Bieg

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ludedude
[B]I'm not sure how long ago 8th grade was for you but I also have experience with film/darkrooms.

Ludedude

Heh, that puts you in a different decade than me, but not a different generation

Sure is a brave new world.

Tonky

I was shown ( by a neighbour) how to make contact prints from old family negs when I was a kid back in the 50s. I was instantly stricken with a bug which I've never managed to shake off. We weren't a wealthy family by any means but I was allowed to lay claim to a cellar with running water which was easily 'blacked out' and which became my dark room. Anything I couldn't afford to buy in the way of equipment, I had to make. My first enlarger was born when I managed to rescue some beautiful walnut panels from an old piano a neighbour was about to chuck on the bonfire. The only pieces I couldn't make and had to buy, were an enlarging lens two condensers and a mount. The lamphpouse unit was fashioned out of a large old tin. I made many great prints on that enlarger and learned a great deal in the process,despite the fact that the 'lamphouse ' would get so hot sometimes you could almost get a tan standing next to it! I've owned several posher enlargers over the years since including a very expensive Durst colour one, but I'm not sure any of them produced any better results than my first one.

On leaving school, I scrimped for ages until I was able to buy my first SLR, a Practica 1VF. It had a lever wind on the base, but no instant-return mirror, so the viewfinder blacked out till you wound on and reset the mirror. There was no such thing as metering in the cameras in those days so learning to use a separate exposure meter was essential. But wonder of wonders!,..... it was a 'proper' SLR and it had a great 2.8 Tessar lens. By the time I was 16 I was doing wedding photography and processing my own stuff. ( I was so shit scared at the first really big wedding I did I could scarecly hold the camera still

I've done wedding and most other forms of photography all my life and owned cameras since which I could only drool over in the mags back in those days. Like all things which you do for money, you jade the enthusiast side to some extent, and I finally packed in the wedding photography just last year. I've been doing computer repair of old photos and pretty well most forms of manipulation and enhancement for my own customers and for the trade, for about 12 years or more and I am carrrying on with that side of it. I'm being bullied from all sides to set up a web site, and whilst I've got mixed feelings about it, I may be doing that very soon.

I've finally ditched all my conventional camera gear and I am thoroughly enjoying the digital revolution with my 4th digital camera which produces results of a quality I'm happy with . I have no regrets whatsoever. Looking back it is just totally unbelievable the way photography has changed in the time.

To come back on topic, it's hardly surprising that the new purchaser of a digital camera who has little or no photographic experience and doesn't know an f stop from a shutter speed has a hill to climb. Why should he understand any of these things? Modern cameras don't need to be taken off Programme Mode to produce totally acceptable and technically good shots under most conditions. I think this has probably been a useful thread to people and it would be great if anyone who wants to do a little more with their camera, could use the thread to ask any questions when they need help. There's obviously loads of expertise on hand here. There's much more fun to be had than just taking pictures of your S. I think we need to be careful though not to overface people here with techniques they don't necessarily need to begin to make progress.

BTW great link Ludedude. That B&W mountain shot on the index page is so reminiscent of the fantastic work of Ansell Adams. Not sure about that avatar though!

Tonky

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TepEvan
[B]I was thinking of getting the Fuji FinePix 3800.

S2000typeR

Sony DSC-P7

Ludedude

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Cedric Tomkinson
[B]

BTW great link Ludedude. That B&W mountain shot on the index page is so reminiscent of the fantastic work of Ansell Adams. Not sure about that avatar though!

Bieg

One interesting fact about Ansel Adams is that much of the look of his pictures was achieved in the darkroom. He would spend entire days just perfecting one image. He said "You compose the symphony in the camera and you conduct the symphony in the darkroom". It actually looked as if he were conducting as he would use his hands to "dodge and burn".

Tonky

Landscape photography is incredibly difficult. Adams did all that work at the printing stage,despite the fact that he devised the Zone Metering System to get as near perfect exposure as he could in the first place. I bet he'd have loved Photoshop!

Bieg

I bet he would have loved it also.

As the photographic process (digital or Chemical) does not offer as much dynamic range as the human eye, (if you expose to get details in the shadows you burn out the highlights and vice/verse) Adams mastered the art of expanding the dynamic range in the print stage by artfull dodging and burning.

An old trick to get the correct exposure under almost any condition is to meter off an 18% Photo-Grey card. You used to be able to purchase them in any good photo store. If you are doing some serious photography packing one along with a pure white card will let you set both perfect white balance and exposure.

Tonky

LOL You can still get the grey cards. I've got an old incident light meter I'm not letting go of any time soon! I've been giving the Nikon 5000 a real low- light work out the last couple of days and I've got to say it's pretty impressive. Truly awesome technology!