Need help from the digital photgraphers

Here’s some views from a digital newbie (or ‘muppet’. Thanks Snapper, my time for revenge will come when the aircraft is back from the menders) 😉

If you are really interested in aircraft photography the time delay between pushing the button and the picture actually being taken is critical. Check this out, either on the specification or by trying it in the shop. Shorter is better for moving aircraft.

There are those who hold that the speed of the autofocus is important. All my Shuttleworth pics were taken with the focus set fixed at infinity, Therefore I don’t really think autofocus speed is that important. For other photography, it is.

Macro, the ability to focus really close-up can be quite useful outside the aircraft world.

The only zoom that counts is optical. Ignore any digital zoom claims.

Battery life is also important. I can’t fill the 256Mb memory card on my 5700 before the battery dies. Even worse if using flash.

Don’t get too hung up on millions and millions of pixels. As noted above you need no more than 72 dpi for internet display. If you are going to print the pictures out, then it becomes more critical. But be warned, printing photo-quality off an inkjet is a very pricy business, best tackled by those of us who can lose most the costs through our company.

The software you use is important too. Adobe Photoshop is, by a long way, the best. The ‘Light’ version supplied with some printers or scanners isn’t half bad.

I’ll step back now and letter the digi-heads give their opinion 😉 😉

Moggy

Moggy,

Could it have something to do with the browser settings which are responsible for the extra compression? Those programs sometimes have a will of their own…

Nice pics, BTW.

Hello everyone, since this thread goes about digital camera’s I’ll add in my question.

I am thinking of buying a digital camera, and am currently looking at the Olympus C-740. Does anyone have any experience with this camera? Is it any good, or should I go for something else.

Also, since this will be my first digital, is there anything I should pay special attention too. Things easily overlooked or not quite obvious?

Thanks in advance!

Nah. 72 DPI.

Funnily enough, I see artefacting on online pictures on my PC at work, but not my PC at home. Its a 100KB file Moggy, don’t worry about it. You can’t help being a photographic muppet.

Really?

I was told 96 dpi for PCs

Moggy

Set the resolution of the images to 72dpi. This is about as much as your average screen can manage. (making the image larger than 72dpi just makes it appear bigger).

Hmm…

Original image has cleaned itself up. What’s going on here? That is exactly the same image I posted on FlyPast, yet all the little glitches around the ladder and canopy framing have gone.

Don’t understand.

Moggy

Original posting for comparison

Right here we go.

Experiment one:

1) Crop to the picture area I want

2) Adjust brightness to add drama

3) Use Save for web to bring image size to 800 pixies wide (What screen resolution are you using Ink? 800 fits all the monitors I have access to)

4) and use the slider to get down to 96kb

5) Post

Now let’s see….

Are you changing the format of the pic to post it on here? That often causes a change in quality.

Thanks both, advice taken to heart.

How come though that my copy of the image in its sharpened and compressed state doesn’t exhibit the same problem, it’s only after it has got to Key that it all falls to pieces?

Moggy

It does look like you were a little over-enthusiastic with the unsharp mask. Another thing you might want to try is using the “Save for Web” function to reduce the actual size of the images. Your pics didn’t fit on my monitor anyway and I had to scroll them around to see the whole thing – making them even a little smaller will save you a lot of kilobytes.