KramBerries
Earing My Urns
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2009
- Messages
- 178
I'm not a pro photographer, but I've been an audiophile for years. A surprising amount of knowledge transfers between the two areas. Here are some useful tips:
1) Get the best CF cards you can buy. Gold plated are better. A good CF card can preserve more detail and will have a higher dynamic range.
2) Never use a card reader. Always connect your camera directly to your computer. Don't use cheap cables. Get the best cables you can buy. Pure stranded copper is the best, with gold connectors of course. You shouldn't pay less than $150 for a good cable.
3) When charging your battery, make sure that you use a conditioned power source. A good power conditioner will generate a much more stable signal. Using "tap" power will lead to charging variations in your battery. Those will come back out as jitter in your picture, causing motion blur and a lack of color fidelity.
4) Obviously, you should be using a 64-bit OS and you should convert all of your photo files to 64 bit files. 16-bit is all you can do for capture these days, but you'll want 64 bit for editing so that you preserve the maximum possible definition in your high frequency colors.
5) Bolt your printer to a granite slab set on at least 500 pounds of stabilized sand (get the smallest possible grains available). That will stabilize the print resulting in the highest quality output.
6) Forget about the inks that come with your printer. You really want inks specially formulated for your type of shooting. I have custom made inks generated off of my camera's color profile. I have different sets for sports, landscape, and portrait photography.
7) Always shoot landscapes with your camera horizontal and portraits with your camera vertical. There is a reason why those are called landscape and portrait mode. The physics is a little too complicated to explain here, but trust me, it makes a difference. Horizontal portrait shots are the classic sign of a newbie photographer wannabe.
8) You might want to get some high frequency enhancement filters. I've done some A/B tests and they seem to bring out the details in the violets and ultraviolets. They are often called UV filters. Most non-photofiles can't see the ultraviolets directly, but they really fill out a detailed picture. For some situations, though, it's best to shoot without for that "natural" look.
9) Some scenes can't be captured will with a camera. HDR is a cheap and easy way to deal with it, but it always looks fake. If you want the best fidelity, there is no substitute for taking your computer onsite and manually recreating the scene with Photoshop. You just can't capture some scenes with a sensor. Use your eyes and your brushes.
10) Remember, if you can buy it in a general purpose electronics store, it's probably garbage. Insist on gear that is only available in specialty boutiques.
1) Get the best CF cards you can buy. Gold plated are better. A good CF card can preserve more detail and will have a higher dynamic range.
2) Never use a card reader. Always connect your camera directly to your computer. Don't use cheap cables. Get the best cables you can buy. Pure stranded copper is the best, with gold connectors of course. You shouldn't pay less than $150 for a good cable.
3) When charging your battery, make sure that you use a conditioned power source. A good power conditioner will generate a much more stable signal. Using "tap" power will lead to charging variations in your battery. Those will come back out as jitter in your picture, causing motion blur and a lack of color fidelity.
4) Obviously, you should be using a 64-bit OS and you should convert all of your photo files to 64 bit files. 16-bit is all you can do for capture these days, but you'll want 64 bit for editing so that you preserve the maximum possible definition in your high frequency colors.
5) Bolt your printer to a granite slab set on at least 500 pounds of stabilized sand (get the smallest possible grains available). That will stabilize the print resulting in the highest quality output.
6) Forget about the inks that come with your printer. You really want inks specially formulated for your type of shooting. I have custom made inks generated off of my camera's color profile. I have different sets for sports, landscape, and portrait photography.
7) Always shoot landscapes with your camera horizontal and portraits with your camera vertical. There is a reason why those are called landscape and portrait mode. The physics is a little too complicated to explain here, but trust me, it makes a difference. Horizontal portrait shots are the classic sign of a newbie photographer wannabe.
8) You might want to get some high frequency enhancement filters. I've done some A/B tests and they seem to bring out the details in the violets and ultraviolets. They are often called UV filters. Most non-photofiles can't see the ultraviolets directly, but they really fill out a detailed picture. For some situations, though, it's best to shoot without for that "natural" look.
9) Some scenes can't be captured will with a camera. HDR is a cheap and easy way to deal with it, but it always looks fake. If you want the best fidelity, there is no substitute for taking your computer onsite and manually recreating the scene with Photoshop. You just can't capture some scenes with a sensor. Use your eyes and your brushes.
10) Remember, if you can buy it in a general purpose electronics store, it's probably garbage. Insist on gear that is only available in specialty boutiques.
