Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Not really, there are some scary lawyer words buried in those owner's
> manuals.

I just read a recent discussion where someone went thru a bunch of user 
manuals for all the high-end cameras, including like the things that TV 
studios and digital movie production houses use, and they *all* say you have 
to go get your license for any commercial use. Indeed, individual viewers 
also need a license to watch any video that was *ever* in MPEG (h.264?) 
format that ever had any sort of money transfer associated with it.

So if you take a video with a camera that records it as mpeg, transcode that 
to FLV, share it via youtube (where youtube makes money serving ads), and I 
watch it, I technically need a license to watch that video.

> If you own old lenses, it's worth the time, and maybe money, to look at
> the different cameras. If you don't own old lenses, it doesn't matter.

I had old lenses, but not so old they didn't have autofocus. :-)

> I have lenses older than me. SLR bodies, folding cameras, and
> 8/super8/16mm film cameras too. Twenty five cents goes a long way at tag
> sales.

Yep.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
> Very different companies. Jasc good; Corel bad.

Yeah, but this seems a common theme amongst many programs.

"Corel bad" is why I'm looking into whether the $70 photoshop is worthwhile.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Invisible wrote:
> Well, try this:
> 
> http://www.orphi.me.uk/rev1/04-Photos/2007-04-14/DSCF0064.html
> 
> That's probably a metre or two away, it's a dazzlingly bright June
> afternoon, and the image sucks. It's flat and utterly devoid of colour.
> 
> http://www.orphi.me.uk/rev1/04-Photos/2007-04-14/DSCF0011.html
> 
> Similar deal. No contrast anywhere, half the frame is bleached white,
> and it doesn't even appear to be properly in focus in places.
> 
> These images are scaled down; usually the full-res image is horribly
> grainy too. (Because, let's face it, usually it *isn't* a dazzlingly
> bright June afternoon, and my camera is supremely insensitive to light.
> If it's not blinding sunshine, it wants to use the flash...)
> 
> There's no way my camera would ever capture the lush colours and sharp
> edges of the images you show.

As others are pointing out, your images are just fine with a bit of
tweaking. It is all about contrast. Earthy reds and greens do not differ
that much, so it all blurs. I turned your first link black&white to show
you how that contrast appears:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sabrina.kilian/TempAlbum?feat=directlink
Also put a comparison leafy picture in color and B&W.

You can fix it with the aperture and exposure, blurring out the
background. You can fix it in post, just pushing the hue and saturation
values around. You don't fix this in camera with menu options. Skip the
color correction in camera, if you can. Skip jpeg if the camera has the
option to shoot raw. You want some dark in there, so one fix in camera
might be to under expose the images if you can not set the shutter speed
directly.

Or, you fix it in your eyes before the picture. Shoot in black and white
for a while, just as practice, and you can quickly teach yourself how to
spot setting that is just doomed to be washed out. You can fix those
situations (spot flash, waiting for the sun to change, moving to a
different vantage point) but learn to see them first.

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Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> I suppose the path is Windows own 'editor', then Photoshop Elements,
> then Photoshop depending on how serious you are. Still when you consider
> you can get the latest Paint Shop Pro for under £80 and Elements for
> under £55 jumping up to £644 for Photoshop is a chasm.
> 

I thought the path went windows 'editor', Elements, ArtRage?

I never 'got' Photoshop. I used it at work, and while it does everything
. . . it does everything. Felt like overkill, every time I started it
for something.

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Right. The bigger the aperture, the more glass (And in high-end lenses 
> it's exotic glass with exotic coatings) ergo, the more cost.
> 
> Remember, the glass has to be a special type (and in most lenses, there 
> are a couple different types of glass being used) to eliminate 
> dispersion effects. Also, its expensive to grind some of the profiles on 
> the glass to counter geometrical distortions. Again, adding to the price 
> tag.

I bet a £7,000 lense is really, really heavy...

(I couldn't tell from the picture, but it looked like it was 30cm across 
or something!)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2010 12:35:02 +0200, scott wrote:
> 
>> And typically pros will not let the camera do *any* processing, and
>> import the raw sensor data to their computer for manual colour,
>> sharpness and exposure control.
> 
> Exactly - the adjustments I made were pretty basic with GIMP (similar to 
> the ones you made), but if RAW format images were available, there'd be a 
> lot more room to adjust things like exposure.

...but once the image has been taken, the exposure has already happened. 
How can you change it after the fact?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:

> You can fix it with the aperture and exposure, blurring out the
> background. You can fix it in post, just pushing the hue and saturation
> values around. You don't fix this in camera with menu options. Skip the
> color correction in camera, if you can. Skip jpeg if the camera has the
> option to shoot raw. You want some dark in there, so one fix in camera
> might be to under expose the images if you can not set the shutter speed
> directly.

Just FYI, the camera doesn't have any option to save anything but JPEG 
format. You can adjust the colour balance (but not very much), and 
exposure and IIRC you can manually set the shutter speed in case you're 
insane.

I still want a new camera. It's a PITA that I can't leave the batteries 
in this one...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 May 2010 12:35:02 +0200, scott wrote:
>> 
>>> And typically pros will not let the camera do *any* processing, and
>>> import the raw sensor data to their computer for manual colour,
>>> sharpness and exposure control.
>> 
>> Exactly - the adjustments I made were pretty basic with GIMP (similar to
>> the ones you made), but if RAW format images were available, there'd be a
>> lot more room to adjust things like exposure.
> 
> ...but once the image has been taken, the exposure has already happened.
> How can you change it after the fact?

In film cameras, exposure means how much time the film is exposed to light. 
In digital cameras, the sensor is receiving light all the time. What does 
"exposure" mean there?

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"Fredrik Eriksson" <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2010 20:21:15 +0200, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I just got PSP X2 working again.
>>
>> What is with these companies?  PSP8 had a perfectly good mechanism for
>> browsing pictures.
> 
> Very different companies. Jasc good; Corel bad.

I remember using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 5... Now that had no bloat :)

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On 05/05/2010 7:21 PM, Darren New wrote:
> I just got PSP X2 working again.
>

...

> What is with these companies? PSP8 had a perfectly good mechanism for
> browsing pictures.
> </rant>
>

Thanks for the heads up :-D

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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