Getting Into Photography

[Consul]

I'm pretty sure I haven't shared this here yet.

Some time ago, I picked up a Canon T4i, and since then, I've been slowly buying more accessories and lenses for it. I took it to our (relatively) nearby renaissance festival last year, and with nothing more than the camera and the kit zoom, got these photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmlandrum/sets/72157635744554706/

Those were what I regarded as the best of the bunch. These are the "seconds", that have some technical issues that couldn't be overcome but otherwise aren't bad:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmlandrum/sets/72157641329547035/

A friend of mine, an older film guy (mostly large format), has been getting me into trying my hand at film and developing my own. This is something I've done before, and the equipment to do it is not too expensive. One inspiration here is this lady, who shoots black-and-white medium format film and then hand-tints, which creates quite an other-worldly effect:

http://ellenrogers.co.uk/selected-work/selected-work (WARNING: site contains nudity.)

I also discovered that developing color film myself is not out of the question at all, and is something I'm investigating.

So yeah, that's what's been occupying a large part of my time lately. Anyone else into this kind of stuff?

My ultimate goal is to do what I guess you might call creative portraiture, involving everything from hand-tinting prints to light painting and anything in-between. I really enjoyed photographing people in costume, so I'll probably find other local costumers and cosplayers to be my models.

 

[rob_gould]

Yes! I love taking photos but am not very good at it. It takes a lot of practice to move beyond amateur.

I've never been that tempted in to portraiture as there's always the concern about random people on the street telling you to bugger off!

 

[zayance]

Pictures are nice, did you shoot raw and process in Light room or so?

What are the lenses you work with?

I see that you like portraits, taking people etc..., and for this best lenses are usually 85mm or more, 50mm does well too (this is of course depending on the size of the sensor in the camera, as this is based on full frame sensors) but with this you usually get less face distortion (some is still artistic and can compose around that too, some like 35mm better), using an 85 or bigger (bigger helps not being recognized out there, well at least for the person you're trying to shoot, not people around you lol these zoom can go to double their size and on DSLR format they are HUGE), but when zooming on peoples face you usually get that "Bokeh" easier, that is craved by many and one thing that shows the quality of the lens, you need that bokeh because what's important in a "portrait" is the person and a little less of  what's around, and bokeh helps nicely wash away this and capture the essential.
Pro's would like to use prime's with a very low aperture, f2 to up to f1.2 or even lower (0.95 ...EXPENSIVE), helps ISO setting, and low light shooting also, reminds me of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, made with a 0.7 aperture lens made for Nasa, that was a challenge for sure.
So for being able to shoot in daylight wide open (with fast shutter speed obviously) and have "bokeh" the magic word... For some it's the difference between Leica and all the rest.
But we all know that at the end it's how you compose your pictures in the frame, and not much what you used to achieve it.
There are some rules to take care of in portrait, and there's a lot of Info's on the web, of course what's important is to be happy on the picture taken, whether they are good nor bad, good quality or bad, but some of these rules help achieve better result at the end, and it's all part of the fun.

Working with a flash is very nice too, and works wonders on helping catch people, composing with it, can take the results up a notch if used wisely, of course usually you're even more showing that you're a photographer and that can repell even more haha...
But I personnaly need to practice more with flash, and since you like "festival" and so, showing that you're here to take some pictures is less provocative than walking in the street with a Flash...
On the street it all depends on the way you approach yourself to people and their moods, if a particular person is interesting and you need to catch that portrait or looks etc... Just say I'm a passionate photographer that needs to learn, do you mind if I take a picture of you? etc...show the result of course it usually breaks the ice (well if you made them look good lol) You might get slapped as a ruthless paparazzi or accepted and you go back home with your wanted picture, maybe even give that picture on email etc... Well not sure if the "pro" would do that, but not being a "pro" myself I don't care much.

Anyway just some toughts, not much into photographie, but got caught by this lately, well got back to it, I was shooting with my dad's old Canon looooong time ago, and too many films to the trash, thanks electronic advancement, no problem on shooting thousands of pictures now lol


EDIT: one famous portrait Photographer is Steve McCurry along many others, but he is one reference
Nice Bokeh on first pic

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jun/24/photography

 

[Consul]

@rob_gould,

Well, there's a difference between planned portrait photos and street photography. Granted, what I was doing at the fair was basically street photography, but the people who show up in costume not only expect to get photographed, they kinda revel in it.

@zayance,

I used the standard EF-M 18-55mm kit lens that came with my Canon T4i. It's an APS-C sensor, so smaller than a full frame. That makes getting a good depth of field kinda tricky, but on the plus side, it's easier to hit that "sweet spot" on a wider variety of lenses.

I just picked up the $99 "nifty fifty", the all-plastic 50mm f/1.8 prime that Canon makes. Optically, it's an excellent lens, it's just cheap construction otherwise. As long as you take care of it, it's a real bargain. On the APS-C sensor, the 50mm is equivalent to about 80mm full-frame, so this makes a great portrait lens for not much money. One aspect of it's cheapness, though, is the five-bladed aperture, which gives pentagonal bokeh unless you have it wide open. You could solve that by using masks, though.

I always shoot raw. The post-processing was done in a program called RawTherapee, which is an open source version of Lightroom. It's not quite as capable (though it is still extremely capable), but it's also not several hundred dollars. I'm finding a lot more benefit in adding and upgrading my kit than in upgrading software right now.

 

[zayance]

I don't think full frame helps you get depth of field easier, FF helps Iso, Huge amount of pixel (not really needed if not a pro)
Depth of field is dependeent on apertue, the lower you go the more you have "bokeh" and so Short depth of field.
Higher Aperture will help getting things more precise within all the frame, andof course in low light you would need to puch ISO, wich would
lead to distortion etc... and you would lower shutter speed to about 1/60, and have to make sure you don't move much,
that's were low apreture is helping, and Sensor well, APS-C is a very much used sensor , many years of "pro" usee and used it....
I basically only work manual, ISO beeing auto tough... but i don't have a DSLR, i have a fixed lens, Fuji X100S APS-C with lens equivament to 35mm.
Maybe will move to a zoom type dlsr in the future, will see, but i like the 35mm and this camera's size/ picture / quality etc... suites me... wasn't cheap tough, and many would have bought a nice DSLR, but i loved the retro look + performance.

 

[zayance]

BTW, we know that the secret of precise pictures is using a tripod, but well moving in a Festival with a Tripod or in Streets is annoying.
but best is a Monopod, it's not as good, but in low light situation and for making sure everything is sharp with a lower ISO, it's a nice thing.
The camera i use, can be pushed until 6400ISO and still be nice, while on some other camera's, passing 1600ISO gets a lot of grain, so that could
cheaply avoid that imho.

 

[Consul]

Yeah, a decent monopod is definitely on my list. I'd also like to get a good fluid-head tripod. My ball-head one is pretty good and solid, but nice pans and tilts are impossible. That's going to be some way down the road, though. Lighting kit is more important to me at the moment.

The sensor size does factor into the depth of field, but you're right in that it's not as simple as "small sensor automatically means less depth of field". But with smaller sensors, lens choice becomes more critical. The guys who can afford full-frame cameras have more to choose from in this area. Of course, they also have to pay more...

 

[zayance]

Yeah, a decent monopod is definitely on my list. I'd also like to get a good fluid-head tripod. My ball-head one is pretty good and solid, but nice pans and tilts are impossible

There are Tripod, that have one leg that can be turned into monopod, all in one, pretty nice.
Normally a "good" ball head would perform very well, might cost between 50-100$  just for that tough, (Vanguard, Triopo and Sirui have nice ones)
unless you want to shoot video, and so i can understand.

Just for sake of Sensor choice and limitations, i don't think sensor is much critical, actually now, the 4/3 sensors are behaving very nice, fast Auto focus, nice pictures, and big list of cheap to expensive lenses (small) that perform very well, of course you need to make sure the focal lenght matches the standard ones, but in those small sensors they propose the ones that are matched, so pretty nice, just sayin, sensor is not limiting, and sometimes even the small one performs very well, and seeing a difference can be hard.
A friend of mine bought a Lumix GM1, lightweight, and with the choices of lenses performs very well, no depth of field difficulty or whatsoever, and its Af is fast as lightning. Plus they are so light to take around, wich makes them very competitive and a mind changer even for "pro" they will usually always have one good one in their bag, and those images would sell as much as th others... and you know what they say, the best camera is the one that you carry with you ALWAYS

 

[Consul]

Oh, believe me, I've been drooling over some of the new class of mirrorless APS-C cameras on the market now, most notably the new Fujis, like the X-E2. I'd have to justify selling off my current camera somehow, though, and I'd have to do it now before I start investing in more expensive lenses. The one downside to the Fujis are the limited selection of lenses. I keep hoping some third parties will step up soon.

 

[zayance]

The one downside to the Fujis are the limited selection of lenses. I keep hoping some third parties will step up soon.

That's where those 4/3 can make a difference.
Yes the Fuji Mirorless are nice, still lack some basic things like faster AF and other stuff, their lenses are top notch tough but you pay
a lot for those true, and i'm not sure there will be third party on those, well at least it's been some time now and not much, well mayve yes,
Samyang i think does some for the X series, but even the kit they give is pretty descent, but of course if you want to have prime's and all it will
be expensive, might be more 2nd hand tough in sometime.

But again, it doesn't always depend on the tool you have, it's always the same story in those artistic fields.

 

[Consul]

Yeah, in the end, I'll have to stick with what I chose. Maybe tax time next year will be different. Who knows?

Canon's not going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[mishagolin]

great work Darren. Canon makes a great line of crop frame DSLRs. I've got the T3i and it can take some fantastic photos. I've got a few lenses for it as well and they make all the difference. I know that a 5D mkii would be nice but i'm not good enough to validate the camera. I've got the 18-55 kit lens as well as the plastic 50mm prime. I've also got a Contax/Zeiss 28mm prime with only manual focus that takes fantastic portrait photos and a Canon 70-200mm zoom that i use for wildlife. My favorite lens that i've used with my T3i is the 17-40mm L series Canon that i borrowed from my dad for my trip to Chile/Patagonia. Its a pricey piece of kit but takes fabulous photos. I just fool around so I can't justify the expense.

I would second the purchase of a monopod. They're lightweight but can make a huge difference in low light photo stability, especially with my shakey hands. a monopod would have been so useful for me in patagonia. i saw one person hiking with a pair of walking sticks and one of them doubled as a monopod withou a mount on top. genius.


regarding film, i haven't gotten into it but my brother in law is fantastic with his medium format hasselblad. He's recently ventured into black and whites that he now paints afterwards. Here's some of his medium format stuff that's not painted. None of the painted stuff is scanned yet.

http://www.ulrichmannchen.com/

 

[Consul]

@mishagolin: Your brother-in-law does really nice work. I'd really love to see some of his hand-tinted stuff.

I'm still hemming and hawing over what new lenses to buy with this year's tax return. So far, the winner out front is the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, which has a constant f-ratio over the entire zoom range. According to the best reviews I can find, it's a decent lens on full-frame cameras, but really shines on APS-C.

A monopod is on the shopping list, but might get pushed out a bit. I'm starting to get really annoyed by every tripod or other kind of stand I own coming with different quick-release systems. I'd like to see if I can standardize those across all of my equipment before I invest in any more.

Industry standardization on quick-release designs would be welcome.