The Photographer's lounge

[SpaceXray]

Here amateur and professional photographers can come together and share their experiences, tips and tricks, stories, and pictures(if not under copyright).

Let's start this off, shall we?

What was your first photographing experience? Where did it happen and when?

Edited August 14, 2014 by SpaceXray

[Nibb31]

My first proper shooting was in photography class at school in the 90's. We were handed old film Fujica SLRs and we processed the B&W film manually in the school's darkroom. The whole experience involved all the senses, including the smell and the sound of that old equipment.

Then I used my first pay to buy myself a Canon EOS 500 (the cheapest film SLR on the market) and I got a couple of lenses later on. It stayed in a cupboard for several years when film went out of fashion and I bought a (decent for the time) point and shoot digital camera (DSLRs were too expensive).

Now, I have an EOS 600D and I still use the old lenses from the 90's.

[Sun]

Found a darth vader helmet laying around in my closet.

[RogueMason]

I'm a bit more on the casual side of photography. It's not my main hobby by a long-shot, but I've still managed to get some decent pictures, I'd say. Nothing artistic, though

Here are a couple from a geology trip to South Wales a year or so back:

Primarily, though, I try to do astrophotography. Try. My camera is not suited to the grand challenge, and my light-polluted, often-cloudy skies do little to help me out. Then there's the fact that cameras suited for the practice are damn expensive. Still...

Jupiter.

Orion.

Perhaps one day I'll have a camera that can image the heavens beautifully, but it is not this day

[Flymetothemun]

I'm a bit more on the casual side of photography. It's not my main hobby by a long-shot, but I've still managed to get some decent pictures, I'd say. Nothing artistic, though

Here are a couple from a geology trip to South Wales a year or so back:

~Snip~

http://i.imgur.com/iUXE0xw.jpg

I don't usually describe things like this on this forum, mostly because I have moderator paranoia, but DAMN that's a fine picture!

Primarily, though, I try to do astrophotography. Try. My camera is not suited to the grand challenge, and my light-polluted, often-cloudy skies do little to help me out. Then there's the fact that cameras suited for the practice are damn expensive. Still...

~Snip~

Perhaps one day I'll have a camera that can image the heavens beautifully, but it is not this day

I know what you mean, I'd like to get into Astrophotography too, but usually when all the action's happening in space It's usually really cloudy or raining or it's really cold or damp to where it wouldn't be fun. As for light pollution, My skies are crystal clear, as long as you can shield yourself from all the mercury-halide lamps and give yourself some time to adjust. Plus, I don't even have the money for a semi-decent scope, let alone a good camera. I'd probably get the camera first though, I've always lied photography even though I've only had 2 or 3 experiences with handling a camera. Photography seemed like a good mix of art (Composition, etc...) and technicality (Lens size/type, etc...) for me, and just easy enough to where I don't get frustrated with myself and ragequit if something isn't just so (Unlike painting, drawing, writing, music, [YOUR TALENT HERE], etc...) but just difficult to where it's fun to do.

Edited August 14, 2014 by Flymetothemun
Forum got drunk and deleted half of the post

[sal_vager]

...I have moderator paranoia...

Oh and nice thread SpaceXray

[Flymetothemun]

Oh and nice thread SpaceXray

It's amazing what a single paddlin-er-infraction will do to a man...

Edited August 14, 2014 by Flymetothemun

[Rainbowtrout]

An absolutely terrible photo taken by an iPhone appears!

If you're wondering what it is, it's the road leading up to the local Aldi, during ex-Hurricane Bertha. I wasn't willing to open the window! I might get into photography, but I'm not willing to spend too much on the hardware. Perhaps I'll post a pic of the view by my friend's house. Any cheap cameras?

Edited August 15, 2014 by Rainbowtrout

[rtxoff]

Here's one nice shot from my trip to Greece some time ago. This little fella was at the middle ouf our track when we had a roadtrip in Greece. Our roadcaptain spotted him and initiated an emergency brake which nearly resulted in a crash from the motorcycles in behind. Luckily nothing happened and after a little photo shooting with Mr. Hellas we took him some 20m away from the road and released him in some juicy gras. Since then we have a motto: "We even brake for Hellas!"

Edited August 15, 2014 by gpisic

[Seret]

Looks like young Hermann's Tortoise gpisic.

[lajoswinkler]

Yes, that's a Testudo hermanni Gmelin, and it's protected by law. It's good your roadcaptain stopped the traffic. These little fellows have a hard time crossing the roads.

Very cute animals. They often roam around gardens of Adriatic coast, sometimes claiming it as their territory so in essence they become pets if you feed them regularly. They enjoy lettuce, cabbage, slices of apple...

[SpaceXray]

I'm a bit more on the casual side of photography. It's not my main hobby by a long-shot, but I've still managed to get some decent pictures, I'd say. Nothing artistic, though

Here are a couple from a geology trip to South Wales a year or so back:

http://i.imgur.com/WcqrNAP.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iUXE0xw.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/msL4bTs.jpg

Primarily, though, I try to do astrophotography. Try. My camera is not suited to the grand challenge, and my light-polluted, often-cloudy skies do little to help me out. Then there's the fact that cameras suited for the practice are damn expensive. Still...

http://i.imgur.com/lgC5pWd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/csb5zVd.jpg

Jupiter.

http://i.imgur.com/0aQzD0z.jpg

Orion.

Perhaps one day I'll have a camera that can image the heavens beautifully, but it is not this day

Damn those astrophotography pics are good! What settings did you use? What lens?

I can't get such a close-up of the Moon yet since I only have a 18-55mm lens right now, but I might get a proper telephoto lens soon.

[RogueMason]

Damn those astrophotography pics are good! What settings did you use? What lens?

I can't get such a close-up of the Moon yet since I only have a 18-55mm lens right now, but I might get a proper telephoto lens soon.

Uh... a Nikon Coolpix L22 digital camera pointed into the eyepiece of my Celestron Astromaster 130EQ telescope. That picture of the Moon is my latest one (from more than a few weeks ago now...) and it is the best I can manage with my setup, but it is far from the clearest image of the Moon that I've seen lurking around. However, I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

Anyway, thanks

[Lordherrmann]

Javascript is disabled. View full album

So I bought a Canon DSLR for my birthday last autumn and this are some of the best pictures I took in late 2013. I took lots of pictures this year, but I haven't got the time to upload any, atm.

[SpaceXray]

Anyone tried the 1000mm telescope? It is awfully cheap for such an incredible focal distance, but is it any good?

Thanks!

P.S. Can I add a poll to the thread somehow?

Edited August 16, 2014 by SpaceXray

[jmiki8]

1000mm telescope? The focal length alone isn't enough to describe a telescope. What kind of telescope is it? Newtonian? Apochromat? Maksutov? How long is its primary mirror's diameter (if it has one)? I have tried an SW 200/1000 Dobsonian (1000 mm focal length, 200mm mirror diameter), and that's pretty awesome. It gathers a lot of light (f/5 aperture, hell yeah). I will invest soon into my own 200/1200 Dob, to shoot contrails. Please note that a telescope's primary job (especially if you use it for astro-photography) is to gather light, and not to magnify distant objects.

Btw, this is what I shot today: a long exposure pic (~1 min) using a 10-stop neutral density filter I bought recently (yeah, I forgot to resize it, sorry about that):

This is the "Inner lake" near Tihany, Hungary with the famous(?) abbey in the background. Note the almost perfect mirror-like water resulting from the long exposure which eliminates the waves.

My "weapon" is an old-ish Nikon D80 (2006), the great-grandfather of the more famous Nikon D7100. It's pretty cool even today, I'm not planning to replace it soon (it has <30000 shutter actuations, and it should die around ~100k clicks). I have 2 lenses for it, a 18-70mm f/3,5, and a 55-300VR f/4 (for all those plane-spotting needs ).

Before this configuration I had numerous cams: a Canon SX40HS bridge camera, and even before that a Canon A430 compact. My first digital camera was a HP C200. The very first camera I owned was a compact film camera from a minor japanase brand which I don't remember. Back in those times I used to borrow my father's Nikon F601.

[Camera nerdness intensifies]

Edited August 17, 2014 by jmiki8

[Camacha]

The water effect is a fun trick, but it rather detracts from the photo that reflections, the boat, long grass and clouds all are blurred.

[SpaceXray]

1000mm telescope? The focal length alone isn't enough to describe a telescope. What kind of telescope is it? Newtonian? Apochromat? Maksutov? How long is its primary mirror's diameter (if it has one)? I have tried an SW 200/1000 Dobsonian (1000 mm focal length, 200mm mirror diameter), and that's pretty awesome. It gathers a lot of light (f/5 aperture, hell yeah). I will invest soon into my own 200/1200 Dob, to shoot contrails. Please note that a telescope's primary job (especially if you use it for astro-photography) is to gather light, and not to magnify distant objects.

Btw, this is what I shot today: a long exposure pic (~1 min) using a 10-stop neutral density filter I bought recently (yeah, I forgot to resize it, sorry about that):

http://i.imgur.com/OFMoqJ5.jpg

This is the "Inner lake" near Tihany, Hungary with the famous(?) abbey in the background. Note the almost perfect mirror-like water resulting from the long exposure which eliminates the waves.

My "weapon" is an old-ish Nikon D80 (2006), the great-grandfather of the more famous Nikon D7100. It's pretty cool even today, I'm not planning to replace it soon (it has <30000 shutter actuations, and it should die around ~100k clicks). I have 2 lenses for it, a 18-70mm f/3,5, and a 55-300VR f/4 (for all those plane-spotting needs ).

Before this configuration I had numerous cams: a Canon SX40HS bridge camera, and even before that a Canon A430 compact. My first digital camera was a HP C200. The very first camera I owned was a compact film camera from a minor japanase brand which I don't remember. Back in those times I used to borrow my father's Nikon F601.

[Camera nerdness intensifies]

I love long exposure shots, but they are often hard to do due to people moving around(note they guy in the boat blurring).

[SpaceXray]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221524566287

You reckon this is any good?

[Dartguy]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221524566287

You reckon this is any good?

I kind of have a policy about buying anything in ads that have misspelled words or grammar mistakes. It just seems very cheap to not have someone correct all mistakes. I can't imagine that is worth much but maybe you can make a very low offer and it won't sting very much if it is junk.

[jmiki8]

It looks like a mirror lens, basically the handheld version of a Maksutov telescope. This lens has mirrors instead of prisms to direct light rays into the CCD or the film.

I have tried similar lenses, and I have to say that they aren't really good. They are very hard to focus, the picture is usually soft at the edges, and the thing is really suffering from vignetting. If these problems don't bother you, there is another: the so-called "donut effect", which means that lights not in the focus will appear like little circles. This may produce interesting results on your pictures, but I guess you wouldn't really like them.

I also noticed that this particular lens has an aperture of F/8, which is a bit weak. It may be suitable for well-lit settings, but in cloudy weather it would become useless (unless you raise the ISO to super-noisy levels). Forget taking photos of moving subjects, because you won't be able to choose high shutter speeds.

The lens has some pros through:

-It's very lightweight, and small compared to other kinds of telephoto lenses.

-It doesn't suffer from color errors, due to the absence of prisms.

If you want to take photo of stars, you should buy a genuine telescope. If you are interested in nature and trekking, there are a wide range of fieldscopes from Nikon, Skywatcher, etc brands, which offer proper camera mounts (usually T2). They are not cheap (the cheapest & decent ones cost like ~$250), but they are worth saving. You probably wouldn't be satisfied with this lens, and regret investing into it.

I have also thought of buying similar lenses for contrail spotting, but now I decided to save money and buy a 8" Dobsonian telescope later. It's big, heavy (like ~20 kg), a bit difficult to transport (requires a car or a hand cart at least), but easy to (dis)assemble, and produces high quality images.

By the way, this low price for an optical instrument is nonsense. To see sharp images of distant objects, these devices have to be produced at like 1/10 millimeter or even higher precision. This precision can't be reached on the assemly lines of toy factories, therefore they won't be cheap.

Edited August 18, 2014 by jmiki8

[SpaceXray]

Thanks for the heads up! What if I buy a normal telescope(doesn't matter what kind) and get and adaptor ring so I can do astrophotography+ use it as a normal telescope when to using the camera?

[jmiki8]

This is the best choice. Hobby and professional astrophotographers use mostly telescopes, and the real experts even have motorised mounts for them, which are able to keep track of sky objects as Earth rotates. Just note that you have to be able to go out to the field or live in the countryside as even the slightest air/light pollution will ruin your pictures.

However, this hobby is very expensive, as shooting photos in the dark night sky is one of the most demanding jobs for a camera. A camera sensor collects way less amount of light than the human eye, therefore a telescope powerful enough for observation may not always fit well for photography. Most dim objects like nebulae need long shutter speeds which are only possible with continous tracking, although shiny objects like the Moon or planets may not require that. Telescopes with focal ratios (focal length/diameter) of e.g. F/10 are instant no-no for photography, you may need large apertures like F/5 or so.

Also, don't go nuts with the focal length, as heavy scopes fitted on cheaper mounts may be too wobbly even for observation as focal length goes up.

But yeah, I must tell again that unlike observation, astro-photography is very expensive thing to do, as it involves a more powerful (and heavier) scope sitting on adequate mechanics. By expensive, I mean usually like (more) thousand $$$ (based on Hungarian prices). A cheaper, but decent scope costs like ~$500, and you would still need a motorised mount for the best results, which costs almost as much (if not more) as the telescope itself.

If you are not that perfectionist, you could use some tricks, as this page says. This reduces costs a lot (and image quality a bit). I guess with a similar setup which is mentioned there, you chould get an adequate setup for like $250.

Edited August 19, 2014 by jmiki8

[SpaceXray]

Can't you also take photos of nebulae with multiple exposures and then compile them all?

[jmiki8]

You can, the link at the bottom of my previous post shows that method.