Making the best of a cheap digi

I only border and name mine. I just try and take a good photo to start with. This month I used over exposure on the night shot setting but this is no different to using direct sun in normal flash mode for sunny days. My camera is a sony cybershot P-150 a good quality point and shoot camera. Out dated by the likes of fuji F31d but good enough for pre-planned plant snaps. On the move I am looking for something better like the Fuji F31d which is more responsive and better in low light. Either way I find the quality of properly executed shots so good that they rarely need touching up.

For the purposes of competition I don't think any lightening touching up etc should be permitted. Even though it is just a bit of fun, the more you play, the less it becomes the photo you took, and more about your ability to use something like photoshop. We then move into the realms of computer art. It does have its place though.

Cropping I feel is ok, and in many cases good practise for those not as acomplished at fore and background noise as others. No content alteration is taking place, just the amount of the photo shown. On full resolution you can crop a cracking photo from the smallest detail.

This is one I took last year.



Cropped

 

Yes - it would be good to hear the views of others. Just want to make a point or three though.

Consider the days when we all shot on film. Would you insist that a competition should only accept photos developed and printed in bog standard photolabs? Surely those photographers who developed and printed their own photos in darkrooms under the stairs should not have been banned just because they took more trouble and produced better pictures than the photolabs who just whacked everything through on auto-pilot.

Interesting, because some GC entries are certainly manipulated and as for coloured frames - some like them but not me. Then of course, some of us have modest cameras and some have all manner of "bells and whistles" which will do, in camera, much of what you can do with appropriate software. Are all competitors to be restricted to the same basic type camera in the name of fairness?


A good photograph is in the eye of the photographer long before the camera is out of its case. The technology, whether before, during or after exposure, is the means to realising the picture as envisaged and then seen by the eye and mind.

Personally, I loathe super-saturated digital photos just as much as I loathed tobacco and other coloured filters when we all used film. I just don't vote for them.

 

I would be personally in favour of pictures not modified in anyway, as far as the competition is concerned, so that the ability of the photographer can stand out.

 

Well as someone who has spent countless hours out in the darkroom in the shed developing, manipulating and printing and prior to that cutting my photographic teeth on a Kodak Brownie 127 using a whack-through lab (Gratispool, Remember them?), I can understand your arguments. However my main hope is that the competition continues to encourage people to go out and take photographs and that they shouldn't be disadvantaged by not having access to digital darkrooms. The alternative would be to make the competition fully open in which case a minority would be placed at an advantage.
I don't think that a "full bells lights and whistles" camera gives any significant advantage. Most basic modern "point and shoot" digi-cams are pretty good on full auto and many have a good range of pre-selected "scenes". The amount of in-camera processing in these cases is probably less than using a high-end digi on full manual control.
You say that some GC entries are certainly manipulated.If true that's sad. I sincerely hope you are not referring to any of mine over the last two months because apart from cropping they haven't been touched and the in-camera processing could have been achieved by the majority of digital cameras.

Miraflores - Got it in one!
I would be personally in favour of pictures not modified in anyway, as far as the competition is concerned, so that the ability of the photographer can stand out.

 

Consider someone with a digital SLR and someone with a basic digital compact. With the SLR you can control depth of field. you can set exposure and focus manually. Such controls will give much better results in terms of contrast, definition and composition. Pictures will have more punch.

The compact photographer cannot exercise such control. Are digital SLRs to be banned from competitions as giving unfair advantages? Can the very basic software that comes with digi cameras or MS not be used to improve the camera's limitations? Must we accept muddy photos or can we not improve contrast in the same way that we improve composition by cropping?

Surely basic "photo fixing" is available to all (by that I mean cropping, sharpening focus and contrast). That is the extent of what I do and I do not have an SLR. If we are too prohibitive - who is going to police the entries anyway?

 

I too only put a border round my entrys in the photo competition but i am quite willing to not even do that to be fair to those that dont have any photo enhancing facilities. or software to provide borders...I think that photos should be entered untouched to be fair to everyone..
I dont know if any other internet provider gives you options to cut and manipulate slightly but aol gives you that facility in the pictures section..and also to crop which i think should be allowed..

[ 01. February 2007, 06:48 AM: Message edited by: wildflower ]

 

Well I can honestly say,hand on heart that none of my photos for the competition have been manipulated in any way shape or form.What you see is how they came out.The only problem I had was trying to hold the camera steady for the 3rd one when we had the terrible winds the other Thursday.Mr Kandy said he would crop the 2nd one for me before I entered it,but in the end I said to leave it as it is.Glad I did now.And to everyone I say each are winners in their own right...as long as the person taking the photo is happy with them then that is all that matters...

 

Just let us pause to consider what you mean by a "raw photo". That is quite different from a "RAW" photo.

Perhaps one of our digi SLR owners would show us what an untouched RAW image looks like and then outline what they have to do to produce an acceptable image.

 

To add my tuppenceworth to the discussion.

Marley you can't just use 'raw' photo in the context of modern cameras. When HB used it he meant 'camera raw' and that is a specific digital technique and is very complecated indeed. I have spent the past two months trying to learn it and you need photoshop, or similar, to manipulate the image.

Basically every digital camera takes all the data and compresses it to jpeg format. This looses data. Some cameras have a 'raw' setting and this saves all the data without compression.

I have one memory card that is 256 mb and it holds 113 point and shoot images at 9.1 pixels per inch. On the same card I can only store 13 'camers raw' images so it shows you the difference in the amount of data.

Manipulating all that camea raw data is like being in a digital darkroom and all the advanced techniques that we used to do in the old fashioned darkroom can now be done on the computer.

Needless to say I would not use camera raw images in the photo comp. which, to make a level playing field should be just a basic image with the few minimal alterations such as cropping, sharpening and light dark balance which is available to all via free software.

Regards HBs comment about it being a gardening web site. I am happy to limit us to that by agreement but it would stop a lot of our keen photographers interpreting the subject in the beautifully diverse and creative ways that we have seen in the January Comp. It really is an impressive collection.

Overall I am never happy with too many rules and regulations. That could spoil all the spontanaeity and creativity that we share with each other.

After all we do it for the fun of taking, sharing and enjoying each others photographs ------ not just to win ------ don't we?

 

Platty wrote:
"Regards HBs comment about it being a gardening web site. I am happy to limit us to that by agreement but it would stop a lot of our keen photographers interpreting the subject in the beautifully diverse and creative ways that we have seen in the January Comp. It really is an impressive collection"

and I agree entirely. I just said that I personally was drawn more towards photos that were linked to gardens or plants. I was not trying to limit anyone or impose my view on anyone. I actually voted for Rosa's Goan child which does not feature a garden.

Platty also wrote:
"Needless to say I would not use camera raw images in the photo comp. which, to make a level playing field should be just a basic image with the few minimal alterations such as cropping, sharpening and light dark balance which is available to all via free software. "

That last point is essential and if I felt that I wasn't allowed to crop, sharpen and get the contrast right, I wouldn't bother to enter the competition at all. There is no great prize to win and so cheating is pointless. There is a big diffeence between enhancing to exagerate and merely using tools that ARE AVAILABLE TO ALL to produce a competent picture.

This thread started because Windy asked how she could take better photos with a modest digi-compact. Others answered by correctly drawing attention to processing software. Used properly, it is an essential part of photography. Used improperly it can give lurid, over coloured photos that we can all spot as fakes.

There is a difference.

 

Well that was fun! I am not going to limit myself to a simple "aim and shoot" camera. Neither am I going to fiddle and faddle with lurid frames and super saturated colours.

My aim is to get the most accurate photograph and that does mean that sometimes you have to give your camera a helping hand. So I am going to crop, straighten and get the contrast right to accurately reflect nature. Nothing more - and that means no enhancement to try to improve nature. Any further competition pictures from me will contain a health warning:

"This photo has been cropped and sharpened - don't vote for it if you think that's cheating!"

As regards photos from others - I am silent. This discussion lets them know what the majority feel about level playing fields etc.

 

Perhaps their should be some new rules laid out ????
So everyone is clear of exactly what they can and cant do to make it fair to everyone.. :eek: And each and every one should then abide by the rules..At the end of the day anyone that cheats is only cheating themselves their is no prize and we are all supposed to be members of the same garden community so it should be fair to everyone as some dont have software or expensive cameras so perhaps it should just be basic..

 

firstly, sorry windy for hi-jacking your thread,
i was only trying to give advice and it seems i stirred up a wasps nest!
i will re-iterate my original point. I enjoy taking photo's, i don't enjoy editing them. I enjoy being outside,in the garden or in the countryside, I don't enjoy sitting in front of the pc.
I wasn't infering that anyone alters their images in the competition, or that changing levels,saturation,contrast or anything else in wrong. I was just offering a possible alternative to "photoshopping".
the use of borders etc has no effect on my votes or appreciation of the photo's, i just vote for what i like and enjoy the differrent interpretations on the themes.
Personally, i do crop my photo's but i don't do anything else to them.UNLESS you class in camera alterations or the use of ND or polarising filters as alterations.
Finally, lets get back to the whole point of the competition, FUN!!!! I don't think there is a need for extra rules,"health warnings" etc lets just enjoy the brilliant photos and be thankful that we have the time and health to take them.

 

Out the camera Canon .RAW images (or Nikon .NEF images) can't be shown on the board as I think it is restricted to .gif and .jpg files Also the files are large (6Mb in my case) which would give a serious headache both to my server provider and anyone on dialup. They also have to be interpreted either by the camera software or some other program such as IrfanView. The adavantage is images can be converted to a .tif (tagged image file) format which does preserve all the original data in very large files that would be suitable for high quality magazine printing or they can be converted to a jpg file that is compressed and hence is a much smaller file but does contain .jpg artifacts. These are normally only visible on blown up reproductions.

To further limit the board bandwith I also resize the photo from 2048 pixels to a max of 800 pixels wide or high (sometimes I'll use 600 or less). Cropping to remove extraneous detail such as a telephone pole or power pylon has always been acceptable in photography as is colour balance, contrast and brightness. With RAW images sometimes sharpening or dithering is usefull but should only be used where apropriate and not to excess. Idealy the aim should be to create as faithfully as possible a 2 dimensional representation of what was seen in a 3 dimensional world. Image manipulation will not make a poor picture great, what it can do is make a great photo into a Wow!

There are other recognised techniques for digital photography such as image stacking where a number of frames are taken, the best ones selected then digitally combined for a final image. It is very usefull for dark sky objects in Astrononomy such as planets or nebulae captured through a telescope. Another trick is dark frame 'noise' reduction software to clean an image of hot pixels in the camera that become evident on long exposures. Used to their full potential moderate telescopes used by amatures can rival some of the best professional observatories (Excepting Hubble which alas now seems to be broken :( )

Now comes the age old question of when photo lab or photoshop images become dishonest. Models have been madeup, soft focused, airbrushed, highlighted, balanced, stretched, etc. etc. from here to infinity but are they 'real' photos? Guess you have to ask the agencies, paparazzi and media marketeers that one!

Then there is digital art. An artist will take a photo or photos and process them and add their own interpretation in such a way that an artwork is created that is quite different from the originals. It is valid, here the processes and imagination are used to create something new, not to deceive.

Finally. to give an idea of what digital processing can do here is before and some after processing of an out the camera cheapo digital (.jpg) night shot:

As taken - this was the maximum exposure (15sec)this camera was capable of. (Ok - I know some of you have seen this before )




Brightness, contrast and saturation modified with Ifanview. It's still not a fantastic picture as there is some colour banding (too much contrast) but at least it rescued it from the bin! With patience it could probably be made better.



Above pic sharpened. Note how the horizon and stars in the Plough are much crisper but the aurora detail has become grainy.