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The Big Photography Thread


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This is my process for star trails:

http://kenleephotography.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/photo-tip-5-steps-to-creating-this-star-trails-photo-includes-stacking-in-photoshop/

 

If you like the tutorial or have any questions, please ask in the comments section below, thanks.

 

I love doing star trails photos!!!!!!!!! I love being able to show the movement of the stars through a single image, something we don't always think about or are not aware of.

 

10 degrees F is pretty cold, so you would definitely need to dress very warmly for that!!

Excellent tutorial, Ken! I was not aware of the stacking technique.

 

Yes, it was very cold, even though I had thermal underwear on! Next time I'll visit in the summer :laugh:

 

Cool, glad you like it, thanks!

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Here's the photo that I'm most excited about these days. Our son, Michael... looking like a million bucks. Proud dad here.

 

http://www.coscia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Mike+Dad-2-Sm.jpg

 

... and here he is in his younger days. Playing the main stage at Philadelphia's Trocadero. Dad is still proud. La famiglia.

 

http://www.coscia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Mike-Troc-Sm.jpg

Steve Coscia

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http://kenleephotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/startrails-templetreezion3-kenleeblend2-700px.jpg

This was featured on the cover of National Geographic's website for the Daily Dozen, and is another star trails photo that "stacks" numerous images together to form the star trails. In total, this is 50 minutes (when adding all the images together). I also "light painted" the tree slightly to give it a more "mystical" sort of look, back-lighting it slightly to give it that warmer hue near the bottom. The rest of it is natural illumination from the moon.

 

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/joshuatree2012aprilstartrails/images/208_joshuatree_jumborocksBW.jpg

Black and white photo with the sun peaking out of the corner. I shot this using a small aperture to create the "starburst" effect with the sun.

 

 

http://elevenshadows.com/travels/india2013-himalayas/images/partone-begtodahhanu/8876kenlee_india-hemisfest.jpg

Himalayas, India. This one used a Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens.

 

 

http://elevenshadows.com/travels/india2013-himalayas/images/partone-begtodahhanu/8969kenlee_india-hemisfest-boymonks.jpg

Himalayas, India.

 

All photos are taken with a Nikon D7000 semi-pro DSLR (cropped sensor) and a Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens except for where noted.

 

 

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Thank you Ken. Coming from you that's quite a compliment.

 

My dog Abbey and my other dog Dolly in the distance. Last week after the snow before it cold too cold.

 

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3822/11835834215_1ae7ca1706_b.jpg

Snow Dog by keysolutns, on Flickr

 

A very lucky capture using the "motion sensing" feature of Magic Lantern - A firmware hack for Canon cameras.

 

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5492/11102553915_b7069220b3_b.jpg

IMG_1857.jpg by keysolutns, on Flickr

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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Thanks, Mike. The two new ones and the other ones look good, are well-composed, and good and sharp (nicely focused, in other words).

 

I've been posting here while processing audio, taking out stray noises and such with Izotope, so I've been doing music and discussing photography simultaneously, two huge loves of mine!!!! :cool:

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A part-time hobby of mine is digital art. This in NOT a photograph, there is nothing real in it, everything is CGI models. It is a virtual porch created in a free program called DAZ Studio. I was going for as much photo-realism as possible as an experiment, and that was only possible to render realistically using a program called Luxrender, which renders everything in world format, which is pretty realistic. I'm actually pretty proud of how it turned out.

 

..Joe

 

http://www.joegerardi.net/Photos/reality_031_AB.png

Setup: Korg Kronos 61, Roland XV-88, Korg Triton-Rack, Motif-Rack, Korg N1r, Alesis QSR, Roland M-GS64 Yamaha KX-88, KX76, Roland Super-JX, E-Mu Longboard 61, Kawai K1II, Kawai K4.
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Thanks, Mike. The two new ones and the other ones look good, are well-composed, and good and sharp (nicely focused, in other words).

 

I've been posting here while processing audio, taking out stray noises and such with Izotope, so I've been doing music and discussing photography simultaneously, two huge loves of mine!!!! :cool:

 

Thank you!

 

Having this thread here was exactly my goal that we could discuss both our visual and audible passions. :)

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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Yeah, that would be really cool. There may be quite a lot of us who are equally passionate about photography. I spent much of the day working on music, testing out this new Waves Scheps 73 EQ, or talking about photography, which I love doing. And this weekend and next weekend, I'm photographing a bunch of stuff.

 

Joe Gerardi, that's pretty freakin' amazing.

 

 

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I have made some money doing early digital photographs, and I graduated in am (EE) subject involving heavy Computer Graphics (photo-realistic rendering), am not fresh to video and the visual arts, but at the moment I wouldn't mind a 4k camera, some more heavy computer equipment, and opportunities to use them!

 

But, the latest HD Sonys (and I mean only the not too cheap Sony, over a few hundred $s) and the Free and Open Source Cinelerra and some other heavy (Linux) tools are certainly fun to try out. Honestly, Premiere bores me too much already after a month tryout...

 

T

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Photography is an interest that my wife and I have in common.

My wife and I also have that common interest, more so now that we both shoot digital. Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis is our favorite photo date location.

www.wjwcreative.com

www.linkedin.com/in/wjwilcox

 

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My girlfriend doesn't take that many photos anymore, a shame since she has a good eye for it. But at some point, she kept saying, "Your photos look great...they're enough." So she doesn't photograph so much anymore when we go on trips.

 

~~~

 

Just to throw it out there, you can take fantastic photo gallery quality photos with a modest DSLR or four-thirds camera (and sometimes, less than that, although that's less commoon). We're talking several hundred dollars, not several thousand. It's primarily the person taking the photo and the vision, aesthetics, and technique they bring to the table, not terribly unlike music.

 

At any rate, the lens plays far more of a part than the camera in terms of image quality.

 

Also not terribly unlike recording music, right?

 

The lens is the microphone, and the DAW is the camera. Sure, the DAW or the camera matter, but much less than the lens or the microphone in terms of quality of image or sound.

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Here is one of my favorites. I used an adapted old Minolta lens. Minolta lenses don't adapt well to a modern Canon and the adapters require another lens to focus properly. The lens on this adapter can be removed, essentially making it function like an extension tube for macro photos. Check your local thrift stores for amazing deals on lenses that can be used on your DSLR.

 

I've had this box of vintage / broken watch pieces that parents collected then gave to me. My wife was about to make some kind of display with them and before she did that I spread them out on the table and took a bunch of pictures.

 

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5471/11861734246_dcd8de95af_b.jpg

IMG_1072.jpg by keysolutns, on Flickr

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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Well, I've wondered about the use of specific photo cameras getting those nice grainy, layer-sharp photos with many megapixels. In honesty, I also like it when a camera is more 'honest' than that, and some HD cameras can do pretty well, also with a bit of glossiness to the result. This is a modern 300 euro Sony example picture (obviously made smaller, but not processed):

 

http://www.theover.org/Keybdmg/Pictures/dsc00214m.jpg

 

Of course, with these JPEG based cams, unless you use frame averaging on HD video, you miss getting High Dynamic Range, and you miss the absolute sharpness of TIFF images. I do experiment with different exposures, and layering those images (like in Luminance-hdr).

 

I used to like playing with Cinepaint, to at least do image processing with more than 8 bits per component of a pixel. However this software has gone stale: both the version I just compiled and the Fedora Linux packaged one will not load or save anything except it's own file format. Amazing.

 

T

 

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Here is one of my favorites. I used an adapted old Minolta lens. Minolta lenses don't adapt well to a modern Canon and the adapters require another lens to focus properly. The lens on this adapter can be removed, essentially making it function like an extension tube for macro photos. Check your local thrift stores for amazing deals on lenses that can be used on your DSLR.

Lovely macro image Mike!

 

As I understand it, a lot of these older lenses (like Canon FD lenses) can really only be used as macro lenses because the flange focal distance of modern DSLRs is longer than older SLRs, thus you can't achieve infinity focus. Has that been your experience, or have you adapted other lenses successfully and gotten the full focus range?

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There are some that adapt very well.

 

This page has a chart that I reference all the time.

 

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/eosfaq/manual_focus_EOS.html

 

Specifically you want to look at the ones that do not require optics to focus properly. I have a Pentax 135mm Prime K mount that I've adapted and it works well.

 

I just picked up a Super Takumar 55mm f/1.8 M42 mount for just a few dollars that is mint and by all accounts should deliver incredible results. Whether it is better than the Canon nifty 50mm f/1.8 or worth the hassle remains to be seen.

 

This thread on has nothing but sample pictures from MF adapted lenses:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=644277

 

 

If you're doing video, some of these old lenses are very desirable because of image quality and the quality/size of the focus ring.

-Mike Martin

 

Casio

Mike Martin Photography Instagram Facebook

The Big Picture Photography Forum on Music Player Network

 

The opinions I post here are my own and do not represent the company I work for.

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http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/ancientbristleconepineforest-2013july/images/2698_kenlee_bristleconepine-20sf28iso3200.jpg

"Touch The Sky"

 

Reaching for the Milk Way amongst the oldest trees in the world, some existing before the time of Buddha, live high up at 11,000 ft./ 3350 m in the White Mountains of California.

 

Title: Touch The Sky, Plate 2698

Photographer: Ken Lee

Info: Nikon D7000, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens.

 

 

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Thanks, Michael.

 

16251, it's really fantastic. Because of my interest in night sky photography, I've sought out more and more places like this, which in turn has brought me to fantastic places and greatly increased my love of nature and the night sky. I wish I could go to places like this more often, but at least I get to go.

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