-= T2i / 550D users UNITE! (1) =-

Annie! Fantastic shoots of the spider... we have some of those here, although considerably darker (brownish) than yours. They are also jumpers... they can move incredibly fast if they are hopping around. And I know how tiny they are, so kudos for the results!!

The white balance is a tad warm and I believe after changing the WB you'll have a tad under-contrasted image, so you will probably need to up the contrast and or exposure a bit.

By the way, which program do you use to edit your images? Thanks for sharing,

Rafa.

RafaPolit wrote in post #11688056
Wolfy,

I am a absolute nerd when it comes to calibrating my monitors, being in the design/web/photo industry. I wrote the process I undergo to calibrate my monitor a while back on another forum. It requires no extra tools nor it is dependent on some very professional calibration equipment.

I recently took a massive project (80 page book with 150 pictures) to the press and the result of the preliminary tests show my monitor to be dead on!... I was so happy (because I got really worried that they wouldn't match and I'd need to redo the entire thing! )

If anyone is interested, here is the link:
How to Calibrate your Monitor - Rampant Speculation Forums

Hope it helps a bit,
Rafa.

I'll give that a good read Rafa. I've been editing on my core i7 laptop, but the even though the 17" screen is decent enough real estate, and the graphics card more than enough, the led backlit panel really is too bright. So when I adjust my photos in ACR, they look exposed, when they are not. I tried to calibrate my laptop monitor, but it just looked poor to me. I'll try it again with your post there rafa. I think that dell monitor with the IPS panel will make all the difference though once it's calibrated, because it doesn't lose color or contrast at the slightest tilt of your head.

I also wonder if that means that my camera is not doing a good job with exposure. I need to look and see what I have it set on. I believe it may be set to evaluate...what do you guys use?

Thanks for the link, Rafa. I'd love to be able to calibrate my monitors without spending $100+ to do so.

RafaPolit wrote in post #11688083
Annie! Fantastic shoots of the spider... we have some of those here, although considerably darker (brownish) than yours. They are also jumpers... they can move incredibly fast if they are hopping around. And I know how tiny they are, so kudos for the results!!

The white balance is a tad warm and I believe after changing the WB you'll have a tad under-contrasted image, so you will probably need to up the contrast and or exposure a bit.

By the way, which program do you use to edit your images? Thanks for sharing,

Rafa.

Thanks Rafa. This little guy was jumping too, and I thought he was opening his mouth to scare me. Now what I think is they move those two furry things which exposes that black area behind. Probably to scare predators I guess.

I think I had the WB set for cloudy. I recently read where some photographer (I think it was Scott Kelby) always keeps his WB set for cloudy. Funny thing is, it was cloudy today. I do agree though about it being way too warm.

As for software, I'm using a trial version of Lightroom, and also have downloaded Scarab which is not as complex, but much easier for someone like me. After them, I export the photos to CS2 for more editing.

My problem is I don't have a clue what I'm doing in CS2. And I'm always afraid of overdoing anything, especially sharpening.

Wolfy, as I said on that post, the drivers for graphic cards and the factory settings for monitors are all set too high so you get a 'punchy' look... if you see them together on a shelf while trying to purchase you will go: 'oh! uh! look, that one has much richer color!'... when in fact it is deceitfully adding gamma and saturation and contrast to what it shows. So... you have to tone it down! The same goes for graphic cards. Specially the ATI driver has such saturation that it bleeds on the reds to undesirable levels!

About settings: I always have it on evaluative, but I use EV compensation almost always (be it up or down) and frequently shoot manual. The thing is: evaluative gives me (that is ME, other people's preferences are surely different ) a good idea of what an good exposure will be, and, then, I decide whether my subject is darker or brighter than the average of the image... so, if I have a bride in her dress in the picture and exposure reads 1/200th at f5.6 I know that the dress will be nicely exposed and her face buried in blacks. So I set +2/3ths EV. That sort of thing.

For white balance, I always use Auto WB BUT I always, always, ALWAYS! shoot in RAW (save the first three images I took of the camera, the other 10.000+ are RAW images... talk about HardDrive use ) so I can re-set the WB

That's me... interested in what others do.
Rafa.

AnnieBananie wrote in post #11688196
...I'm using a trial version of Lightroom...

OK, fantastic, then you are set! Under LR, you can tweak the WB until the image is still warm but more neutral (I like warm images for most subjects... I think Landscapes benefit from a cooler look, but people and animals love a more warm and saturated look in my eyes ).

Also, you can play with two different sets of settings: Exposure, blacks, fill and recovery is the first group and brightness and contrast is the other. Give it a go at setting exposure to +0.33 blacks to around 5 and then rise the contrast a bit.

Oh, wait... are you shooting RAW or JPGs, I think settings read differently form one to the other

Rafa.

wolfy317 wrote in post #11687938
Anybody have their monitor calibrated for editing? I ask, because I had not done this, and found out the hard way that it's pretty necessary if you ever intend to print your photos. Had some photos printed up professionally for a friend that wanted some, and they were consistently underexposed during the printing process. Talked to smugmug customer service (most awesome customer service experience ever!!!!), and they told me that all of the pictures on my profile appear to be underexposed anywhere from 2/3's stop to 1.33 stops.... They asked me to send a few raw files, and they looked at them w/Adobe camera raw and came to the same determination. I was really impressed by their professionalism. They are even going to reprint for me after I RE-edit the pictures!

Needless to say I was confused because they looked so great on my computer. Turns out LCD monitors are commonly "too bright" and editing without the proper calibration will yield poor results even though they may look great on the web.

Anyway, I've purchased a highly recommended IPS screened monitor from dell and am going to calibrate it so I can print my shots!!!

I guess this is more of a heads up for those that didn't know than anything else. Just wanted to share what I learned the hard way hahah. I just hope they still look good on the web when viewed by other computers!!

Hey Wolfy,

I have just gone through calibrating my monitor. It was an older Dell 2407 lcd that is supposed to be very difficult to calibrate properly specifically the Brightness level. I have my brightness set to 9 out of 100 and it is still too bright when I print with the ICC profiles on my Epson 2880. If I go any lower than 9 my blacks will start to clip which is a problem with the monitor.

Long story short, most lcd's are way way too bright if your intended viewing is going to be for print. I do get by with my printing by adding brightness to the image in lightroom to compensate for the slightly darker prints I was getting. Obviously if you are printing through smugmug (which I agree is amazing) then it may be more difficult to get accurate exposures. What I did though, and you may want to try is to print 4 images on 1 8x10 and varying brightness levels and then send that file to smugmug. When you get the image back compare them to your monitor and pick the closest one. Then you can apply the brightness when you export your pictures to smugmug and it should be bang on.

Of course, you will probably want to drop your brightness level on your monitor by a substantial margin. Also, I cheaply invested in a Spyder 3 express which does a fantastic job of calibrating for color and contrast. I now know I was post processing my pictures way too much and by white balance now can be corrected to near perfection. Got the spyder 3 express through B+H for $70.

RafaPolit wrote in post #11688056
Wolfy,

I am a absolute nerd when it comes to calibrating my monitors, being in the design/web/photo industry. I wrote the process I undergo to calibrate my monitor a while back on another forum. It requires no extra tools nor it is dependent on some very professional calibration equipment.

I recently took a massive project (80 page book with 150 pictures) to the press and the result of the preliminary tests show my monitor to be dead on!... I was so happy (because I got really worried that they wouldn't match and I'd need to redo the entire thing! )

If anyone is interested, here is the link:
How to Calibrate your Monitor - Rampant Speculation Forums

Hope it helps a bit,
Rafa.

I will read that Rafa! Thanks!

RafaPolit wrote in post #11688224
OK, fantastic, then you are set! Under LR, you can tweak the WB until the image is still warm but more neutral (I like warm images for most subjects... I think Landscapes benefit from a cooler look, but people and animals love a more warm and saturated look in my eyes ).

Also, you can play with two different sets of settings: Exposure, blacks, fill and recovery is the first group and brightness and contrast is the other. Give it a go at setting exposure to +0.33 blacks to around 5 and then rise the contrast a bit.

Oh, wait... are you shooting RAW or JPGs, I think settings read differently form one to the other

Rafa.

I'm shooting RAW.

Just sort of tweaked this in CS2. Not sure if it's any better, and please don't ask me what I did. LOL

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wolfy317 wrote in post #11688141
I also wonder if that means that my camera is not doing a good job with exposure. I need to look and see what I have it set on. I believe it may be set to evaluate...what do you guys use?

Your histogram, either on the camera or in editing software will tell you if your exposure is right. Shoot an average scene and you should see a pretty good spectrum covering the mid-range and no sharp peaks at the far left or right. An underexposed shot will be very heavy on the left and an overexposed shot will generally be heavy on the right. And if it is truly over or under exposed you'll have clipping of shadows or highlights.

Hello everyone,

Since taking some pictures of the moon, I've become interested in taking more of them. Well, over the past week it has been pretty much cloud covered, so no chance for me. But, I've been doing some reading, and found a website I thought was interesting about telescopes and the moon. I was wondering what it would take to take a closer shot of the moon, and I got my answer below.

Check it out Here

AnnieBananie wrote in post #11688255
I'm shooting RAW.

Just sort of tweaked this in CS2. Not sure if it's any better, and please don't ask me what I did. LOL

Hi Annie, I just did a quick edit to your picture, hope you like it.

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Rivest wrote in post #11688306
Hi Annie, I just did a quick edit to your picture, hope you like it.

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HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

That's better. May I ask what you did please? I love shooting, but I really hate PP.

I took a picture of a tiny spider on my wall... that spider is so much awesomer than mine! Awesomer is a word.

natums wrote in post #11688322
I took a picture of a tiny spider on my wall... that spider is so much awesomer than mine! Awesomer is a word.

Thank you.

And hey, if gooder is a word, so is awesomer!!

AnnieBananie wrote in post #11688315
That's better. May I ask what you did please? I love shooting, but I really hate PP.

Sure, first, I re-framed it, I added 0.25 of exposition, +3 of blacks, +6 of saturation, played with the levels a bit, a lot of noise reduction (which made the picture blurrier), and a big clarity boost.