Digital Photography School

This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

We finished the Construction Assignment this week and there were a lot of really creative ideas this time. It’s been great to see so many people thinking outside of the box. The winner was clear though. Congratuations to tyago_sylva for his picture of using Scrabble letters to construct the word construction. We had several Scrabble shots, but this was our favourite. Our runners up were tveolcker for the hammer slamming down on the nail because the motion blur was just great, and Steph for the blueprints to a house which takes the traditional idea of construction, but shows a slightly less thought of aspect. Congrats to all our winners and good job to everyone who participated.

We also started a new assignment this week: Panning. Panning basically means moving your camera along with a moving subject so that the subject stays in focus, but the background blurs because you’re moving the camera. In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, the picture must have ben taken between 12-25 March 2008, your post must include “Assignment: Panning” somewhere in the post, and the exif must still be in tact. Remember, you don’t have to participate in the mini-contest in order to still submit a picture to the assignment, so feel free to still post the pictures that are outside the time frame or don’t have exif. Just don’t include the assignment tag. Next week’s assignment will be “Your Morning” so as you shuffle out of bed, snap a picture of something that shows us your morning.

Weekly Poll

Last week we asked forum members what focal lengths they used most often. There were 3 options to keep things simple:

• Wide angles (7-35mm)
• Normal (35-55mm)
• Telephoto (55m or greater)

Most people used lenses in the normal range (which may have something to do with how many people love using their nifty-fifty lenses).

portered2nz preferred longer focal lengths and said: “I usually like to leave the 75-300mm on the camera even though I am usually taking photos of landscapes and buildings. I tend to take landscapes as multi-image panaramas as I like the extra print size options that this gives me. I don’t take a lot of shots at the wider end of the range.”

Karen514 was one of the nifty-fifty people and said: “I have my 50mm/1.4 lens on my camera 90% of the time. It’s by far the best lens I own, and I prefer not to use flash so the wide aperture lets me take photos indoors.”

Finally, GEli likes the wide angles and said: “I’m currently on a wide angle kick. Most everything I’ve done in the past few weeks has been between 18-24mm. I actually did what I believe to be my best portraits yet at 18mm with the lense an inch or two away from the subject’s faces.”

This week, come tell us what kind of computer you process your photos on and tell us what your favourite pieces of software are for it is (for processing pictures at least).

Hot Threads

• Photographing Strangers: It’s not an uncommon subject, especially when people are just getting started with the idea of street photography. How do you actually approach your subject when you want to take a picture? Do you snap first and ask later? Do you ask first and risk not getting the natural picture that you wanted? How do you deal with people who are uncomfortable with the whole thing? If you have advice or are looking for advice on this, drop by this thread.
• A question about low ISO’s: Noise is something that happens when you use higher ISOs. There is a pull for photographers between using high ISOs so that you can get better pictures in low light vs getting as little noise as possible. So why do so few cameras offer ISOs lower than 200? See this thread for a little discussion of why it may be, and why it is so difficult to create a sensor that has both high and low ISO capabilities.
• Flash from across the street: This is one of those questions that’s still searching for an answer. windrider86 saw a photographer taking pictures and the flash was located half way across the parking lot. Now, we’ve all seen photographers doing strange things, but the question is, why put the lights so far away instead of doing something else? If you have any ideas, drop by this thread and share them.
• Givings your pics some pop!: shootoften started this thread with a simple sharpening technique that can be used as a first step to give your pictures a little bit of extra sharpness. But the thread doesn’t stop there since even more people have offered advice on how to give your picture that extra little bit of pop. Why not drop by and share your own tips.
• My Camera IS SOOO STUPID!: Ever heard of PEBKAC (Problem exists between keyboard and chair)? Well, we all have days like that with our cameras too. Why not drop by this thread and lament a little about the mistakes your “camera” has made. Always good for a laugh knowing that everyone forgets about settings once in a while.

Other Threads to Note

As another week rolls around, it means we have another What Would You Do challenge. The goal of the What Would You Do threads is to show off and practice your post-processing skills in order to help another forum member fix a photo that they think needs help or is even beyond help. Drop by the thread in the Games & Challenges section (or try any of the past threads) if you’re looking for something to do this Easter weekend. And for all you rock fans out there, the Classic Rock Challenge has a new one for you. This week’s album is Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast”. So throw on some black, grab the camera, and take a shot that interprets either the album name or a song name. Rock on!
Until next week, keep taking lots of pictures!

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