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Thanks for that...I did get back into looking at all the test shots of a painting on the wall thing...hehe.. dont laugh.. I got camera on tripod to learn buttons and menus.. so the wall over there is the only thing easy to shoot at this point..
YOUR shot is a lot nicer.. having fun in surf with wife ! How cool is THAT ? !
She has beautiful eyes and maybe you should tell her - she could take off those shades sometimes ! hehe... the one in hawaii she had shades on too.
Oddly enough I revisited the tests and my first manual shot with some minor level adjustments ended up being the best one in this lighting situation etc. The glass has a lot of kick from the sliding glass door light source.. and the wall is white but the matte is even whiter..
This is a watercolor by an ancient aunt who is my Godmother. It took me about 45 years to get her to give me a watercolor 'original' instead of some print ( poster ) and I used the Godmother guilt trip to make that happen. At the time I was sorta snotty and uppity about " art " and told her she should take more 'chances' with her art... not play it safe.
She didn't like my criticism very much. I think she likes me anyway. But she hides on Sanabel (sp? ) island mostly now... and this is her back yard I guess...
Probably has some seagulls flying around like your friend you shot in earlier post ??
hard to believe its a white wall ...but auto stuff didnt do better
Not bad, as evidenced by the image behind that painting:
Hunt
I've had plenty of practice. I have been substituting my weak smile with Tom Cruise's for many years now...
"Mr. Hunt, we have this photograph of you, that we need for an article, is that the one to use?" "NO! Here, use THIS one."
Hunt
I was asking my dentist about implants and he just laughed at me...said, " one tooth is enough for you ".
You can't tell probably from this picture, but I have a toupe now.. lost a lot of hair during my last divorce. When fitted for the hair piece the beautician talked me into longer eyelashes which are permanently attached. She said , " Chics will dig it ".
This has not proven true yet.
Also, if I walk into a long shoreman's bar ( which I wouldn't do again on a dare ) ... everyone in the bar takes turns beating me up.
Anyway, so far one tooth is fine as long as I don't have to chew on anything really hard, like rock candy.
Thank goodness.. this worked ( test ) ....
I used my spot meter and read the snow ( circle ). Then using IRE scale put the snow at white.
this is with no level adj or anything in psd.. just out of camera. I like it. Of course I wouldn't put the 'snow' on absolute 'white' as I did here in test, but at least I know my stupid spot meter is working with manual settings on camera. YIPEE !
Sorry everyone, but every little learning test type thing about camera controls is at this moment a huge happy moment for me. I'll get over it..
In fact, I think I'll now stop reading this retarded manual for a bit and open up the other packages I got ( stepping rings for mamiya filters I own, and stuff like that )
Well.. another progress report.. which is sorta halfway good.
The stepping ring for nikkor lens fits well ( to use mamiya filters which are bigger ). So I stuck a UV filter on ( basic fear of messing up coating on nikkor front element ) and then my mamiya rubber lens shade and now I also can use the mamiya lens cap... which is better than that stupid nikkor thing with that clip mechanism that always confounds me. The mamiya lens cap just presses on and stays there. Anyway, since the rubber thing is bigger it wont mess me up at widest zoom, plenty of room. Plus it's rubber so you can fold it back and its happy.
It occurs to me that my posts have now become the most inane (sp ? ) posts in the world. But to continue... as I also watch the masters...
It's raining outside so if I open sliding glass door blinds etc. it's still pretty 'dark' in apartment and mixed lighting.. some tungsten, some daylight. So I decided to use my ambient meter and just leave it at 56k ( or whatever it is .. 55k in this camera ? ) and shoot another manual shot of my wall from tripod. This time I figured I'd need to adjust color due to me not using color meter and so on...
I'm finding out the camera is happier with lots of light ( daylight so far is good to go ). Anyway, I stuck it on 1000 iso this time, and had about a f5.6-8 split .. forget the shutter speed, probably about 1/4 sec. Also, lens was at 200mm max for this lens..
So I got this image, with TONS of adjustments in PSD..namely levels, color balance and also selective color. And also unsharp mask. LOTS of playing with it.
This is a painting by Sam. When we were younger he was in the same college and we had mutual friends. One of those friends was Bob. We were at Bob's apartment one day and we were talking and I found out that Sam was not circumcised, so I asked him if I could see his penis. I never saw one that was uncicumcised ( even to this day ! ). But he didn't want to show me. He's a vietnam vet and had seen some action and I guess I can't blame him for being shy. Anyway, he was a painter and pretty soon after graduating he went to the south of France to some town ( I think it was Ners ) there and fell in love with some French girl and so they lived together and he painted to make a living. Everyone in the town would buy his paintings to sorta help support them. The French are like that. I bought this painting after he didn't show me his penis cause I wanted to help too, but that was before he moved to France.
Once in a while Sam would come back to NYC and paint giant Billboards cause he was in some Billboard painter union that paid well. He also painted murals and walls for restaurants in NYC sometimes. All this was to make enough money to go back to France for another few years and not worry about money...even though the locals were buying his paintings. They never got tired of his work.
This painting is some beach or something near where he lived over there.
Now he is back in the states cause he and his girlfriend had a falling out I guess and plus he had a stroke ( Bob told me this a few months ago, cause I haven't spoken to Sam since the penis episode ).. I guess I can't blame him for being stand offish...and I think it's my long eyelashes that bothers him the most .. I'm probably lucky he didn't beat me up.
hehe.. yeah, I'm thinking the same thing... one more beer and I'll call it quits for the day.
I don't know if you've noticed this before..but I'm shooting this HUGE images...like about 26 inches wide at 300ppi ...and they look pretty 'sharp' at that size.. but when I downsize to like 72ppi and 5 inches wide .. to make it real small for web etc.. the thing gets like REALLY BLURRY..
I know I'm just doing tests and dont care right now.. but this is sorta bothering me a little bit.
Plus, I haven't even got to my 'settings' for pic sizes and so on yet so maybe I'm just worrying about nothin at this point.
I'll put on the zeiss 35mm soon and see what happens.. as it's a cine lens and I wouldnt be maxed out on the zoom and so on.
Anyway, I'm pretty far away from worrying seriously about quality issues, since I'm still figuring out what buttons to push and so on to do simple stuff. Plus, ultimately, I'm probably gonna worry more about the video stuff than the still stuff, cause the still stuff I can light and so on when I'm inside... you know, use lights and stuff. Anyway, sorry about the stupid posts.
Anyway, sorry about the stupid posts.
Hmmmm
First external mic test.. not so good...
I set the mic on zero db.. it can be -10 or zero or +20..
and shot the TV .. on auto settings.. not sure I released the wb for that though.. to auto...
Anyway, dont care.. was testing sound.
When I shot it I had headphones on and it sounded pretty loud to me ... and +20 sounded louder so I left it on zero db...
And when imported to cs3 the sound does say zero db... but the waveform did look a little smallish...
But playing it in cs3 with headphones etc sounded okay... so I uploaded that way...
But now I realize after upload it isn't loud enough... plus has some noise.
Grrr... I'm a sound idiot so this is yet ANOTHER thing I gotta work out ...
I think this is it for me today.. enough testing
Thanks Steve,
okay, I get it.. what you said.. and I also found some earlier info that Bill Hunt sent me about levels ( including background music etc ).. and basically it's the same info regarding overall sound stuff.
So I did another test for sound..and this time played with the level in the camera a little bit while listening to it with headphones through camera ...
So that was one thing to get used to...what it sounded like with headphones ( volume) compared to the actual recording level from mic..
Then I did test and put that mov file into soundforge and exported the sound separately as a wav. So now I had the original mov with sound embedded, plus a separate wav file of same stuff.
I reduced the volume a bit on the wav cause it looked kinda right on the top edge -6db with some spikes above it.. and basically ( after mov to avi conversion with neoscene ) put the video into cs3 and also the other wav file.
Reading the audio meter in CS3 while playing both sound tracks alternately, the original is actually BETTER, and the AVI is a little too low.
So the levels meter in camera appears to be working well...for keeping things at the -6db area.
The biggest problem now is the mic on camera is just not discriminating enough for me, for doing interviews etc.. so I'm gonna have to get another shotgun mic and stand or boom pole etc.. to do that stuff...
But I gotta get new computer first so new mic will have to wait..
This is the one I want to buy...and I can get it close to the talent on stand etc.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/367747-REG/Rode_NTG_2_NTG_2_Battery_or_Phantom.html
So, thank you very much for that info and it looks like I'm sorta in good shape for now....
I mean in terms of the cam mounted mic..
Well.. against my initial leanings to get new computer first, and THEN deal with sound issues etc... I just ordered this junk from B&H.. I'll let you know how it works out...
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=trtr50bsetxl&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=bobphk&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/964135-REG/tascam_tascam_dr_60d_with_rode.html
Ohhh... also got bulbs for the Lowel DP's and Omni lights....
Yikes..I am going to become less of a sound idiot I hope...
hehe... I hear that.. about the budget and wife and basically what amounts to 'common sense' among partners. It's nice you have that relationship. A while back I got a recorder ( H4N ) due to some good reviews by my friend Chris Duncan ( he comes here sometimes and used to be here more often before you came back to forums apparently ). I used it to record a historical society person's presentation a couple months ago at some conference room and it came out pretty good in general, but had way too much ambient sounds etc ( world noises around the building etc ). As a little recorder ( stereo ) it's fantastic and small and I put it on the seat next to me and got her voice over pa system and also my own 'questions' later on really good. But to do interviews of people for documentary I need to really get in there tight ...or it's gonna sound stupid to me. I probably need a boom guy or girl and maybe I can get that if the local stage owner and me and his 'students' hit it off ... to do this dumb project. They would get college credit and I would get free sound stage and lots of young help. It would be fun for me to work with young people too I think.. have some fun. Sorta remember that 'making entertainment and stuff ' is really fun..
I don't know, maybe I'm a jerk about that. I always thought working on movies should be a fun thing.
Anyway, I am not having fun right now. I put my zeiss distagon f2 35mm cine lens on body a few hours ago...for first time.. and have got ZERO results. I assigned the non cpu lens to the FN button, have followed all the instructions in manual and on internet and keep getting a flashing ' FEE ' code ( failure to communicate with lens is my guess )...
I get NOTHING.. no live view no ability to change f stop, shutter speed.. it's all blank.. just he error mssg.
There goes over a thousand bucks down the drain at this rate.
Fortunately ( or maybe not ) I don't have a loving wife to squint at me right now and add to my own feelings of despair about this situation. I have a feeling I would feel better with a partner I could hug and say, " Good God, I am feeling very bummed out right now... could you make me a nice dinner or something ?? "
Anyway, maybe I can get in touch with some pro camera place tomorrow and ask them to walk me through assigning a non cpu lens and see if maybe I'm missing some basic setting. The intructions are ( manual and internet etc ) VERY ambivalent sometimes IMO.
In other words, I have no clue what's wrong.
EUREKA !!!!! YAHOOOO ! IT'S BEER THIRTY !!!!!
Guess what ??? YES !... I put the F stop on the " orange " colored one... ( F22 ) and it became 'active'. Then you can change the F stops via camera controls but you dont touch the F stops on the lens.. you leave it on F22....
GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY ! I have no freaking clue how I finally arrived at this solution after an ENTIRE DAY of this....but it is working... and on manual setting I can then set the F stop and shutter speed ( and dont ask about ISO yet.. I sorta put it on auto and didnt mess around with that yet - I can't recall what I did with that..., as I was so thrilled to have A LENS I probably was close to having a brain hemorage (sp? ).
OMG.. it works !!! I didnt throw a thousand bucks out the window !!!! YIPEEEE !
It's hard to feel bad for all the bombs going off in Aghganastan (sp?) and Iraq (sp?) and Pakistan ( sp? ) and boston (sp?) without taking one little moment out for myself to celebrate having a lens that WORKS !!!!!!
All the same I do feel bad for all the blown up people around the world and hope I can take pictures of them so I can win a pulitzer prize !!!!! YIPPEEEEE !
that was sarcasm and I would drop my camera in the gutter and run to help anyone ...and screw my little thrill about taking pics.. I hope we stop and think..
For example, isn't THIS an exciting pic ??? I call it " lubriderm "...my first pic with new zeiss lens !!!
[profanity removed]
just so you know...
not that I'm one to gossip...
cause I know for a FACT that everyone is busy and stuff... and engaged in life...
I wrote an email to about 9 people ( not cc but to everyone ) about my problem with camera and the zeiss lens...
Steve was the only one who wrote back with an attempt to help by giving the page of manual for non cpu lens.
I'm talking about one world famous producer/dir / dp..., 3 world famous DP's, 1 almost famous assitant camera dude ( he's excused cause he's a worker bee in a disfunctional hive ), a famous still photographer and artist of world reknown ( trust me you know his name), a US representative of the most prestigous large format camera manufacturer in history of the world, and I think that's it..... If my old dog was still alive I would have added her to the list just for compassion.. she always 'gave' ....except when trying to get her head out of the leather band around her neck.
Anyway, thanks Steve.. you were the only one who responded ( even though it was useless ).
Well, I did start with "I don't know either". 
Since you had mentioned earlier that you had skipped over large parts of the manual, I thought it might help. I'm glad you didn't need the help after all.
My three lenses don't have f stop settings on them so you were way outside of my knowledge base the moment you started.
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