Hot answers tagged digital-photography
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I think medium and large format photography is still a world dominated by film. While that fact is starting to change with more recent digital cameras that have extremely high megapixel counts (20mp or more), going to a larger format is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper with film. The benefits of large format are particularly nice for landscape photography, but shine ...
46
Star trails (Google images search) are much easier to photograph using film equipment, for a few reasons:
It won't kill your battery. A digital SLR will expose for an hour if you're lucky before the battery dies, depending on your power setup (extra grip vs no). A film camera can expose indefinitely without using any additional battery usage, which is ...
42
Infrared and ultraviolet photography is much more accessible with film. With digital it is possible, but generally involves modifying the sensor to remove the hot mirror, which is very expensive.
31
It would be wrong to think that increasing ISO results in no "physical" change in the camera at all. The problem with ISO is that people often call it sensitivity. That is really a misnomer...sensitivity is a fixed attribute of any given sensor, and it cannot be changed.
Sensitivity is really more synonymous with the quantum efficiency of the photodiodes, ...
30
Both have strengths and weaknesses - some of the top ones involve video mode (or live view mode).
Vertical streaking
In live view or video mode, CCD sensors exhibit vertical streaking, where bright points of light in the frame, even at the edge, can create a vertical bright line from the top to the bottom of the frame. This is caused by current from a ...
28
I still compose diagonally on a regular basis when shooting bands, I find this maximises what I can get into the frame, and the resulting images work both mounted diagonally and in a regular upright orientation:
I agree that presenting other images like this wouldn't work, for example if you do a diagonal composition of a shot with a horizon it will ...
26
You don't need any special equipment if you're just starting out with astrophotography. So forget about a telescope and an equatorial mount (to counter the earth's rotation) just for now, it's complicated enough already without those things ;).
Besides the moon you can take wide field shots of the night sky with your 20D and a normal lens and tripod. I ...
26
Given the current state of the art, the noise in the blue channel is a combination of cascading effects that work together to make the blue "look" the worst. First, with the Bayer pattern setup, there are twice as many green pixels as red or blue ones in the matrix*. This immediately puts the blue and red at a spacial disadvantage as compared to the green ...
26
Digitally blown highlight is worse than negative film because transition between blown and light areas is quite harsh. Slide film is only slightly better than digital in rendering details in overblown highlights. You don't even need high magnification to see the digital image blowing promptly plain white, while the negative film gives more gradual fading of ...
25
There's a difference between color and color correction filters although they both are colored.
Color correction filters are useful in digital photography to get more even exposure in all channels under some special types of lightning.
For example you'd probably get more exposure and thus less noise in blue channel if you used blue color correction filter ...
25
You've asked quite a few questions, each that is not necessarily as straight forward to answer, but I'll do my best.
For reference, check out this link for some definitions for key terms often used in photography.
[What are the] basics of photography?
The very basics are:
Adjusting your camera settings
Aiming your camera at something
Pressing the ...
25
From a purely theoretical point of view: more megapixels good.
People often talk about how high megapixel sensors were now outresolving most lenses, thus there was no point going higher unless using the very best glass. This is not always true. System resolution is the product of lens resolution and sensor resolution. Thus if you improve one, your system ...
20
Yes, digital sensors are indeed sensitive to UV light, as well as a considerable amount of the infrared spectrum. Most digital sensors are equipped with multi-coated, multi-layered filters that are designed to filter out the extended ranges of UV and IR. Generally speaking, filtered digital sensors are sensitive to a much broader range of light than the ...
19
I don't think we can talk about quality difference anymore. The definite difference, in my opinion, is the need of power of digital cameras. If you are going mountain climbing then a film camera might be more appropriate since mountains still lack power plugs.
Also, film cameras have a very low starting price. If you are a novice it is economically ...
19
Given your situation, I would lean towards Canon, simply because that's what most of your friends have. There are a few benefits in having similar equipment:
You could share lenses (try before you buy)
More specific advice, because different brands have different names for the same things (IS vs VR), so you'll be able to pick up the names quicker.
19
One result of using a polarizer is the deeper blue skies; that effect isn't hard to replicate using software such as Photoshop, Lightroom, Picasa, or the GIMP.
Another important reason a polarizer might be used is to reduce glare and reflections. The best example of this is if one is photographing a puddle or pond; without a polarizer the surface will ...
18
One thing that I like better about film photography is, that you can shoot slides and project these in large scale with their original resolution onto a screen, or even just a smooth white wall.
Digital projectors will never give your 12 megapixel camera justice--most digital projectors cannot display anything beyond the "HD" format, which is really only 2 ...
18
The answer will most probably change in time.
Current top cameras are said to capture around 10-11 stops at base ISO, less at higher ISOs, see DPReview tests of Nikon D3X for example. As a sidenote - you won't probably like the pictures that are processed to measure the maximum dynamic range, they'll simply lack contrast you'd expect from "normal" picture.
...
17
1~2 and 3. On CCDs, the amplifier is effectively in the corner of the sensor, but on CMOS, there is an amplifier built into each photosite, dispersed throughout the sensor. See here.
As mentioned in one thing I recently discovered, most DSLRs have an amplifier before the ADC (Analog-to-Digital Conversion). They tend to max at 800 or 1600 ISO and are all ...
17
Film has always had a more nonlinear response than digital, due to the different processes of exciting chemicals to change states, and collecting electrical charge on a solid state device. Another reason is that film contains grains of different sizes which respond differently to light, whereas most digital sensors are homogeneous.
What you ideally want is ...
17
A wonderful thing about photography is that it's multiple hobbies in one. You can enjoy the act of capturing moments distinct from the production of final images. You can develop your skill in print-making without taking pictures yourself. You can collect photographs taken by the masters. You can participate in contests. And, you can enjoy the gear ...
17
The technology is not primtive but actually quite advanced. Every component important to photography is constantly being researched and improved. The cost of those improvements are passed on to buyers, just as with everything else.
Furthermore some of what you suggest would render a camera worse for photography:
The interface of each manufacturer is ...
16
Oh man. Yes lasers can and will damage your camera's sensor! Your laser pointer is probably weak enough, but I still wouldn't risk it.
Light painting (as you were doing), is okay, so long as you're not pointing your laser directly into the lens, however, if you plan on doing more light painting, I would switch to an LED or incandescent source instead of a ...
16
I think the most important thing I can say is to go out and take pictures.
Take the kind of pictures you want to take (not test, practice or drill pictures) and pay attention to what you are doing and what results you get from what you are doing (I could say "take notes" -- but that doesn't work for everyone). If you do that, you will be learning about ...
14
The big pro to this is, as you say, the ability to take many pictures in a short period of time, allowing you to pick the best frame.
However, there are several cons to this approach:
Lower resolution. Even "Full High Def", 1080p, is only 2 megapixel (1920 * 1080 = 2,073,600). This would give you an acceptable print size of 6.4x3.6 inches, at 300 DPI. ...
14
If a manufacturer wanted to do that, they could.
That being said, all sensors have a native sensitivity, usually ISO 100, 160 or 200. Gain is used to achieve higher sensitivities by multiplying the base signal. This introduces more noise, so if the base ISO was lower, them you would need to use more gain to achieve higher sensitivities and you would get ...
14
Sharpening of digital images is made necessary by two things that degrade the image:
1) the anti-alias filter, to prevent aliasing it filters out high frequency information, but that degrades the image sharpness.
2) the Bayer matrix, this is a scheme to recover pixel level colours from a 3x3 matrix which also degrades image sharpness.
This degrading of ...
14
The Orton Effect is an image-processing technique resulting in a high-contrast look with a slightly "glowing" appearance. It started as an analogue technique made from two slide exposures of the same scene - one sharp and one soft - but nowadays it's more commonly done digitally. This photo on Flickr is an example of the result:
A basic recipe for doing ...
14
Other camera types that I can think of, in terms of digital, would be:
Cell Phone - Destined, I think, to ultimately replace, or at least supplant, the point and shoot. They currently represent what is the most likely camera for a person to be carrying and that is what gives them advantage: the camera you have with you is infinitely better than the one ...
14
The biggest advantage is that you get 3X more light sensitivity.
With a bayer filter, every photosite gets 1/3 of the light that falls on it because the filter blocks 2/3 of incoming light to filter for one primary color. So the sensor becomes more sensitive to light. That means that less amplification of the read-out signal to get the same ISO as with a ...
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