A Warm Refreshment

[David Kilpatrick]

Now try afterglow or before dawn, like John was shooting. The sun had gone down (or not risen) before he shot his pic, you can tell that from the double gradation and the look of the light on the icicle. Colours can be stronger, or weaker, depends entirely on conditions. But sunset with the sun above the horizon is a different game generally for saturation.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

Don, since when when was 17:06:09 - 6 minutes past 5 in the evening - 11:10:54pm? It is, exactly as I said, afterglow. The sun had set that day well before 5pm even allowing for Dutch time zone of +1 HR over GMT - it set around 4.30pm and twilight officially ended at around 5.15pm. Today it was 4.36 and 5.17pm, days are getting longer. I didn't need to check the EXIF data to guess that the picture was taken in the last minutes of twilight and well after the sun has set.

You can find similar conditions before dawn too. They are not the same as a sunset with the sun above the horizon. John is writing in English and calls it a sunset - I might call this gloaming, afterglow, dusk, twilight, or sundown. I would not expect John to know these words but he probably knows Dutch equivalents for all of them.

David

[David Kilpatrick]

I've asked John to send me the vertical file already, so I will see it in due course. It would be good if it was up full page repro standards, but if not, it would look OK at a quarter page.

David

[kingfisher]

hello john

it is a great picture , the colour`s and details are great

greatings
gustav

[bfitzgerald]

I can feel the negative vibes man!

Anyway, I think some c&c is good, but it must be done with respect..and with the goal of being constructive. I would ask myself if someone were commenting on my shots, what sort of tone would I like, and not like. I couldn't say hey it's boring..that doesn't tell the poster anything.
Something along the lines of.."have you tried this"
My fav one is.."just an idea now, but what about.."

No point in blasting someone for putting shots up..

Taste is a very personal thing..and technical aspects (bar obvious ones) are also open to debate.

[jcoffin]

I have 300K frames under my belt the past 5 years and all of the frames were shot in "my style" but I still like the photos to be well done technically so I can print them at 12 x 18 inches or whatever size I care to.

Most of my 300K frames are full frame as cropping is for compositional whimps.

Of the 300,000 photos I have shot, less than 200 of them were made with a flash. That's .00066 percent flash photos if you do the math...flashes are for whimps.

Dude, I am the *king* of high ISO with 125,000 ISO 1600-6400 shots the past several years so no need to make any of those sorts of excuses for technically difficulties around me.

[ ... ]

PSSS...If I were to start posting my shots that look good at web size but won't print worth a hoot we coud be here for a a decade or longer. Some of us have higher expectations than capturing frames for the web only. Many of us here shoot for 11x14's as a minimum so if the shot won't print at least a decent 8x10 then a lot of the shot's lustre is lost in my eyes...

1) It's a good thing you put "style" in quotes -- your pictures show about the restraint and elegance my nephew had when we was eight years old or so.
2) Cropping is sometimes useful. Your failure to recognize that some subjects are better portrayed at aspect ratios other than 3:2 is hardly a strength.
3) Flash can be useful too -- again, your inability to recognize its usefulness hardly makes you a better photographer.
4) If you want something that's for wimps, high ISOs would be a good place to start. You seem to need ISO 1600+ in situations where any decent photographer could get better results using ISO 100 or (in the old days) Kodachrome 64 or even Velvia 50.
5)
a) Most of what you post doesn't look very good even at web size, and it doesn't look like printing would help them.
b) 8x10 and 11x14 are puny prints anyway. Maybe when you post something that would look good 48 inches wide you'll have room for a little bit of attitude -- but somehow, despite having done exactly that, I (for one example) manage to be far more polite than you even try to be.
6) Shooting second rate athletes playing a second rate imitation of a sport that's itself exceptionally boring puts you in a poor position to make accusations about boring subject matter.

PS: "PS" stands for "postscript". A second one follows (is "post to") the first, so the abbreviation would be "PPS". A third would be "PPPS", and so on. Of course, if you think you need more than two postscripts, what you really need is to organize your thoughts better.

[David Kilpatrick]

It's interesting to see how good the old 7Hi actually was compared to the 7D even. When I used the 7Hi, I could not afford large CF cards - and I could not afford the 25 seconds wait for writing each raw file. So I took far too many JPEG only shots. A lot of those got on to Alamy when they accepted 14MB file size, and loads of them sold (for better money than you get today, but that is another story). Then Alamy did a big sort-out of stuff for new captioning and new settings which meant some RF had to be removed, but of anything you replaced the old files with had to be 50MB. From JPEGs, I could only get a few of the shots to pass quality control at 50MB. I had to abandon a load of pix, let them be deleted, even though some were good sellers.

I took a few raw shots with the 7i and 7Hi, and of course those were easily taken up the required size, almost as efficiently as 7D/5D files. But nearly all the shots I took on those cameras are 'wasted' because I never shot raw.

David

[jcoffin]

1) It's a good thing you put "style" in quotes -- your pictures show about the restraint and elegance my nephew had when we was eight years old or so.

To which are you referring? I have posted several hundred shots on here.

All of them. I've yet to see you post a single picture that showed real style or taste. Responding point by point to the remainder of your post seems pointless, since it's all based on the false notion that at least one picture you've posted was actually good. The other posts you added to this thread in an apparent attempt at showing off were, frankly, below average even for you. You should stick to pictures of pretty girls -- it's basically nothing more than halfhearted pornography, but at least the subject matter provides some distraction from the mediocrity of presentation.

[stevecim]

6) Shooting second rate athletes playing a second rate imitation of a sport that's itself exceptionally boring puts you in a poor position to make accusations about boring subject matter.

Don can look after him self. but just for the record I like American Football. not easy to say living in Australia, but I do take a day out of my holiday leave to watch the superbowl but would never waste a day on any other sport. I also played it for 3 years here in Victoria, Australia. there is no other sport like it. Don post all the football/cheerleaders photo you like at least I'll look forward to them.

[jcoffin]

[ ... ]

I do well enough to do books, magazines, museums, newspapers, mailers, flyers, posters, annuals, biz cards, and most all other types of publications as well as sell fine art so once again I don't care about some (banned term)'s opinion...Join the hate clubs and then please start adding some input regarding the problems with the OP's photos. This thread was in-part was about the OP's soft photos and weak gradients...my photos were only posted as examples of gradients that were not ruined and icicles that had some oomph. BTW...my websites get millions of page views so somebody sure likes looking at the pix...so many people in fact that I need a dedicated box on a fat pipe just to serve the pix...

-Sonolta

It's interesting how you claim others' pictures are doggy doo and such, quite rudely, and claim that it's meant as constructive criticism -- but when somebody else points out the mediocrity of your pictures, quite politely at that, you immediately switch to personal attacks, claiming they must be blind, are "haters", etc.

As for millions of hits, consider the National Enquirer and the New Yorker. The former virtually epitomizes cheap, tawdry and tasteless, while the latter is generally considered one of the most tasteful, elegant publications in the US -- but doing a bit of looking, it appears that the Equirer sold about 4 times as many magazines last year as the New Yorker.

[jcoffin]

You have pointed out nothing here other than the fact that you are quite narrow minded as well as quite ignorant...and a (banned term) too. You can't show me better alpha or KM or Minolta pictures made on many of the subjects I have posted to this forum so you need to pack up your bag of bullspit and go home. You have not critiqued anything. You have posted nonsense, flamebait, and other completely idiotic and stupid remarks. In-fact you have yet to critique one photo while skipping over hundreds and stumbling over your own lies and delusions! I have proved you a (banned term) several times already and I will do it another 100 times if I must.

Perhaps you need some work in English comprehension as well. Your claim of having proven anybody a (banned term) indicates that you don't even know what the word really means.

OTOH, you have claimed (for example) that I haven't done any action photography. For comparison, let's consider bicycle racing, where the speeds are around double or triple that of anything in football:


Link to larger size:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1386/787 ... 0236_o.jpg

If you prefer even higher speed, consider motorcycle jumping:


Link to larger size:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3242/301 ... d62c_o.jpg


Link to larger size:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3055/301 ... f2ee_o.jpg

To produce this height of jumps, these guys move a just a bit faster than a football player can run. In all three cases, note the careful choice of shutter speed to combine sharpness with motion blur to produce a dynamic picture with real impact. Take careful note of the contrast between the sharpness of the subject, and the substantial motion blur of the background -- essentially perfect panning, something that takes real skill. Simply put, this is real action photography that takes real skill, not just pointing a camera in the general direction of a football play, and using the "machine gun" approach until you happen to get a shot around the time something vaguely similar to real action took place.

As far as boring goes, well I've sat through some pretty boring NFL games, but I've never met anybody who could watch a Superman or a Lazy Boy, or just about any other kind of jump, and keep from getting excited. When people talk about a football game that sucked, they mean it sucked. When they talk about jumping "sucking" they mean something like the weather stopped the jumping from happening.

And yes, of course I could post hundreds more like this, but David's new rule isn't really a problem at all -- even just one of these would be more than adequate to demonstrate how much more exciting action photography can be than your boring shots. Oh, and since you consider the equipment important, these were all taken with a K/M 7D.

[jcoffin]

You are comparing ISO3200 work to ISO 100 work!

Only fools, idiots, and stupid people think shooting action at ISO 100 is anything like shooting action at ISO3200 with wide open lenses. Seriously, dude....get a life and try shooting something tough for a change.

[ ... ]

-Sonolta

Don, your "argument" doesn't even contain a hint of sense anymore. The fact is that the light during the motorcycle jumping (for one example) was quite minimal -- these were taken well after sunset. As I alluded to in a previous post, a skilled shooter can use a low ISO in situations you think you need a higher one. If you look at the EXIF data, you'll see that the shots of motorcycle jumping were at 1/90th and 1/60th of a second respectively. You're using your lens wide open and shooting at ISO 3200. I'm stopping the lens down to about it's optimal sharpness, and shooting a subject that's moving roughly 80 MPH at 1/60th of second, and still keeping it sharp.

You're right, this is NOT like shooting at ISO 3200 with wide open lenses. This is action shooting done with skill and finesse, while shooting at ISO 3200 with the lens wide open is using brute force and ignorance to make up for lack of skill.

[jcoffin]

If you try to execute motion blur for effect for indoor football it does not work on most plays because the players are all moving at different speeds and the are constantly accelerating and decelerating....you will come home with only a few keepers instead of many. I have shot maybe 30K indoor football shots from 1/160 full effect motion blur to 1/500 which stops almost all player and ball motion. I usually settle between 1/320 - 1/400 as shooting at 1/250 and below results in to many ruined shots...way to many. Indoor football is one of the hardest sports on the planet to shoot...outdoor biking is one of the easiest to shoot as you know exactly where your subject will be and at what the pace the bikes will be going...on top of that you have plenty of room to work form there as far as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are concerned. Outdoor is almost pointNshoot stuff just set the SS you want for blur effect and fire away with no worries.

-Sonolta

Don, you should have given up while you were ahead. The reality is that the bicycle shot was taken near a fairly sharp corner, that the racers took at substantially different speeds and accelerated out of at substantially different rates. In fact, the difference in speed between one and the next was higher than the maximum speed your football players can ever hit. Likewise, the bicycle racers took substantially different lines through the corner, so you did NOT know where they were going to be ahead of time nor when they were going to be there.

As far as indoor football being particularly difficult to shoot because it's unpredictable, you simply don't know what you're talking about. Rodeos (for one example) involve far faster action that's a lot less predictable. Of course, there's also a bit more "guts" involved since at least when I did it I was in the middle of things, where the bulls could have stomped on me if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The bottom line is that every post you're just displaying more of your ignorance, and no amount of skill you claim to use changes the fact that they're just plain boring.

[jcoffin]

Don, your "argument" doesn't even contain a hint of sense anymore.

You are the clueless fool...ask any photographer that shoots action. My god man it's like you were born yesterday!

And you claim you aren't making personal attacks!

As far as your claim of underexposure goes, you're clearly wrong: just for example, in the first motorcycle jump shot, the highlights (after straight conversion with ACR) come in at 255, 254, 242. Any more exposure would simply have blown the highlight. I don't really expect you to accept or understand that argument, but for those of use who actually understand digital photography, it's simple, clear-cut and incontrovertible.

The rest of your post was simply more personal attacks, devoid of technical content, to which a response would be pointless, so I won't bother.

[jcoffin]

Outdoor racing and jumping is so easy you can almost do it blindfolded with a broken camera. This time I was shooting one of the largest events in the nation the Midwest Nationals which was the first and only time I had shot a BMX event. My KM5D had broken the day before and my 7hi was not up to the task so I shot this event unable to change settings on my KM5D....The dials and controls were screwed from moisture so I had to stick with a mode and setting that worked at the time....I came home with almost all keepers...hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in a couple hours. I dug these two up and I ill dig some others later..

[ pictures elided ... ]

Is that enough motion blur for you?

-Sonolta

No -- part of the point of blurring the background is to keep it from being distracting -- and the minimal motion blur you have in the first shot simply makes it _more_ distracting rather than less. The second doesn't seem to include any panning at all -- or anything that's moving very fast either.

In short, you've simply shown a still more thorough demonstration of your incompetence, poor understanding of photography, and general lack of taste.