What are /r/photoclass2017's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Good thing I got myself one of those fancy IPS panels! As for calibrating, I tried doing a bit of tweaking myself with the Windows color calibrating tool... turned out a little bit better. I also found this free software, figure it might be worth a try.

Otherwise I have my laptop. The colours seem to be more balanced there, so I could use it for comparison.

Later than all the rest... Have been interested in patterns (and contrast) for a long time, but have, basically, only used my smartphone to take photos (posted on Eyeem).

Got a chance to go out the other night with my Canon EOS 1100D to seek some patterns, and found a few. Because it was dark, I wasn't very happy with the outcome. (Meaning - there's always room for improvement - and the need to buy a tripod)

Pattern Assignment

Edit: Just started reading the next lesson with shutter speed, and can say that the shutter speed was something that i had a problem with when I took the the photos for this assignment. I had the aperture wide open (I was using Av), to let as much light in as possible, but even then, the shutter speed was long. This meant that (without a tripod) the slightest movement screwed up the photo...)

Favorite photo: I would try retaking this image, move your angle down and to the left. Get rid of that big white door in the background and instead make the background that black area to the right. It will help bring focus onto the ornaments more.

Almost there: Crop in a bit, to help get rid of that wire. Maybe even shoot down the middle of the road, using the bridge as a frame, road as a leading line.

Something I love: Crop in and just use the leaves as an frame for the steeple. Outside of that frame, the image is busy and we don't need to see anything outside of the steeple. Also, removing some of the wider image will remove some context, creating a mysterious feel that will draw people into the image more.

Something I love: Make this image black and white. The colors are a bit flat so there's no need for them. Though, I've often heard (and followed the rule of thumb) that if you need to make a photo black and white, it's not really that good of a photo. To make this one better, I would step back and make the shot wider. Get all of the tree in the frame.

Dog: Getting animals and people in the right moment is always tough when starting out. But, I would try to move him/her away from the table. The lighting is actually pretty decent from what looks to be a simple on-camera flash.

>A goal for me would be to compose beautiful photos with minimal use of photo editing software.

No photo software needed if you're looking for good composition. Good composition can all be done in camera. Lighting and color on the other hand, while a lot of it can be done in camera, you're never going to get everything out of your images unless you learn to use some post process. I would highly recommend the Google Nik Collection.

It's free and very useful for people just starting out with post-processing as it does a lot of the work for you and has a bunch of presets.

Yeah, calibrating by eye is really no calibration at all even with a good panel like yours.

However, I do have a scenario for you to consider. Say, you purchase a Datacolor Spyder 5. The model is irrelevant as you will not use their useless software (don't register it!). Instead, you would use the excellent, free and open source DisplayCal which can very accurately calibrate your monitor. You could then calibrate all displays at your disposal in the time span of a week or two. Then, theoretically speaking, you could be compelled to return the device to Amazon and be entitled to a full refund! Thus, you would have calibrated monitors for very close to $0.

Interesting thought experiment, no?

I thought I got all of this, but after reading the lesson I have two points I don't really get:

1) When purchasing lenses for a DSLR, I've seen there are some lenses specifically designed for crop sensor cameras. What I don't get here is what "desinged for ASP-c (crop) sensor" actually means.

I mean, you can mount that lens on a full frame canon and still getting shots, although I guess you will get really wide shots with that, right? Also, there is a 10-18mm Canon lens but it says that is only for APS-C bodies.

So, there are lenses only compatible with non-full frame bodies, or it just a recommendation (like in "if you go 10mm with a full frame you will get some trippy stuff)?

2) The second question is related with the sensor size and its relation with the focal length. If you get a mobile phone camera sensor (which for my question it's going to be "the smallest"), its crop factor will be huge, so to get wide photos you would need "lenses" with small focal length, right? So if I could mount using magic a DLSR lens on a mobile phone, I would get HUGE zooms due having a bigger crop factor.

Okay, thanks again for all the feedback.

I'm not totally sure I did this right. Here's my homework.

Maybe I screwed up by choosing a lemon as a subject (literally a lemon - not a metaphor), but to my naive eyes, it still looks pretty sharp at slower shutter speeds I would not expect.

At 24mm (I have a 16mm widest lens, but a 1.5 crop factor), to my eyes, it still looks okay at 1/15, and almost even looks okay at 1/8. (I guess when you zoom in it looks blurrier.) Even at 1/4 it looks okay-isn, and then at 1/2 and 1 second the train goes off the rails.

What really threw me for a loop - even at 105mm (lens goes to 70mm, so 105 with the 1.5 crop) it still seems sharp until 1/4 sec, but I know that can't really be the case. Once again, it gets junky at 1/2 and 1 sec.

This is the lens I'm using - I don't know how that factors into the equation...

On another note, I learned something else doing this -- how hard it can be to focus close-up on something using a wide lens. Initially I tired to get very close to the lemon at 24mm so that it mostly filled the frame (like I did with 105mm), but the focus wouldn't really lock on any one point in the lemon, so I had to back up (hence the crappy composition of random stuff on the kitchen counter.) Is there any rule of thumb about how close you can be to something and focus when you're at a wide lens? Or is the moral of the story that when you're doing macro, you want to zoom in with longer lens?

Anyways, hope I didn't botch this too much, and thanks again!

Hey /u/Aeri73, I forgot to ask! When you say bag, do you mean a ziploc bag or is my camera bag enough? The camera bag I currently own is this one. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3J4RDI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_-dosyb4438J06