, I found a photo of the new guy with the light coming from roughly the right direction, resized his head to match ours, and PaintShopped (not PhotoShopped) him into the photo. I then painstakingly pasted tiny patches of background around his head to completely hide the fact that it wasn't real. More than one person wanted to know how I did that. IIRC, the cover photo on our DVD was the same thing, a pic with a different band member from a different concert. I don't have the patience to do that now!
But more to the point, I'm partial to the concept of the pic being more or less as seen. You marketing guys can create idealized pics because that's what you're supposed to do. I'll do some sharpening if necessary in conjunction with resizing, every so often play with brightness/contrast (which I could have done with those ducks, tried a little but it didn't help much). A tiny vibrancy tweak on rare occasion. I rarely do much else. I don't want it to look enhanced. Not sure how well that succeeds to experienced eyes though.
[This note is growing long but I might as well finish the thought.]
Shortly after I joined FM I read a thread in the Wildlife forum in which a guy asked for opinions. He had taken a well-executed though static hawk portrait, totally modified the background to look like it was in deep woods or jungle instead of the suburbs, changed what the hawk was sitting on etc. He even showed how he had done it all. The result struck me as an example of 19th century idealism in art or literature, but not a hawk photograph at all. It might as well have been painted, or composed by AI. Another guy had changed an awesome, dynamic hawk pic to have it landing on a tree branch instead of a power line. But the power line is now part of that hawk's environment, natural or not. I watched a "how to" video in which a guy modified a great mountains & lake landscape shot to be what he thought it should be instead of what the scene actually looked like. It might have been great for a travel agency ad. But I've seen and walked over lots of mountains and that didn't quite look real. Had it been my vacation pic I would have preferred the original. I certainly wouldn't show the result to friends as what it looked like when I was there. Then some months later I read an interview with an editor for Nat Geo about what was and wasn't acceptable. Besides the fact that the landscape and that first hawk pic were static and uninteresting, all three would have been disqualified immediately for exactly the editing their creators had done.
It's a personal preference. I was never a Marketing Photographer and never played one on TV. I kant even spel fotawgrafer most of the time. So I just try to record what I see, sometimes things we all look at but don't see, and anything I especially want to remember or share. I'll close by sharing a pic from today's walk, a pic I want to remember.
L to R: My sweetie Sharon and two friends who happen to be sisters. Taken with the 55mm f/3.5 AI Micro.
The photogs in editorial dept thought of themselves as purist or "light scribes". We enjoyed lots of banter about the different constraints we each operated under. A famous lost week of discussion was spent on a sports photo that won an award, but then in was later learned the photographer had cloned out an audience members foot. Just the foot behind a chain link fence in the very bottom right corner. It added nothing to the story, and the quick legal edit was to crop it out, but that destroyed the composition.
What I did was sell ideas - you know - the condensation coated glass on a hot sunny day. It was great fun, and photographers can be really inventive.
milt wrote:
Sorry, I just saw your post today. I’ve (once again) broken my ankle (this time it’s the right one) and with the end of the semester, things have been pretty chaotic on my end.
That said, I absolutely love the 45mm f/2.8, it’s one of my favorites. It’s small, lightweight, and I really love the images it produces. Mine was almost new when I bought it and has been perfect. I’d definitely recommend going for it.
This was the first photo I ever posted on this forum (I used the 45mm f/2.8P):
No worries, Regina. Sorry about your ankles having a tough life, of late. I hope for your complete healing before Summer is over. All the best.
rafaelcasd wrote:
Prepare for real art with an art lens!!!!!!
I was always intrigued by the Oscilloscope-Nikkor. At f/1.2 it is obviously super-fast compared to most of the macro-range Nikkors. Probably this was to allow capture of relatively dim oscilloscope traces, but what were the optical implications/compromises of that fast speed? Enquiring minds want to know..
There are two owner links to your Nikkor-O 55/1.2, and they include specs, datasheets and galleries. An interesting fact is the optimal range is 1:5 which resembles the CZ process lenses of that era: my S-Planar 60/2.8 (1:10) and S-Planar 100/4 (1:4).
OMG Regina, how the heck did you do that?!? At least you're home in MA, rather than overseas.
milt wrote:
Sorry, I just saw your post today. I’ve (once again) broken my ankle (this time it’s the right one) and with the end of the semester, things have been pretty chaotic on my end.
That said, I absolutely love the 45mm f/2.8, it’s one of my favorites. It’s small, lightweight, and I really love the images it produces. Mine was almost new when I bought it and has been perfect. I’d definitely recommend going for it.
This was the first photo I ever posted on this forum (I used the 45mm f/2.8P):
Be extra careful with the knee walker, they've been known to tip and toss. Glad your son is helping you.
milt wrote:
No, it wasn’t from a bicycle accident. I twisted my ankle badly at home. Thanks so much, Jim, I really appreciated the offer. My son is here helping me, and I’ve got a knee walker, so I’m getting around the house pretty well (fingers crossed I don’t injure the other ankle!).
