Need advice. Digital SLR Camera

[kenr08]

Hey guys...thanks for all the amazing information. Like Lovin most of it went right over my head. With that said, I did gain some great information that will help me when I go and look at them in person. I have visited some of the sites listed and they were very helpful. I think I have what I need to start my decision process.

Hopefully I can get out this weekend and look at them. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again!!

[raythompson]

Ain't no expert here

You two guys are obviously the experts in photography

I am hardly an expert. I find out the more I think I know the less I really do know. I am just an opinionated user of photography equipment. If you want to see a real lively discussion get into one about the best white balance method. Especially when the Expodisc and Whibal are involved. Everyone is right and wrong at the same time.

[sparky216]

I'm lost.....really lost. You guys speaking Greek or English? I have a cannon rebel with a short lens and a long lens (cannon ultrasonic 22-200mm 1:4.5-5.6). It works and takes pretty pics, other than that....I'll leave the expert crap to the experts. Good luck with your camera purchase.

[jwanck11]

You two guys are obviously the experts in photography, thanks to both of you for spending the time to express your opinions. Some of the terminology is way over my head, but I gather bits and pieces and appreciate your input. Regarding your differing opinions, to each his own and it would be up to those of us who use it to decide which preferences we like.

Thanks again. By the way do you have websites of your photography. Ray I think I've been to your wedding site before.

As for being an "expert"... I have relatively little actual interest in the equipment side of things. I know my equipment extremely well but focus heavily on the Artistic side of photography. I am continuously learning to tell stories with my photographs. The equipment just takes the picture... My professional site is in the process of moving to smugmug.com. The cost of personally serving the content has become greater than using such a convenient and well laid out service. I will post a link when it is up and running. In the meantime, check out my buddy Erik Mackey's stuff.

In bold: Boy, that is the truth! I encourage everyone interested in this topic to venture off tigeowners.com for perspective and additional input. Make sure you are reading relevant material. Your needs will NOT be the same - or even close to - that of a semi or full fledged pro!!! The best place to finally end up is in a brick and mortar and test rigs yourself.

In my long "points to consider" post, I attempted to detail out for any old photo taker what upgrading to a DSLR might look like to effectively point and shoot with "good" equipment that will meet that need - even where the wife will enjoy it.

Thanks Sparky for your post - that is the perspective that most people will drive from.

Spend money wisely rather than just spend it.

[raythompson]

focus heavily on the Artistic side of photography

I know the technical stuff and my equipment well. I used to be able to deal with reciprocity failure issues with film and compensate. I can quickly determine a required f-stop and shutter speed outdoors without a meter and come quite close. I can correct white balance, fix photos, makes brides dresses white, white, white. I can avoid blown highlights and automatically compensate for exposure issues because of light or dark prominence in an image. But I am still learning.

I lack the creative spark that many have. The ability to visualize in my mind. I don't know how you learn that. I have an assistant that I use on weddings that is very creative and imaginative. I handle the technical issues, the formals, the lighting, etc. She does the creative shots of the details while I do the other stuff. We don't always agree and know that we don't agree. But between the two of us we do manage to get the job done. It is a nice balance.

The number one rule in photography is that there are no rules.

[evil0ne]

I swear someone had posted a great link to taking a portrait with different lenses that showed how much better a non zoom was for the guys face. Anyone have that link?

[jwanck11]

I know the technical stuff and my equipment well. I used to be able to deal with reciprocity failure issues with film and compensate. I can quickly determine a required f-stop and shutter speed outdoors without a meter and come quite close. I can correct white balance, fix photos, makes brides dresses white, white, white. I can avoid blown highlights and automatically compensate for exposure issues because of light or dark prominence in an image. But I am still learning.

I lack the creative spark that many have. The ability to visualize in my mind. I don't know how you learn that. I have an assistant that I use on weddings that is very creative and imaginative. I handle the technical issues, the formals, the lighting, etc. She does the creative shots of the details while I do the other stuff. We don't always agree and know that we don't agree. But between the two of us we do manage to get the job done. It is a nice balance.

The number one rule in photography is that there are no rules.

The number one rule in photography is pay attention to composition - especially in this day and age where almost any aspect of an image can be manipulated on a computer. For pro work, the techie stuff is irrelevant otherwise. Who is going to buy a technically correct picture that does nothing at all for them? I usually stay out of the techie discussion nowadays although do believe there is still more that I need to learn...

Learning to see is something that most believe can actually (to individual extents) be learned. There are many courses on it and one might set off the light bulb... or at least give it a bit of juice.

I spend most of my time getting my work evaluated/critiqued by an artist and a professional photographer. They happen to be my in-laws.

Go to www.styerholtongallery.com to view paintings by Mary (MIL) showing at Thanassi Gallery on Cape Cod. Tom Holton's work is on the photography link and both of their stuff is prominently displayed in our house.

I mean no disrespect to you ray and I hope you do not feel insulted.

[jwanck11]

I swear someone had posted a great link to taking a portrait with different lenses that showed how much better a non zoom was for the guys face. Anyone have that link?

Au contraire - to a point!

A DC (defocus control) lens is generally regarded as the best type of portrait lens to use although they are very difficult to work with.

I believe most model shoots are done with relatively massive zooms. There is a reason for that.

There are all kinds of "portraits" in concept and it really depends on what the artist / person paying for want in the end. It comes down to "depth of field" and something called "bokeh" (or how buttery and roundish the blurred objects look in the foreground and/or background.) It will also depend on how many subjects are in the portrait that determines the best lens to use. Seriously, rather than re-write the book on TO.com, there is loads of great info on the internets.

I do portraits mainly with an 85mm and a 70-200mm zoom. One image I posted earlier in teh thread was at 135mm f/3 at ~8' if I remember correctly. Depends on what image I am trying to create.

[evil0ne]

Au contraire - to a point!

A DC (defocus control) lens is generally regarded as the best type of portrait lens to use although they are very difficult to work with.

I believe most model shoots are done with relatively massive zooms. There is a reason for that.

I just wanted that link again, showed the guys face distorted and showed it perfect. Great little article too.

[raythompson]

I mean no disrespect to you ray and I hope you do not feel insulted.

Hardly. I have been slammed by the best.

I have seen many pictures that I thought were absolutely terrible that others thought were fantastic. I failed to see this as in my opinion the composition was wrong (limbs cut off, odd angle) and the exposure was bizzare (high contrast, poorly lighted). And on the other hand I have had images that I thought were great that others panned.

As an example there was one image where the person taking the picture was on the ground and shot up at the bride and groom from an angle. It made her hips look big and her nostrils dominated the face. Yet others thought it was a fantastic choice of composition. I have seen weddings done where 90% of the pictures were slanted and I absolutely think that looks bad. I can slant later in PS if I want. Straightening is much more difficult due to cropping issues.

It is sort like a painting. If a well known artist slaps paint on a canvas in a helter skelter fashion it is a famous painting and sells for thousands. If I did that I would have to pay people to take the canvas away as refuse.

So like I said, I wish I had more internal vision for creative stuff and the more I think I know the less I find that I know.

I did look at the link you provided and I was not really impressed with the paintings and found them boring. The photographs were incredibly average in my opinion.

[jwanck11]

Hardly. I have been slammed by the best.

Sorry to hear that!

In one breath you talk about not having creative vision and in the next, you critique art and call it boring and incredibly average. Ummmmmmmmmmmm. OK. To each their own with regard to taste. I agree with you... some see (and even fewer can create) good art and others have no idea what they are looking at (and even more than that have no idea how to create it.)

Please do share the images that you have that you think are great! I would love to see them!

I believe the intent of the thread was to help someone upgrade from a compact to a decent DSLR solution the family could use. He certainly got some great info.

Good luck with the weddings ray!

[raythompson]

In one breath you talk about not having creative vision and in the next, you critique art and call it boring and incredibly average.

When I see something I like I know it. What I have trouble doing is being creative enough come up with the concept in the beginning. As you should well know art is in the eye of the beholder. I have a friend who is a well known artist, Medora Nankervis (google is your friend), who is a very talented and highly regarded artist. I know she is talented and I have a couple of her works in my home. Yet many of the items she produces I fail to like. The ones that I do like I could never sit down and create such an image myself.

Please do share the images that you have that you think are great!

OK. I can only post links to my own images. I do respect copyrights (except for Adobe). Most are not great but what I consider as falling into the good category. The images were placed to show a perspective client that I can handle different lighting situations.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/index.html

Comments welcome. Some of the images I would have done things a little differently as I tend to be my most severe critic. Suprisingly, even to me, is that the people in one wedding enjoyed this picture more than all the others.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...633_large.html

One of my favorites is this image.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...730_large.html

It was cloudy as it had just finished raining about 20 minutes earlier. That wonderful soft diffuser called clouds.

The favorite of the brides family was this image.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...312_large.html

I thought it was OK as I don't like some of the blown highlights on the brides dress. I had to do it to get the faces at least reasonable.

Another favorite of another family is this image.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...415_large.html

In retrospect I would rather have had the bride facing me and looking over her shoulder at her mother. This caused problems because of the lighting in the area as the sun was behind the bride.

I like this image because it was in the sun with the sun behind the bride and groom and required some careful balancing of fill light without looking obvious. Since it was during the ceremony I was extremely limited in my options. I got lucky I think.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...254_large.html

This image has been converted to B&W using Photoshop and the edges vignetted giving it a somewhat antique look.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...136_large.html

In this image I felt the groom (second from the left) looked relaxed and the posing gave the image that casual look. I should have moved the the green items on the left. However it was on someone elses property that was not associated with the wedding, with their permission of course, and I was limited in what I could rearrange.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...206_large.html

And lastly this image was done in a church with horrible lighting. They use a converted gym and still have the sodium (I think) lights that are horrible orange. Overcoming the lights and color balancing the image was a challenge. The bride holding the bucket and her child holding the bouqet was out of my control as she let the kid do whatever the kid wanted.

http://home.comcast.net/~rayt435/con...270_large.html

Anyway, those are just some samples.

[jwanck11]

As you should well know art is in the eye of the beholder.

Nah, as someone that sells my artistic craft, that is cliche. That would mean my kids produce art when in fact they produce drawings.

Art, in my understanding, is a combination of presentation, psychology and science.

I'd be happy to provide comments if you want a perspective on composition. PM me your email addy.

[raythompson]

Art is ?

Nah, as someone that sells my artistic craft, that is cliche. That would mean my kids produce art when in fact they produce drawings.

I have seen art that in fact looks like it had been produced by young kids. I have seen what people call art as being what I would call blatantly offensive. So I really don't know what is art and what is not art. I know what I like and what I don't like.

I know the basic rules of composition, rules of thirds, golden rectangle, etc. Yet I have many times seen these rules blatantly broken. Some I liked, some I did not. I know the basic rules of lighting. I have seen these broken with some to a good effect, others not so good.

I have personally seen "art experts" totally admire a painting, exclaim it's virtues, the creative vision, the expression of the torment of the human soul, the dynamic grasp of colors, the randomness of life; all phrases designed to make them seem important. These same "experts" were then shocked to learn the painting was done by random people shooting paintballs on a wall while blindfolded. To cover themselves they say "the vision was in brain and merely exposed unknowingly by actions of the individuals."

I have seen many wedding photographers with the tilted photographs. I personally think it looks stupid, like you can't hold a camera straight. What happened to gravity? Yet there are people that like that sort of photograph, out of the ordinary, different. Maybe that is art. Maybe I am just clueless because of upbringing as a sod buster.

And I will bet that your kids drawings are every bit as good as the art of the Neanderthal which was their expression of art.

[jwanck11]

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