***DSLR/Photography MegaThread***

Thinking about heading to the camera shop tomorrow and buying some B&W 35mm rolls. Luc Skybomba's pics inspired me to try my hand at B&W again. I guess I could always take pics off my DSLR, grayscale them and then up the contrast to get the look I want, but my Nikon 35mm camera has been dormant for a while so maybe it's time to brush up on those film skillz.

awesome! i need to get to the camera shop also for more rolls and more fixer.
 
Thinking about heading to the camera shop tomorrow and buying some B&W 35mm rolls. Luc Skybomba's pics inspired me to try my hand at B&W again. I guess I could always take pics off my DSLR, grayscale them and then up the contrast to get the look I want, but my Nikon 35mm camera has been dormant for a while so maybe it's time to brush up on those film skillz.

You know how you have those days where your friends will say stuff like, "oh man, you're such a good photographer" or "wow how did you learn to do such great stuff" and you start to feel good about the effort and time you've put in? And you know those days where you find out that you can fire your flash by pushing a button on the back of it without your camera having anything to do with it? Yeah, guess which day I had today.
 
Did have some nice luck today, though. A lady named Sarah Hall from Soho Myriad Art Consulting emailed me about purchasing the rights to print one of my b&w HDR aviation-related images on a WALL-SIZED sheet of aircraft-grade aluminum for a decorating job her firm is doing for an executive meeting room at the Hilton Newark Airport. I replied, "INTERESTED!" and am waiting for her opening offer.

Do any of you know what a realistic and fair price would be for me to charge for a single-use, print-only license for this company to fulfill their clients requirements? She says she wants to have it printed on like a wall-sized 3:2 ratio (original aspect ratio)...like a 5'x8' or something like that.

So...I've got that going for me...gungagallunga.

I have no idea what something like that would run, but to tell you the truth, Id just be thrilled that someone wanted to use it in such a prominent way. If it happens, have her send a picture of the final product that you can post here.
 
It'll be neat because that hotel is where my airline puts us up when we overnight in Newark, coincidentally. I might get a chance to look at it first hand!

Thanks.
 
Thinking about heading to the camera shop tomorrow and buying some B&W 35mm rolls. Luc Skybomba's pics inspired me to try my hand at B&W again. I guess I could always take pics off my DSLR, grayscale them and then up the contrast to get the look I want, but my Nikon 35mm camera has been dormant for a while so maybe it's time to brush up on those film skillz.

I just bought some old manual lenses and attached to one of them was an old Russian Zenit. I also have a Minolta XG-1 on the way with some lenses. I was just thinking of doing some B&W film shooting myself.
 
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Surfers taken from Huntington Beach Pier this morning.
 
I'm still a sucker for a nice sunset. Here is one over Malibu that occurred on Labor Day. We were having some strange tropical weather, and in this one it appears that there were wisps of rain falling out over the ocean, which picked up nicely in the afterglow of the sunset.

 
I figured somebody would have posted a Space Shuttle shot by now! Everybody in LA was out there taking pictures--albeit mostly with iPhones and Droids. Unfortunately where I was, it was flying kind of high and there was a lot of haze. But with lots of pixels to work with and the processing power of Photoshop, I was able to pull something out.




That night I happened to be driving by LAX and saw a bunch of TV trucks and people standing on an overlook in El Segundo. I stopped and took a shot of Shuttle as they were preparing to remove it from the 747. You can see the cranes and fixture they use to lift it. The original is a 36mp image so you can zoom in and see the people working. This shot was taken from about a mile away with at 400mm on the D800.

 
my friend dragged me to the roof of our work to see the thing. if i knew about it i would've brought a longer lens than 28mm (equiv).

anyway haven't been out shooting because of the damn heat! i wanted to do a project called "women's summer office attire" but it was too damn hot for me to even be out there. my gf wouldn'tve appreciated that project anyway, especially in her current impregnated state.
 
I've been busy scanning old 35mm slides. I came across some fairly decent stuff that I shot during a two-week backpacking trip I took in the Sierras while I was in the Scouts back in 1987. I shot this with my old Nikon F1, and if I recall correctly a 28mm f/2.8 lens. I REALLY miss that camera...it was stolen from my pickup truck while I was in junior college.

Check it:

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Yeah...these were scanned as raw files and processed in LR4. They'd be merde without that little trick.
 
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sweet shots! what software are you using for scanning? i've been using silverfast cause it came with my plustek scanner, but i've been reading that a lot of people use vuescan.
 
This is a borrowed Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 slide scanner. I've had it for like six weeks, but couldn't get it running because Nikon no longer supports updates to Nikonscan software, so it wouldn't work with either my 64-bit Windows 7 Pro PC or my new iMac (which is also 64 bit).

I'm using VueScan's software. It works really great, especially the automatic dust-spot cleanup feature. The downside is that VueScan doesn't support the batch-feeder, so I have to sit here in my spare time and feed it one slide at a time.
 
Great shots FBJ! I didn't make it past cub scouts, but I did do summer camps in the Sierra and took some nice B&W photos on backpacking adventures. Who knows where those negatives went tho. At least you kept track of yours. I would love to see what I could bring out of some of my old shots with modern image processing.

Like you I'm still nostalgic over my first Nikon. It was the first camera I bought myself and fortunately I still have it. It's an FE2. I was taking a photojournalism class in college and the instructor (who was a working photog for a major daily paper) recommended that I not get the traditional 50mm lens with it. He told me to start with a 28mm 2.8. Then get a 100mm 2.8. He said learn to use those two lenses first and my pictures will be a lot more interesting... and it was true. Those were the days. If you tried to shoot sports in a gym or at night, you were pushing Tri-X to 1600 and beyond with custom chemical baths and crossing your fingers that you got something good. Plus we were bulk loading film so we could get more than 36 frames on a roll. Nowadays these kids have just got it too easy. Shoot a thousand pictures on one card. If the light is bad, just switch your ISO to 3200. No crossing fingers, just take the shot and look at the screen and see if you got the shot. And if that's not enough, you can always fix everything in Photoshop. Now I feel old.
 
BTW, FBJ, as a pilot, how would you like to fly that 747 with the space shuttle on it's back? That must be something.
 
Man I'm horrible at post-production. Are most of you self taught on PhotoShop and LightRoom?
 
I never really alter my pics in PS or LR. I've experimented a bit, but my opinion is if you alter the pic much it goes from photography to graphic design. Plus I also think if you need to touch it up in PS, then you ain't got it. That said, there are cool things you can do aside from just simple cropping and adjusting. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to do those things.

Just came back from a trip to Ireland.

429 by The Black Cloud, on Flickr
 
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