Picture of the Day

[ANP !!!]

ANP that is an awesome shot. Do you mind telling me how you get such a great shot with ISO 800? Usually over ISO400 you get so much noise, but your shot came out really nicely. Anyway, its a new day, so here is my next pic :

Taken a few weekends ago along the Thames on a Saturday just after Guy Fawkes day. They had a nice fireworks display.

Thanks man, I shoot RAW and apply a bit of noise reduction in Lightroom, it does a great job in getting rid of Noise. But Noise is not much of an issue with DSLRs, esp with D40, due to its small pixel count, it has great high ISO performance, The below pic is shot at ISO-1600, straight out of the camera JPEG, no noise reduction applied or PP.



Camera: Nikon D40
ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/320sec
Aperture: f/9
Focal Length: 18mm
Exposure Bias: -0.7 stop
Lens: Nikkor 18 - 55mm VR DX AF-S

[Shogan]

Thanks man, I shoot RAW and apply a bit of noise reduction in Lightroom, it does a great job in getting rid of Noise. But Noise is not much of an issue with DSLRs, esp with D40, due to its small pixel count, it has great high ISO performance, The below pic is shot at ISO-1600, straight out of the camera JPEG, no noise reduction applied or PP.



Camera: Nikon D40
ISO: 1600
Shutter: 1/320sec
Aperture: f/9
Focal Length: 18mm
Exposure Bias: -0.7 stop
Lens: Nikkor 18 - 55mm VR DX AF-S

Damn that is a great shot for 1600 iso! Surprised at how little noise there is! Thanks for the tip about Lightroom. I'll see what other noise reduction techniques I can find. Usually I just use a gaussian blur (small) / median / unsharp mask in PS...

[MaxxxRacer]

Dfine 2.0 is the best NR product I have found. It is a PS plugin. next best is Dx0 5.0 (this is does alot more than just NR)

[Nate P.]

Canon 20D
EF 24mm f/2.8

[YugenM]

D70s and 50 1.8

[Nate P.]

Yugen, nice candid!

[3oh6]

Canon 20D
Phoenix 100mm F/3.5 Macro
EXIF still there

[Cold Fussion]

Dfine 2.0 is the best NR product I have found. It is a PS plugin. next best is Dx0 5.0 (this is does alot more than just NR)

Have you tried noise ninja?

[ANP !!!]

Nice pics NateP, Yugen and 3oh6. Please care to post the ISO settings.

[Oliver]

awesome picture Jody

keep nehaleming it

[YugenM]

Nice pics NateP, Yugen and 3oh6. Please care to post the ISO settings.

400, the light was in my favour that day.

[ANP !!!]

Camera: Nikon D40
ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/1000sec
Aperture: f/16
Focal Length: 18mm
Exposure Bias: 0 stop
Lens: Nikkor 18 - 55mm VR DX AF-S

[Shogan]

Wow, shots are looking awesome guys. Can someone please explain to me how to get that cool Depth of field effect? I know you need a large aperture (Low number) - I have tried on 2.8 which is lowest for my cam, but my Depth of field effect is never that "pronounced" enough. I can take close up shots of a flower for example, and then the background is reasonably blurry, but never blurry enough. For example the brick wall pic above - that is a nice depth of field effect. Do I need to zoom in, and then use the 2.8 aperture or what? Maybe its just my camera/lens...

Anyway here is my POD :



Camera : FujiFilm S6500fd
ISO : 200
Can't remember the rest of the settings, have them at home somewhere, but the exposure was a couple of seconds.

[YugenM]

Wow, shots are looking awesome guys. Can someone please explain to me how to get that cool Depth of field effect? I know you need a large aperture (Low number) - I have tried on 2.8 which is lowest for my cam, but my Depth of field effect is never that "pronounced" enough. I can take close up shots of a flower for example, and then the background is reasonably blurry, but never blurry enough. For example the brick wall pic above - that is a nice depth of field effect. Do I need to zoom in, and then use the 2.8 aperture or what? Maybe its just my camera/lens...

I find that a lot of it has to do with how far you are from the subject.

EDIT: i.e. closer = better

EDIT2: big huge DSLR sensor helps too

[Nate P.]

The brick shot above was shot at f/2.8. As Yugen said, the closer you are and the bigger the sensor the better. BTW, shot at ISO 100.

[3oh6]

I find that a lot of it has to do with how far you are from the subject.

EDIT: i.e. closer = better

bang on the money...it all has to do with F/stop and the distance between you and the subject. with my Nehalem photo above, that is with a 100MM lens and i am only 2 inches away from the CPU (love macro lenses). the same goes with 300MM lenses. here are a couple football photos of mine from ages ago, but they are a good example of the difference in distance from the subject.

this first one is of action on the other side of the field. the background is barely blurred out and the subject isn't very isolated. the background is also really close to the subject which doesn't help.



this second photo is on the sideline that i am shooting from. the background is all blurred out, even the players relatively close to the subject.



both of these photos are with a 20D and 300mm lens at F/4, i don't know how P&S cameras work but if it truly is at F/2.8, getting a shallow depth of field shouldn't be hard. just get as close as the lens can focus and go from there. HTH

[Shogan]

Thank you! That was a very good explanation, and the examples really helped I'll keep that in mind next time. I have a semi-DSLR camera, not true SLR, but not point and shoot either. It should be able to take some decent DOF pics provided I follow your suggestions Thanks for the answers to my post all...

Here's what I am using by the way :



Here's a shot I seem to have got it slightly right on- was very close to the subject using macro mode :

[MaxxxRacer]

both of these photos are with a 20D and 300mm lens at F/4, i don't know how P&S cameras work but if it truly is at F/2.8, getting a shallow depth of field shouldn't be hard. just get as close as the lens can focus and go from there. HTH

F stop is only half of the equation with depth of field. A camera phone sensor with a F2.8 lens will not have a very shallow depth of field, whereas a large format sensor at F2.8 will have a paper thin DOF. essentially the larger the sensor at a particular F stop, the shallower the depth of field. This is partially why people are so excited by the Canon 5D, 1DS MK3, Nikon D3, and D700 because of their full frame (FX) sensors that allow for more shallow depths of field.

[Goreg]

Camera: Nikon D80
Focal Length:52mm
Aparture: F/5
Exposure:1/100 sec
ISO:200

[Soulburner]

Good shots guys.

As far as DoF goes - no one has mentioned focal length yet. Focal length and distance to subject matter more than almost anything else. The two other factors being sensor size and aperture. They all play important roles but you can get subject isolation even at f/16 at 300mm.

Easy proof that aperture isn't everything - look at macro shots. Even at f/10 and only 100mm the DoF is thin.

[MaxxxRacer]

Good shots guys.

As far as DoF goes - no one has mentioned focal length yet. Focal length and distance to subject matter more than almost anything else. The two other factors being sensor size and aperture. They all play important roles but you can get subject isolation even at f/16 at 300mm.

Easy proof that aperture isn't everything - look at macro shots. Even at f/10 and only 100mm the DoF is thin.

This is true. One of the things I liked about my 70-300 is that it had good subject isolation despite being F6.3 at 300mm. My Tokina 11-16 on the other hand cant isolate subjects well at all even at F2.8, but it wasnt inteded for that.

[Soulburner]

Another factor is quality of the blurred area - which is primarily affected by having rounded aperture blades. The more of them, the smoother it is. The fewer, the harder the edges are. For example, you get "octagons" in the background instead of smooth circles.

[3oh6]

Another factor is quality of the blurred area - which is primarily affected by having rounded aperture blades. The more of them, the smoother it is. The fewer, the harder the edges are. For example, you get "octagons" in the background instead of smooth circles.

mmm, buttery smooth bokeh is what it is all about...gotta love L action

here is another piece to my i7 puzzle that just came in today...

Canon 20D
Phoenix 100mm F/3.5 Macro
EXIF data is still with the image...



oh, and for those that like to look at EXIF data, if you use Firefox; this is a handy add-on:

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/fxif/

[charles_h]

Fantastic shots guys.


Here's Wimpy; mah fish

Camera: Sony DSCP200
Lighting: Tank lights/CF's - 6,700k
Date: 11/02/06



feedin' time

[pvtdonuts]

Camera: Canon XTi
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85