kja

Ah, so you are looking at zooms, too Both the sigma and the tamron are great choices - you'll love either one!

50 1.8 35 is a nice focal length, but I think the 50 is just a tad more all rounder. on the other hand, the 30 1.4 is what I will grab quite often, too. but you do have to be all up in people's faces with the 30 or 35 where the 50 gives you a little more breathing room.

Unfortunately the white areas on her head are completely blown and there isn't any data to recover (at least in the posted version). Up your shutter speed or close your aperture (or lower your ISO if you were shooting over 100 or 200) and try, try again! Sorry the news isn't better...

FWIW I think the Olympus water/shock proof cameras are completely overpriced for the image quality. Even the newer models STILL have issues with nailing focus even in good conditions. And noisy? Woo boy, noisy images fa sure. Every time I use ours I hate it more and more. On the upside, it is waterproof (always check the seals!!), it looks cool and it's pretty small. But heavy compared to other cameras of the same size. And it's only one piece if we're talking snorkelling only. The Canon cameras, both SD and A range (and G if they have the cash), simply work and produce very nice results.

Love my 100-400 Last time I took it out I had a great time! It's a great lens, you won't regret it!

Canon A series with manual controls and a Canon underwater housing I have two A720s and an A570. I've had several others before these and loved them all. RAW hack is available for some models, too. Easy, reliable, capable of great results, will grow as skills/needs grow, manual allows him to fine tune tricky situations (read all of them underwater) that would otherwise trick the camera. I do this underwater thing day in and day out & have played with most everything out there, so please feel free to ask any and all questions.

Nope, it's a 1.6 crop just like the XXDs and XXXDs If I was still shooting with a 20D or 30D, I'd probably seriously consider this if I wanted to upgrade; same if I was shooting one of the Rebel line. If a 40D dies I'll probably look at this over the 50D, but I love my 40Ds and hope that doesn't happen for a long while yet!

Awesome challenge and great contribution - thanks for lining it up, Ashanali!! TerraN - yes, you can shoot landscapes with any lens really. I shot one the other week with my 85 that I really like and had never considered using the 85 for something like that before. Maybe part of the challenge for some will be shooting landscapes with different lenses than we might first consider as landscape lenses And whoever asked about shooting the ocean as a landscape, I'd say that's perfectly great! Can't wait to see more this month - the ones so far are excellent!! Nicely done

Well, it's official. Canon's newest dslr is available for presale and the specs are out. Reviews are already hopping. So far, things look very very nice for this new camera. Very nice indeed. Specs Rob Galbraith review dpreview Looking sweet...and at $1700 initial pricing it looks to be good value from the outset, too.

Congratulations!! It's a gem of a camera and you're going to have heaps of fun with it.

Looks like about $650-$700 US on POTN...

Or you could just use Lightroom and not worry about masks and layers and whatnot :cool: I didn't adjust the colour or contrast or saturation or vibrance etc coz I didn't know what look you wanted or what the real colours were. I just tamed the highlights and made sure the shadows didn't go blocky. Obviously it's just a quickie as an example. I deal with "overexposed" images a lot by choice and I've found that LR copes very well. Of course, some cameras do better than others, too. This image is pretty salvageable! Here's about 10 more seconds of sliders in Lightroom - have no idea if it's where you are going

Sorry, I was talking about more than locating images...I should have been more clear I think I mark mine like "yes I'm going to deal with this one right now" and "I kinda like this so I'll mark it to come back to one day but I'm not going to work on it right now" and "this needs to be cropped" and "this needs some curves or a split tone or black/white" etc ... I tag 'em with my "instructions" and "timeline" at import then when the mood strikes, I hit the purple filter and it brings me all the ones I want to split tone/black white or whatever. Green with a star? I know it's one that I'll deal with right away and that I want to do something to it (depends on what kind of shot as to what, but usually something like straighten a horizon). Saves oodles of time as I don't get (too) distracted looking at a whole heap of images at one time and helps me keep focused. Not having to think about a different treatment for each frame - like I do all of my crops/straighten or all my split tone/bw in one hit - is a huge time saver for me. Does this make sense?

Ripley - if you don't already, maybe try using the marking tools - like colours, stars, flags...dunno what your program uses. That way you don't have to actually toss stuff you might go back to one day but you can hit the filter button and not be so overwhelmed with the sheer volume of images as it will only bring up a certain set. It took me awhile to find a marking system that worked for me (and I'm sure this will evolve too) but once I even started messing with it things became a lot more manageable

I have a whole other job where I work 8-19 hours a day most days of the week, all year round mostly. I also do photography professionally in there somewhere and shoot a crazy amount just for the hell of it. I have 100s and 1000s of images each week. I survive without living in front of the computer and without getting too far behind by culling and tagging...and I am not the world's best culler, frankly LOL I, too, have a whole bunch of images from 2008 that I haven't processed - why? Because I've prioritized things and those are images that I can go back to any time but that have no real time sensitive value to me. When I first shot them, I pulled out my very favourites (or at least the ones that grabbed me right at import LOL), dealt with them and left the rest to do later when I wanted to. I can cull and tag 1000 photos pretty much as fast as my computer can download them - I use a combo of colours and star ratings in Lightroom then use the filters. I think Bridge with Photoshop will give you a lot of options when you import your images - you can tag em, tweak em, batch em whatever. Hopefully someone who uses it will chime in...I hated it and just fell in love with Lightroom so use that. Both work, I think, especially the newer Bridge. Anyhoo. Shooting in RAW really shouldn't increase your editing time. Import 'em, cull 'em, tag 'em, tweak 'em and get 'em out the other end. Pretty much what you do when you shoot jpeg (or tiff if anyone still has one of those!) It took a while to develop an effective workflow and honestly, it changes and evolves as I learn more..but I'm spending more time shooting and less time editing, organizing and the like than I was even 12 months ago.

Ask Ash nicely and maybe she'll make Taking Photos of the Every Day and Making Them Interesting a new theme one month Pretty much for me, it's just get out there and shoot and play around. Sometimes I have something in mind, but often I use my camera time to have NOTHING on my mind - it's therapy & meditation for me ;) Just try new things - times of day, angles, get on the floor, get on a chair... Play in your editing program. Join the challenge here...everything.

OMG how many hours can be lost once you start experimenting LOL Being strict with yourself is the only way to go ... and some days I start looking around the web and trying new things and combining things and then say "bad me! just git 'er done THEN play" Almost all my edits are done in LR but I don't do much fancy schmancy stuff right now so PS doesn't give me any benefits for my basic workflow on an overall shoot. I keep getting tempted to work more in it, but can't quite bring myself to go there LOL But I am going to take the time to learn more about this scripts thing!

I haven't played with textures and such much at all so haven't really thought too much about buying it tho it does look cool! Hmmm, when you work on an image in PS, doesn't it pop back up in LR when you save it after the changes? Mine do and then I just use the edited version for export (usually by adding a * to the original so the filter removes it once it's done). Then I have everything in one place if I want it. So many ways to skin a cat, I love learning new ways to think about things...

I think I'm starting to understand scripts a little but am curious why you chose to use this for your proofs instead of just exporting them from lightroom with whatever droplet (watermark, PROOF or whatever)? In the export menu in lightroom you can set the image size, the folder to save to, the file type, the file quality and your choices in section 4? This particular script looks like what Lightroom can already do so just curious what it does that I'm missing or how you've found that this helps your workflow. I know this isn't the *only* script and was just an example, but now you've made me curious about this one specifically

Are scripts like actions? Yep. Very handy for things such as creating proofs for clients, we can use a script rather than creating an action. Takes about 30 seconds to set up a script as the information is all right in front of you, no having to record the action and testing it first. Sorry for the hijack here for a minute...ok, I clearly need to figure out what these things are Can you save them to use over and over, like actions? My proof thing is an action at the moment. I'll get online when I have a few minutes to see what the difference is and how the heck to use them. And here I thought actions were pretty cool

Are scripts like actions?

I just wanted to say that shooting RAW or jpeg makes NO difference to wanting to get it right in camera. That's bollocks and one of the reason I was scared to move to RAW for so long. Same with being nervous about all the "extra editing" I'd have to do. Bollocks again. My biggest regret is not moving to RAW right away. The data the camera threw away using jpeg can never be gotten back and that does impact the final product sometimes - with or without big changes to the original. I still get it right in camera. I spend less time in editing. My data is better which gives me more room to do whatever I want with the image now or in the future. Do whatever you want & be happy. Use what works for the situation and for your needs/interests. But please let's remember that people who haven't adapted a style or routine are reading these threads and scaring them by implying they aren't striving for perfection in camera or they are going to have to spend hours wasting away in front of their computers tediously editing images if they shoot RAW is ridiculous. Shooting in RAW isn't about being able to fix errors later (though it may be a lovely side benefit). /soapbox

Dunno, never heard of it. Looks big, ugly and clunky to me. Lens doesn't appear to be fast. If you have an extra $200 laying around and don't care if it turns out to be a piece of junk, go for it - you might be pleasantly surprised. I doubt it, honestly, but it could happen. A good compact might be a better, safer, smaller, more user friendly option

This can all be done at import in lightroom - stick the card in the reader, choose a folder and a backup location, choose the filenames, file type and hit the button. No time to do. Those who shoot the same things over and over have presets created that can be applied at import so that can eliminate that step for the vast majority of images, too. A good friend who shoots underwater has a couple of presets that are applied to all his images at import - like one for macro work, one for super wide angle, one for in-between etc and also different ones for different cameras. All of the applied tweaks are, of course, totally changeable if they don't suit a particular image. I haven't used the import presets as yet but in the back of my mind I'm always thinking about it. I do have presets that I'll apply to a whole shoot by selecting the preset from my develop menu and using "select all" after I've imported, but not very often as often what I shoot has a good variety of conditions. So I tend to just import without a preset and then apply whatever to batches or groups of similar photos. The synch option in LR lets you apply your tweaks to multiple images at once - it's very fast and efficient and everything can be tailored per photo if you need to. I can whip through 1000 photos with basic edits ready for proofing FAST, if need be. What tends to take the most time, for me, is selecting the keepers - and I can't see that RAW or jpeg would impact that at all. It really shouldn't take more time to get images ready to show if you shoot in RAW vs jpegs once you get a good workflow happening. And the extra benefits of RAW for the final product more than make up for any extra seconds, imho This isn't to debate the merits of one over the other as both work for individual photographers so there's no right or wrong, but having used both, I just don't see that jpeg took any less time for me to deal with than RAW (and using RAW has saved a photo here or there that simply wouldn't have been recoverable in jpeg, since I'm not perfect and do make mistakes or get slack and don't check settings before I pick up a camera and shoot sometimes!)

ROFL I don't really think it's opinion but okie