Quake3World

So I got my new camera a couple weeks ago ( Canon PowerShot A520 ) and I've been pretty happy with it.

I took a trip to Northern Virginia (and D.C.) with my gf this weekend and had a little time to play around with some of the features and settings. I took about 200 pics - some turned out great, and some like complete crap.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to crop or adjust any of them yet, so I thought I would just post one of them to see what you guys thought, since they're so big.
I don't know what kind of flower it is, but the color and contrast made it a great pic:
[lvlshot]http://rook.perfunction.com/flower.jpg[/lvlshot]

I'm by no means a pro, but I was pretty proud of myself for a few of the better ones I managed to get off. I've wanted a good digicam for a while now, and I didn't realize how fun it is to try and compose photos.

Anyway, that pic shows off the quality and detail level the camera is capable of, and I'm pretty happy with it. I was using the macro mode and playing with the zoom to try to get the background out of focus a little.

What do you guys think? Do I have what it takes to be any good at this? :icon32:

yeah, the first pix i took with my sd200 were shit, but once you get to know th camera, u'll be ok

how much was it?

Nice pic

Yeah, nice pic Love the detail. I'm no wizard, but I would like to have something like that available Love taking pics, but my Nokia 6230 isn't very good hehe

lol, the first pic people take with their digital cam is always a flower

Experiment with all the settings on you cam and take a lot of shots, that's the nice thing of digital, you instantly see how it turned out.

Get used to NOT using it in auto mode. Get your head around shutter speeds and aperture settings. Oh, and balance out your colours in ps and maybe add a unsharpen mask to the main subject area using quick mask. I mostly use unsharpen mask around 75% at 0.8 pixels

yours


mine

Nice DB, thanks for the tips.

I've played around with the shutter speed just a little bit, but the aperture value I'm still having a hard time understanding.

I have been trying to avoid the auto mode though. On the dial, aside from the Auto mode, there's one spot that lets you adjust everything but the shutter and aperture, one where you can set the aperture but the shutter speed is auto, one that's the opposite where you set the shutter but the aperture is auto, and one that is fully manual.

I've tried playing with all the settings, but I don't think I know enough about the aperture values to do any good with it yet. It apparently determines how much light is allowed through the lens and can be used to change the background/foreground focus -- but it seems to me that it would only change the brightness of the picture?

I also don't have a tripod and I'm learning that my hands aren't the steadiest in the world. It's not too bad with normal shots, but when I start adjusting the light values it makes the pictures really blurry.

nice cam man enjoy

but be aware

putting sharpening on pics and vid is a common error in low end production.

never do it

Thanks for the comments, guys. :icon32: :icon14:

zeeko wrote:how much was it?

I got the camera for about $240, from beachcamera.com. It came with a 16 meg memory stick, so I also got a 512 meg stick to replace it.

I got an underwater case for it too, which cost nearly $200 by itself, and I'm hoping this weekend I can take it to the pool to play with that. I'll post some pics up if I do.

plained wrote:nice cam man enjoy

but be aware

putting sharpening on pics and vid is a common error in low end production.

never do it

What makes you say that? The flower pic looks pretty damn good with the mask applied to it.

Knock yourself out

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin/D ... _Field.pdf

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin/#OpticsPhoto

plained wrote:nice cam man enjoy

but be aware

putting sharpening on pics and vid is a common error in low end production.

never do it

rubbish

saturn wrote:lol, the first pic people take with their digital cam is always a flower

Experiment with all the settings on you cam and take a lot of shots, that's the nice thing of digital, you instantly see how it turned out.

Yea I couldn't resist. I took a lot more too, but I won't post any until I've had the time to crop and resize them. A lot of them are 2.5 megs, at 2272x1704.

Doombrain wrote:Knock yourself out

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin/D ... _Field.pdf

http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin/#OpticsPhoto

Good stuff, thanks man.

Doombrain wrote:Get used to NOT using it in auto mode. Get your head around shutter speeds and aperture settings. Oh, and balance out your colours in ps and maybe add a unsharpen mask to the main subject area using quick mask. I mostly use unsharpen mask around 75% at 0.8 pixels

Or if you're using CS2, try the new Smart Sharpen filter, which is even better.

whatever :icon8:

Since we're all posting flowers. Mine: http://www.atac78.dsl.pipex.com/flower.jpg

Taken without a tripod, so it was a bit blury, and with no touching up.

nice,

this is the last one i took with my R-D1



don't have a host so sized it to 20 x 15ish[/img]

oh, and some pissed nutter last week

oh and this



this was 4080 x 5440 pixels at 4 pass shot on a hasselblad H1 with a Phazer 22 mpix back

Nice pics. What is that first one from? It looks like a movie set or something.

Pro Focus show at the NEC. It's a show for pro photographers