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yes, well, good exposure is better than under or over, but the nature of digital is that there's less you can play with if you over do it..you lose the white .. with film you can under develop in a pinch.. and then print up as per that result. Digital is less forgiving in terms of that basic over exposure. Dont forget people did film for many years and figured out how to 'fix ' things that were not shot perfectly, or else get certain contrasts and grains and stuff.. Digital is fairly new in comparison. It has nothin to do with " what is better ".. its all about what works and how to deal with it.
I'm starting to sound like some idiot who doesn't know half of what I should and pretends to know more than I do. So I gotta step back a bit and start using this new camera myself and get into the work instead of the critique stuff. Otherwise I'm useless.
It's been fun sharing stuff and I hope the forums stay around to keep it up.
Meantime there's this new birch tree outside my window that deserves my attention... the leaves vibrate in the wind. Not like an apen, but they are pretty cool looking.
hehe.. yeah, good ideas...dont know about the bed thing cause of the type iron frame it has...but shelves is great idea. First thing I gotta do is just take all that stuff out and then re-stack in the back the stuff I would least likely use for a real long time.. like the strobes, mamiya and that sorta stuff. Once I re stack stuff ( some of that stuff I can put elsewhere now too ) .. then I'll know what sorta shelf thing would work best..
I just took camera out to backyard.... is the FIRST time the camera has been outside !!!! It's a milestone !
I took the pic ( 1st snapshot I took outside ) of birdbath..and 1/2 sec later 3 nice wood ducks flew through the frame...clost to foreground... DARN I MISSED THEM ! hehe...but they live back there in the reeds so I will get them later...I hope to shoot a lot of that lake in different seasons etc...
It's land locked. No boats allowed ( with motors ). Since it doesnt connect with Minnetonka ( which is in front of building instead of in back like this lake is )... there's apparently only carp and turtles in the lake...according to some resident I met here.
I know your camera shoots bigger pictures than that. And I know you can upload up to 2MB per picture. So - bigger please. These are like looking at little Polaroids! 
Edit: I think I took some good ones today. I will post them after dinner.
haha.. tough nuggies... thats all you're gettin this time around...cool back yard though isnt it ?
Geez.. in other apt. all I could see out the back was my 1982 cougar parked there in the parking lot.
Actually.. my apt faces front of building with parking lot and a sorta 'main' road through Mound. Although 'main' is maybe misleading, as it's single lane both ways and a country road. Where I am now is more or less literally the actual geographic location of the first settlement now called 'mound'... its a long story.
Anyway, I'm now on 2nd floor so I like it more than the other apt. which was on ground floor facing parking lot. I kinda wish I was on the other side of the hallway , facing the lake, but this isn't bad at all...
Now I can leave my windows open and not worry about someone walking into my apt through sliding door screen thing I had at other apt. facing parking lot.
Anyway, I was so excited about finally being here and had to run out and take snapshots of the lake with new camera being outdoors with it for first time.. and I dont give a hoot about how they look to show you the nice back yard ! So there !
It was fun.. As I was running back down with camera ( after seeing the lake and deciding to take pics ) I set the iso to about 400 or so, cause I wanted the 35mm lens to be high F stop for lots of DOF... and set it to auto wb and auto exposure , but then adjusted quick when frameing shots to lower shutter spd and get higher f stop..
At first shutter was like a gazillion ( 1 /1000 or something crazy )..and F stop 4 or so...
So I made shutter about 250 and shot away real quick... was FUN !
I was looking straight into the setting sun ( which I hid behind trees and stuff ) so it was a bit wanky ....me not wanting to get into other stuff at the time to deal with that.. it being back lit etc.
I was only out there for about 2 minutes I guess.. and yappin with some fellow tenants who were sitting at the patio area outside, which I didnt shoot.. and one of them told me about the ducks living in the reeds etc.
I know all this is a very weak excuse for not showing better pics , but its at least true.
hehe..
haha.. I just re-read your post.. and realized you said " bigger" when at first I thought you said " better "...
Boy, talk about me being paranoid !
But you're right on both counts.. .it can do better, and it certainly is waaaay bigger...
More info about Mound, MN.
Earlier today a bunch of bands starting playing next door to this building.
Yesterday some guys set up a pretty big " tent " thing...I'm guessing about 300-400 feet long ? And maybe 60 -80 ft deep ? Probably about 40 feet at highest points.
This was put up on the property next door, which is the school yard of a Catholic primary school I guess ( the main church is next to the school area ). The church is called "our lady of the lake " or something. It's one of the first catholic churches built in the area after the sioux treaty and this homesteading stuff happened here.
It ( being next door ) is also obviously on the same lake as my apt.
Sooo, the guys sitting outside on patio when I first went out there ( which eventually promted me to get camera and shoot stuff ) said that the ' party ' next door was gonna go on to about midnight.
It's a pretty big deal for around here, as I could see over the little fence separating this property with the church property that there were like about 30 porta potties set up for the people, and some bar b q stuff going on ( to buy food to eat ) etc.
The old guys on patio said the church was having a tough time last year and were thinking they would have to close the school. Money problems.
So it turns out the local parishners (sp? ) raised $ 400,000 bucks to keep the school open. And TONIGHT the church is sponsoring this HUGE ROCK AND ROLL PARTY ! To raise more money for the school ....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycdreamin/8727476391/
I love hearing the kids playing in the yard during the day , and I hope they raise a lot of money tonight. The road out front is lined with cars parked ... and basically it looks like a nice crowd is there now.
How cool is THAT ?? !!!
I posted a few from today. A 40 foot dancing woman originally from Burning Man.
Check them out at http://www.behance.net/gallery/Bliss-Dance/8780151
Here is a taste:
This one is for Bill.
This is a large sign on a former hanger. Note the wine bottle in the "W".
There are a few wineries on the island. Have you been over there for a taste? It is a short drive from San Francisco to the middle of the Bay. Maybe you could use a Zip car or even pay through the nose for a taxi and actually enjoy the wine.
A 5 inch gun behind one of the buildings on California Avenue on Treasure Island
It really looks bigger than 5 inches. I guessed 6 inches, and my wife kept saying it was bigger. I know that there is a dirty joke buried in there somewhere, but actually I think she couldn't deal with the inside diameter instead of the outside diameter.
Nonetheless, it is a BIG gun.
I don't know why this interests me other than I have never before seen a Chevy Volt in the wild, and certainly not while it was feeding.
wow, that's a big woman sculpture ! Cool " W " with bottle in it... clever...
Someone sit in that gun thing when it gets shot ?? That must be really LOUD.
??
I like the car photo too ...stuff with chrome is always groovy. Typically I favor the designs and stuff associated with the " art deco " period ( like Chrysler building ).
those guys musta gone deaf after a few days of firing those things.. yikes...
I fire my 30-30 without ear protection and just that ALONE is pretty darn LOUD !
Well, I went to old apt and packed up the remainder of the small stuff, brought condiments to new apt..and left the rest of stuff near sliding doors for one last car load. Probably between now and next THU will make that trip. Hard to say as the weather now is bonkers and unreliable.
I also brought the olympus camera here. I got show cards ( black and white, gold and silver ( matte and shiny ) ) left at old apt. plus film scanner, printer and my rubber surgical tubing for camera rig, stuff like that left over there.
Soooo, the adventure begins... sorta...even though its with the mouse....
Thanks to Bill, I got some DLL file that allows me to open the viewer program that came with Nikon.. it reports an error when opening, but it at least opens ...and I can see thumbnails etc of pics on computer. So far this has been JPG I've looked at...I honestly haven't used the viewer at all yet.
But today while doing laundry ( previously delayed due to moving ) I decided to get out camera and look at what it takes to shoot raw. I discovered I had the camera set on a DX crop mode ( for old non-full chip lenses )... so I wasn't using the whole chip up to now.
I figured out how to shoot raw with it instead of JPG or Tiff ...( been doing JPG ).
Pointed camera out window and shot a raw pic...( think I'm now using the full chip on FX mode)...duh....
Then got pic into mouse and opened nikon viewer and YIPEE I could see a thumbnail of the image. I THINK theres a way to see that full screen but couldn't figure it out right away and just used the thumbnail size to play with the NEF image a little. The dummied down nikon viewer thing ( which is working for this thanks to Bill ( THANK YOU BILL FOR THAT DLL FILE ! ) ) ...doesn't have all the cool stuff YOUR screenshot had , Steve... no RGB parade, only presets for various white balances and so on...
At least as far as I can see from this fast test of the NEF thing.
Here's what it looks like.. and as you can see its pretty basic...
This is HUGE.... look at the file size !!! holy smokes !
So then I used nikon viewer to make some preset adjustment type things and saved it as a TIF and then I put TIF into PS 7 and saved it as a jpg.. and once again, the nikon viewer program WORKED to convert the file to the TIFF ( THANK YOU BILL ).
Dont pay attention to quality of this thing as its really first test of seeing if the nikon program would even WORK to do anything with raw on the mouse... and so this is the JPG of the shot out window ( my first raw picture ! ) YIPEE !
PLUS ITS BEER THIRTY ! YIPEE !
Sooo, this is that nice Birch tree out front windows.. and I'm gonna play with it a sec and see if I can do anything more to make it look decent...
But the main thing is... it was a NEF and my mouse can actually import that with the nikon viewer program.. how cool is THAT ??
yikes.. these files are HUGE ...
When I get cs6 loaded on something better than mouse using the nikon viewer ( new computer ) I may be really happy with using raw .. though to be honest.. it doesn't look as mushy grey ( washed out looking ) as other raw stuff I've seen..from digital movie cameras.
Not even as mushy as pro res but I'd have to compare that later...
IN meantime at least ( thank goodness thanks to Bill and his DLL file ) I can see the raw file on mouse and convert to TIF. This conversion went to 16 bit tif and of course I had to change to 8 bit to save as JPG to show here... but at least I'm on the way to figuring out more cool stuff about camera.
Thanks you guys. Maybe being a real man shooting raw just mean having about a gazillion bytes to record image to.. cause these things are HUGE !
I had a screenshot of the nikon viewer program opened but somehow that got lost during this test stuff so my earlier statement ( this is how it looks ) is moot...I didnt load that screenshot.
Steven,
I like it - even more if the "wine" is well-crafted!
Thank you,
Hunt
yeah, Bill, it's pretty cool. I'll have time to get into stuff a bit more now that I'm nearly entirely moved etc. Even with mouse I can at least explore some basics with the RAW stuff.
Now that I know the rudimentary digital camera 'controls' I can also get into the finer stuff about those controls too. I'm pretty fast at the basics now, but sometimes get 'lost' about where to do things quickly ( like, I forget where certain menu items are located sometimes ).
Yeah, stupid weather has sorta delayed the final move and AC installation stuff a few days...just one more small car load ..probably all done by Thu eve.
I got 2 choices on raw, compressed or uncompressed. Any idea whats up with that ??
I have to chk the cam menu etc to see what choices I have for file size of raw...cause I dont need 25" wide at 300dpi right now..and the byte count is huge.
You're probably wondering why its taking so long for me to get into this part of things, but I was really dealing with more basic controls before ( in both auto and manual modes ).
It's nice that the nikon viewer at least works for this raw stuff ( the movie editor button does nothing when I click it ...some part of the program wont work since it installed wanky ). I was honestly surprised it worked for the raw image. That DLL file you sent did the trick. Thanks.
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