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DEE38

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I'm off to get my nerd on @ Borders..I know alot of you are photosavvy with the digital camera. I wanted to pick some books up today to understand it more and hopefully take more artfag photos-- and theres 500 books out there.. just wondering if anyone can suggest me some really good ones.I just got a new digicam (nothing pro or fancy or anything) and it has lots of lil things to mess with and i'd like to know exactly what and how to mess with them.kodak_easyshare_z710_1.jpgif it helps, i have a kodak z710.thanks.

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eb, the camera is okay. i've read reveiws from pros and they talk alot about it being slow, and etc etc. but the quality is really good as far as taking pictures of artwork (which i orignally bought it for.)

 

so can you help me make lemoade out of lemons here? :(

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SnB...

 

This is seriously what I know about it right now in my head without looking anything up.

 

It's the step up for the w50 and w70. It's 8.1 MP. Has a 64MB internal memory.

 

3X zoom (As with most compact point and shoots) and it has a 2.5 LCD.

 

 

Also I want to point out that Sony's are expensive and overly complicated, and the motor that brings the lens out tends to break. Their customer service sucks and they pretty much never replace anything.

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Guest R@ndomH3ro
eb, the camera is okay. i've read reveiws from pros and they talk alot about it being slow, and etc etc. but the quality is really good as far as taking pictures of artwork (which i orignally bought it for.)

 

so can you help me make lemoade out of lemons here? :(

 

Only if you mail us puppies....cute furry puppies.

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well for 1, i'm going the mom route and say i want cute photos of my son running around with his dog in the park.. without it looking like a snapshot.

 

and secondly.. scenic photos. like those awsome graff 133t photos of tunnles. well not that subject matter, but similar style i guess.

 

-excuse my amatureness.

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Guest R@ndomH3ro
sorry sneak i just sold my last huskey last night. :(

 

but my bitch is pregnant again. you want dog embryo?

 

 

It might make a tasty snack...Mmmmm Dog embryo

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eb, the camera is okay. i've read reveiws from pros and they talk alot about it being slow, and etc etc. but the quality is really good as far as taking pictures of artwork (which i orignally bought it for.)

 

so can you help me make lemoade out of lemons here? :(

 

Here is something that is fun to know about Kodak. They hire people to go online and write good reviews about their cameras. The Kodak rep at my old store tried to bribe me to have better things to say about their cameras. I don't blame her, but hiring people to write good reviews is kind of shady...

 

Anywhoo. What I will say is that Kodaks are BY FAR the easiest camera to use, and as far as their cameras, you do have one of the better ones...

 

Nothing is going to tell you more about the camera then the manual itself. So dust that baby off and get to reading. Anytime you see a word that you don't understand, hit up google oner and figure out what the fuck...

 

Without more specifics on what you're trying to take pictures of I don't really know where to go from there.

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99% of successful digital photography can be learned from traditional info. If you're looking more to figure out what the "landscape mode" is, you're best (first) bet is to read your manual. If you want to really learn about making successful photos, it's best to start with some basic books on photo in general--ones that will give you the background of composition, lighting, exposure, etc. Some suggestions that are probably available at B&N or Borders:

 

Photography Basics, Revised Edition by John Hedgecoe

 

50 Principles of Composition in Photography: A Practical Guide to Seeing Photographically Through the Eyes of a Master Photographer by Klaus Bohn

 

The Ansel Adams Guide : Basic Techniques of Photography by John P. Schaefe

 

 

This is all assuming you're going to use your camera in modes other than Auto.

 

 

Get the basics (it won't take long), practice them and read up on digital crap while you're doing that. Kodak puts out a quality guide/tip/trick publication (online only, I think) that would proabably be ideal since you are shooting that. Start here: kodak.

 

Just about all the "How To" digi books out there will tell you the same thing in pretty much the same language. Brand-specific publications are obviously most relevant but you can glean a lot from, say, a Canon or Nikon book. This is also one are where you CAN tell a book by its cover: if it looks like it was published (1) in the early 90s; (2) in someone's basement; or (3) at Kinko's, I'd stay away.

 

Check the Photo thread in untitled... they're all about dropping the knowledge.

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Oh also to combat the slowness of the camera. Make sure that you press the button halfway first. That should auto focus it. Then it should beep or something when it's ready, and the picture should take a lot less time from the time you press it to the time it gets processed.

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I'm getting photo knowledge battled...

 

Dee my personal opinion is that you don't need any books at all. You'd be wasting your money. Nothing. Get a big memory card, take more photos then you need of any one particular thing and figure out what looks good and doesn't look good about all of them.

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Get a big memory card, take more photos then you need of any one particular thing and figure out what looks good and doesn't look good about all of them.

 

This was how i went about things. If i wanted to take a nice photo of something. I'd take a bunch on different settings and eventually worked out what worked well for different shit.

 

 

I really should finish reading my manual.

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DASH_21.jpg

 

provencealley1.jpg

 

here are some of my favorite photos in the photo thread. i love this look.

 

the thing is, my manual sucks. its 8 pages long with 1 sentence explinations for each button! thats why i wanted to get some kind of reference book to learn what apeture priority and stuff mean.. and also how shutter speeds effects a photo.. what ISO is and etc etc. I have no clue.

 

also the camera comes with alot of pre-settings like "party" "children" "landscape night". and sometime that shit seems like it doesn't even work / i'm doing it wrong. so it can get pretty frustrating. the one thing i like is how it takes close up/flowers really well. and thats something i coulden't even dreaaaaaaam of with my other awesome 2.0 pixel digicam.

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Shutter speed is how long the shutter is open, and therefor how much light is exposed in the picture.

 

Longer shutter means more light. So if it's a dark you will need to leave the picture exposed for a longer period of time...

 

This picture for example was taken at 3 in the morning, the only light are the street lights.

 

310908062_0708fde039.jpg?v=0

 

So I had to leave the shutter open for 15 seconds just to get it that bright. Although your camera I believe only has the option to leave it open for 8.

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Aperture is the actual hole that lights the light in. So things start to get more complicated after that...

 

The smaller the hole is the less light gets let in, which means that you have to leave the shutter open for longer.

 

So say you're taking a picture and you notice it's coming out blurry even though it's not that dark. You might have your hole to small. (hehe)

 

So if you made your hole bigger, you wouldn't have to leave your shutter open for as long, which means you're less likely to shake your camera while taking the picture.

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I have a few books on photography, and to be honest, I've learned so much more by just taking pictures, as Eastbay said, and see what works and what doesn't. I've also learned new things on the internet, theres plenty of good sites with information from the basic of exposure, composition, etc, to tutorials for editing techniques

 

Then again, I'm not really a book person, so maybe that's just me

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Guest R@ndomH3ro

Better then a tripod

 

FBDD6138E1CD4D6982EA9F4F9A3ABBC9.jpg

 

Gorrilapod : A Bendable,Flexible,Tripod That Secures Your Camera To Nearly Any Surface.It's Legs Bend And Rotate 360 Degrees, While It's Rubbery Feet Provide Extra Gripping Power. The Possibilities Are Endless.

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there ^^^ like that! i love it. thats what i wanted to know. i love that photo.

 

so this might be silly but..... you set the camera down, right?

 

Tripods are handy too.

 

Pretty much every camera in existence has a hole in the bottom for a tripod. You can pick up a moderately good one for about 30 bucks. One size fits all.

 

Canons are more than likely going to be your best bet for a camera. If you can afford it I suggest your next camera being an SLR. You can pick up a low end SLR for under a grand these days. Which is pretty amazing.

 

That's if you really want to start taking more professional quality photos. There are more to SLRs than just interchangeable lenses and more settings and all that. You're also looking at sensor size and frames per second and all kinds of good fun stuff.

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Better then a tripod

 

FBDD6138E1CD4D6982EA9F4F9A3ABBC9.jpg

 

Gorrilapod : A Bendable,Flexible,Tripod That Secures Your Camera To Nearly Any Surface.It's Legs Bend And Rotate 360 Degrees, While It's Rubbery Feet Provide Extra Gripping Power. The Possibilities Are Endless.

 

Those gorilla grip things are fun but I wouldn't trust it with my camera off the side of a cliff.

 

Sheesh!

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Okay ISO...

 

ISO is basically the amount of artificial light your camera puts into your photo. Ideally you want to have as low as an ISO as possible. Because the higher your ISO, the more noise your photo will have. I'm sure your familiar with noise if you had a 2.0 MP camera. The grainy, shitty, dots that fill up your picture.

 

Sometimes having a super low ISO isn't possible for whatever reason. So you have to bump it up so you can have a bright enough picture...

 

If you're indoors at a party, and you want to take a picture of your kid. You don't really have the option of having a long exposure because then your kid will come out blurry. But maybe you don't want to use the flash because it tends to wash out details. Also the majority of the time the flash will light up the foreground, and turn everything behind it black.

 

Flash:

 

_MG_1484.jpg

 

Without flash:

 

_MG_1485.jpg

 

 

So in a case like that, you can turn your ISO up to 400, 600, or even 800 and it will basically artificially brighten your picture. But you have to make sure you don't turn it up to high or else your picture will be super grainy.

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I wouldn't recommend using the electronic flash anyways, the built in flash is pretty much just for snapshots, its non diffuse light which will really blow out the foreground and eliminate the background.

 

And for ISO, I wouldn't worry about it until you get aperture and shutter speed down.. It's pretty much a last resort if you can't find a good combination of the two

 

The built in settings on your camera, i.e. Portrait, Landscape, etc, are best to be left alone.. Learn how the settings should be set for each situation instead

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