SnusOn Art

[heders]

@ Heders:

So I took your advice and got the Cannon 50mm f/1.8 and it's awesome! Great depth of field, decent Bokeh (though only round at 1.8, then it gets all pentagon looking due to the 5 blades), but overall great for the money. The only complain is that it refuses to autofocus a lot of the time even in good lighting, and the manual focus can't get it crisp for some reason. Maybe not enough contrast in the stuff I was taking pictures of.


These are not pictures of anything, just trying out different settings to isolate the foreground/background or some combination of the two.

That's awesome! Yeah, the f/1.8 is a fantastic lens for the money. If you want good, round bokeh you have to go down to f/1.8 or f/2.8 indeed. Do you live in a warm area? If not, when the trees starts growing leaves again in the summer, try doing bokeh shots with those leaves in the background together with the light shining on them. That makes for a wicked cool bokeh background! Fantastic for portraits.

I've noticed about the auto focus as well. Often my focus gets in the background of the image instead of the foreground when taking pictures at a low aparture number. It also only happens when there a bit of a distance to the object I want to focus on. Close-up shots I have no problem with really (except it's hard to get perfect focus at such low f numbers).

Heders - those are excellent pics. Plenty of mood in them. Superb quality in that D80 - I've only got a D40 and it doesn't come anywhere near close to that quality.

Thanks a lot man! Yeah, I really love the D80. Totally fantastic camera in all aspects. Haven't got anything to complain about with that one. The D40 I've heard is good also, but remember: if you want, you can get fantastic pictures out of the D40 as well. It lies in capturing the motive in the right light, the right composition, and do some adjustments in Photoshop afterwards. You can take award winning photos with a little pocket camera. I'd love to see some of your shots!


A shot from today:

[clint404]

My fave!

[clint404]

Im a decent artist. I use photoshop a lot and design websites and company logos. Some of these are photos, freehand sketches, photoshop sketches, and snus art. The swirly thing is gonna be my next tattoo. Leme know what you think...

[Frosted]

Heders - those are excellent pics. Plenty of mood in them. Superb quality in that D80 - I've only got a D40 and it doesn't come anywhere near close to that quality.

[sgreger1]

@ Heders:

So I took your advice and got the Cannon 50mm f/1.8 and it's awesome! Great depth of field, decent Bokeh (though only round at 1.8, then it gets all pentagon looking due to the 5 blades), but overall great for the money. The only complain is that it refuses to autofocus a lot of the time even in good lighting, and the manual focus can't get it crisp for some reason. Maybe not enough contrast in the stuff I was taking pictures of.


These are not pictures of anything, just trying out different settings to isolate the foreground/background or some combination of the two.








We got those new green "daylight" super efficient lightbulbs in our house recently, they make this weird cool/blue light instead of the traditional warm/orange light you get, it makes some things look weird when you photograph them like these flowers:

[sharesnusinfo!]

Some more i made..

[sharesnusinfo!]

Very nice. What's that first picture, some kind of maypole?

See here: http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Lifest...way/Midsummer/

[sgreger1]

I'm looking a the reviews online and it seems like everyone loves this lens Heeders! Says it's plastic so feels cheap but that the picture quality is great.

I am not familiar with what lenses are best for what situations, but if I understand this correctly it is mianly good for portraits/close up shots, right? Is it going to be any good for pictures of nature for example that require a wide open depth of field or will they appear soft?

[UsualSnuspects]

Ooooo....nice bokeh!

[heders]

Heders, that some fanastic pictures!

I have a small hobby of photografing also but not in the same league as you man.. But still here some i have made.

Thanks a lot man! Really great pictures you too man! Keep it up and please post more!

I dig this one!

Thanks man!

Hey Heeders/anyone else, if I were to get only one lens other than my kit lens for my Cannon T3i, what should it be?

I am thinking about getting a medium cost lens, something that is as diverse as possible but still <$300. Any idea about what would be the best all around lens for this price-range? I like mainly shooting nature photos etc. I am not too knowledgeable on what the different lenses really do or the difference between them. What is a prime lens, I remember you stating it was a good one earlier, but I am not sure what prime means?

What I would recommend, as I wrote before, is a Canon 50 mm f/1.8. You can't zoom with it, but it's a fantastic lens for a very cheap price (around $120 I think).

This photo is taken with Nikons version of that lens:



You see the blurred background (also called, 'bokeh') and shallow DoF? That's one of my favorite things with this lens. The aparture (f/1.8) is just amazing to get for such a low price.


If I would choose three lenses right now, it would probably be 18-55mm, 50mm f/1.8 (preferably 1.4 though, but it's more expensive), and a super wide-angle at 10-20mm. Add a tele lens to that and I would be set for life.

However, with a 50mm f/1.8 and the kit lens, you have the same stuff I have and can go very far with that.

Here's a little review of the lens: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/R...ns-Review.aspx

[sgreger1]

Hey Heeders/anyone else, if I were to get only one lens other than my kit lens for my Cannon T3i, what should it be?

I am thinking about getting a medium cost lens, something that is as diverse as possible but still <$300. Any idea about what would be the best all around lens for this price-range? I like mainly shooting nature photos etc. I am not too knowledgeable on what the different lenses really do or the difference between them. What is a prime lens, I remember you stating it was a good one earlier, but I am not sure what prime means?

[lxskllr]

What is inkscape, is that like the opensource version? I will have to try it out as I had never heard of it.

Yup. It should be in the fedora repos, and it looks like they have packages for all the major platforms.

http://inkscape.org/

[sgreger1]

Are you using a tablet, or a mouse?

A mouse. It would be cool to have a tablet, but frankly I have even less skill with a pen than I do with a mouse lol. To make matters worse, I am left handed but use the traditional right handed mouse setup. Most of this was drawn with the pen tool so you just click once at eat point and then adjust the bezier curves until it all ligns up, so you can take your time to make sure everything looks right. The hardest part was the hair, for that I used the blob brush and had to make freehand strokes which would be a million times easier on a tablet than with a mouse. I had to redo it like 30 times and make a lot of adjustments to make it look right. That's the beauty of digital art though is that you can easily move things around and fix them, but using the mouse requires a lot more tweeking than with a tablet I imagine. The tablet has the pressure sensitivity so things like the hair would have been a lot easier if I could just press harder to make the lines darker etc.

What is inkscape, is that like the opensource version? I will have to try it out as I had never heard of it.

[lxskllr]

Yah I suck at art too, but vector art is way easier than drawing. What you do is start out with a picture of something and essentially trace over it, making new layers for each little shadow etc, then use basic radial or linear gradients to blend it together and add depth. All I did was take a stock photo of some chick and trace over the general features, then add layer upon layer of detail to make the shadows and highlight in her hair etc. It's actually really easy it just takes a long time. It took me pretty much the hole day to make it.

Are you using a tablet, or a mouse?

[sgreger1]

Nice work sgreger. I've opened up inkscape, but don't have any idea where to start with it. I need to read through the tutorial I downloaded, and figure it out. I'm not sure how useful it would be to me though, as my artistic prowess stopped developing when I was about 6 :^D

Yah I suck at art too, but vector art is way easier than drawing. What you do is start out with a picture of something and essentially trace over it, making new layers for each little shadow etc, then use basic radial or linear gradients to blend it together and add depth. All I did was take a stock photo of some chick and trace over the general features, then add layer upon layer of detail to make the shadows and highlight in her hair etc. It's actually really easy it just takes a long time. It took me pretty much the hole day to make it.