# Photo Mag Research



## buckas (Jun 13, 2008)

All budding togs out there :wave:

What would you like to see explained/shown in a feature in a Photo Mag and on what aspect of photography?

Cheers to all replies :thumb:

drew


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## spitfire (Feb 10, 2007)

Off the top of my head, and given that many lenses don't have distance scales for apertures, I'd like to see a feature giving rise to what effect aperture has on DOF on different focal lengths on zoom lenses.


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## Mini 360 (Jul 17, 2009)

How to get white balance bang on every shot. Always evades me that one


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## butcher (Sep 3, 2010)

The reason I rarely buy photo mags, is they're generally dull as dishwater. Yet another pic of a rock in the foreground, few hills in the background.. *yawn*

I feel like they sap any creativity I ever had. 

I'd like to see a photo mag with some original content for a change!


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## wayne_w (Jan 25, 2007)

Similar to what Spitfire has asked,
I have a kit lens - 18-105mm, not a bad all-rounder but, if I use a 105mm prime(?) lens say, what are the differences in picture quality, especially if the f number is the same.
eg. 18-105 f3.5 105mm f3.5.
A basic question but, I'm still learning as much as I can about photography.
The same as my 35mm which gives me stunning pictures but, if I use the 18-105mm I don't get the same effects?

Thank you :thumb:


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## [email protected] (Jan 9, 2006)

photoshop tutorials


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## David 1150 (Jun 6, 2009)

A simple workflow for beginners to get pics off the memory card into an organised folder system and then Photoshop. Nothing fancy, but include tips on sharpening, resizing etc for web / printing / viewing on PC monitor.


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## mattsbmw (Jul 20, 2008)

Tutorials on programmes other than photoshop


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

Am I stealing thunder here? maybe, but some of these are relatively simple to answer...



spitfire said:


> Off the top of my head, and given that many lenses don't have distance scales for apertures, I'd like to see a feature giving rise to what effect aperture has on DOF on different focal lengths on zoom lenses.


that's easy: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
You'll need aperture, distance to object and focal length.

Check out the hyperfocal distances and circles of confusion while you're at it. The english Wikipedia articles on this are also well worth reading, even if they are not as simple as they might be - but the whole subject is very complex and worth understanding.



Mini 360 said:


> How to get white balance bang on every shot. Always evades me that one


that's also not sooo difficult: grey card or white card or both. Lastolite have a Triflector with white, grey and black. Shoot it before the shot and you're done. Alternative? Work in RAW and you can correct it every time. This was the reason I moved to RAW and I haven't looked back.



wayne_w said:


> Similar to what Spitfire has asked,
> I have a kit lens - 18-105mm, not a bad all-rounder but, if I use a 105mm prime(?) lens say, what are the differences in picture quality, especially if the f number is the same.
> eg. 18-105 f3.5 105mm f3.5.
> A basic question but, I'm still learning as much as I can about photography.
> ...


Primes are generally better than zooms for a simple reason: fewer compromises. It's not easy to quantify, but you'll know it when you see it. Better out of focus areas, sharpness generally, the "3d effect" and plasticity. Kit lenses are built to a price, 35mm are optically much simpler and yet cost a similar amount. Guess which has the better glass?
There may also be something as simple as different numbers of aperture leaves which will affect OoF areas.
The f number has no direct effect on picture quality in any way, it's about how much light is let through and nothing else.



David 1150 said:


> A simple workflow for beginners to get pics off the memory card into an organised folder system and then Photoshop. Nothing fancy, but include tips on sharpening, resizing etc for web / printing / viewing on PC monitor.


There is no such thing unless you count Aperture or Lightroom. Even then, they "sort of" organise. You have to do it yourself in the way you want it to be.

Sharpening is a black art. Questions that need to be asked: For what? Print? At what DPI? Where's it going to be viewed? Is it a dark picture or pale? Lots of detail or just a foreground object? Based on that, you can work out whether to sharpen lots or less (lots looks crappy on the web but great on paper), photos with lots of detail sharpen easily but again look pants unless great care is taken, sometimes just sharpening edges is the way to go. I've seen a pic of mine which I think is awful on screen look fabulous printed as part of a calendar. I don't know if anything was done with it, I will ask. At the very least you should understand the effects of unsharp mask filters and be able to apply masks and layers so you can sharpen parts of a pic and not others. There are a lot of tutorials on this on the web; people seem to think there's a "magic number" which you can feed into the USM filter and <schwup> there's a great, sharp, picture. Doesn't work like that, you need to at least begin to understand how the eye views contours and edges and why edges, contrasts and anti-aliasing (a.k.a. blur!) are important - and where the noise is going to be so you can avoid it.

This is a series of articles, not just one. And workflow within your editor is not the end of everything - there's also other stuff to consider, like calibration, colour spaces, EXIFs or not, protecting your pics, compression, backup and captioning.... would be very, very cool if it included links to (good) online tutorials and additional material: and preferably using free or close to free applications. Not all of us like Adobe....

Bret


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## Buck (Jan 16, 2008)

A good article on hyperfocal distance and how it works/looks in reality - it's one of the things my head hurts when thinking about!


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## robz (Apr 18, 2006)

I'd like to see more "use what you have" articles, and realistic gear shown. 

There's far too much emphasis on spending £1000's in order to get good shots, doesnt raise your skill level does it...

I rarely buy them now as almost all the info in them is available online....


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## beginner101 (Jan 19, 2010)

i use good old windows explorer to sort the photos, from memory card to pc, but im starting to use XnView to help, digital photo professional for re-sizeing and gimp for editing (hardly edit pics anyway)

with over 10GB of photos, that does'nt include the re-sized copies


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