Photography

Got inspired by yesterdays darktable workflow to finally export a photo. This is from a 2024 airshow in San Francisco. Im still figuring out Darktable and all the tools it provides

I used my Sony A7R III with a Nikon lens adapter and a Nikon 400/3.5 lens.

I started as a pure JPEG-photographer, but Darktable sparked my interest in RAW-photography. Darktable has its quirks, especially for a complete beginner, but its manual way of doing things forced me to learn some fundamentals, instead of just sliding some sliders to see if something sticks.

What is your workflow in Darktable? Which module is a game changer for you?

These are the steps I almost always take:

• denoise (profiled): Match with the ISO of the photo, sometimes reduce 'preserve shadow'
• Lens correction: correction method: Lensfun database. It finds my camera and lens and I like the correction most of the time.
• exposure: turn up the exposure until my subject is well lit.
• crop: to compensate my ability to hold the camera horizontal
• color calibration: I often use the eye dropper on a neutral color, or on the whole picture. Then correct the hue and chroma a bit, until my picture is as balanced as possible.
• diffuse or sharpen: Preset 'lens deblur: medium' to get it sharper
• diffuse or sharpen (second instance): Preset 'local contrast'; I often turn up the iterations, I like it contrasty.
• color calibration: Preset 'basic colorfulness: standard' to get the picture more colorful. I often add even more saturation. What are those chroma-sliders for?
• filmic rgb: I use the eye droper for the white relative exposure. For the black relative exposure, I take a look at the darker parts and turn it down, until I can see enough details in the shadows.

I experimented a bit with the red/green/blue-channel in the color calibration module, according to Boris Hajdukovic. That was fun, but the modules 'color equalizer' and 'rgb primaries' are a bit easier to use to tweak the colors. The 'tone equalizer' is also often used to brighten up the darker parts of my pictures.

Been out of the game for about a decade, just wondering what platform everyone uses to share digital albums/event photography with friends and family?

Back in the day imgur, Picasa, 500px and flickr were viable options for the hobbiest but it seems they either no longer exist or are now very, very expensive for low volume nonprofessional sharing

Canon R10, ƒ/7.1, 1/4000, ISO 640. This is the widest field of view my 100-400mm lens can capture.

Hope this one is topical enough to not be against the rules, it is a great PeerTube channel altogether.

https://archive.is/DgB3F

Vulpes vulpes fulva, or the American red fox to be specific, padding around in the forest and being all photogenic.

This one may have been after the ducks floating in the pond nearby but certainly in vain. The ducks were having absolutely none of it; they wouldn't even quit swimming away from me and my camera so there's no chance they didn't see Basil here coming from a mile off.

This is at absolute maximum 400mm zoom for me. Foxy might have been mostly interested in ducks, but he or possibly she was on to us certainly wasn't coming any closer despite having no qualms about crossing over the footpath in broad daylight. Canon R10, ƒ/8, 1/400, ISO 640, 400mm.

Bonus fox pictures:

Since no other photos of it have been posted here yet ... Partial Solar Eclipse, 11am, Reading, UK

Canon R5 Mk II + RF600mm F11 + Thousand Oaks Optical Solar Filter (alas filter missing any details of its "strength") all on a Manfrotto 405 tripod.

Bottom left is the original (ISO500, 1/125s, F11) , top left is playing around with the histogram tool to emphasise brightness changes, top right a slightly later photo again with histogram modification.

I currently shoot my kids U9s rugby with a Nikon Z6 and 70-200 2.8 with an FTZ adapter. But as the pitches are bigger now than when they played tag only I'm finding the 200mm reach limiting and I end up doing a lot of cropping. I'm not printing these or publishing them anywhere, but it does consume a lot of time in post processing.

So I'm considering some long lenses, almost certainly second hand.

I obviously rely on decent autofocus speed as the kids are pretty quick. I'm less worried about edge sharpness as it's centre sharpness that matters most and vignetting I consider a solved problem using PhotoLab.

I've had my eye on either:

• Sigma 150-600 DG OS HSM SPORT
• Nikon 200-500

The Sigma is more expensive, but i don't mind if its woth the extra. I don't know much about Tamron or others.

What would you recommend or have experience with shooting outdoor field sports?

Hi everyone! I've been working on "bestof", a huge list of the "best" things in every category.

I came to the conclusion of these picks using both online reviews (both videos and articles) as well as online consensus in various different forums. A lot of them probably aren't very good, please lmk if my picks are terrible! I want to eventually turn this into a really useful source for people looking to buy X thing.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if there's any alterations I should make to my picks! Also, I would like feedback on how to improve the site as a whole!

improvements that others have suggested already:

• higher contrast colour palette
  • What colour schemes do you think would fit this? I still want there to be a pop of colour, but right now it is very low-contrast
• more information on WHY I picked the things I did
  • p.s. How should I go about this? Should it be a note at the bottom, a link, a tooltip, or something else?

anyways here's the link: https://swarbler.github.io/bestof/camera-gear/camera-gear/

Note that for the camera section, I've split it into different sections based on FF, APS-C, and M43, with subcategories for the different brands. Each brand has their own merits to their cameras. Should I add that to the site?

I do think that I should add in Olympus (or are they OM-System now?) cameras soon, but which ones are good options? Is the OM-3 any good? How about older models? I've heard that the OM-1 mark one is good value.

It's definitely spring! All of the cherry blossom trees in my area are blooming and are beaaaauuutiful.

Aperture: f/8

Shutter Speed: 1/400s

ISO: 640

Focal Length: 250mm

Gear:

Canon EOS Rebel t2i

18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 EFS zoom lens

55-250mm f/4-5.6 EFS zoom lens

Pictures are taken in RAW, processed in Darktable, then converted to webp and compressed to 70% quality.

If you'd like a full quality image, check out my account on Unsplash!

Also, you're free to do anything you want with any of my pictures, just don't claim you were the one to take it :)

...Possibly due to being pissed off about being rained on.

This is the common Grackle, looking quite a bit less iridescent than they can do thanks to it being grey and wet. If you see a thing that looks like a crow but is smaller and gives off the distinct impression of giving you The Eyeball, that's one of these.

Canon R10, ƒ/14, 1/640, ISO-1600, 400mm. I stepped up the exposure compensation a bit but maybe could have done with a little more. Oh well.

Bonus picture of this guy reevaluating his life choices:

Just look at him face.

Canon R10, ƒ/14 (are we noticing a pattern?), 1/640, ISO-2500 because I forgot to unset it from auto, 400mm.

No bonus picture this time. Instead, a bonus video of this noisy little bugger:

(Link if it doesn't load in your client.)

Probably despite desperate wishing on the part of the creature in question.

Canon R10, ƒ/14, 1/640, ISO-800, 400mm.

Bonus picture of the same doofus:

Nikon D5200 with 55-200mm zoom lens

I made it 17 days! I beat my goal of 2 weeks. Anyway, here's some yellow leaves that look like flowers. I probably should have decreased the aperture, it's a bit out of focus at the top, but oh well. This was also taken before I knew about raws and everything.

Aperture: f/4.5

Shutter Speed: 1/160s

ISO: 800

Focal Length: 90mm

Gear:

Canon EOS Rebel t2i

18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 EFS zoom lens

55-250mm f/4-5.6 EFS zoom lens

Pictures are taken in RAW, processed in Darktable, then converted to webp and compressed to 70% quality.

If you'd like a higher (or full) quality image, check out my account on Unsplash! It doesn't have all of my pictures as of writing, but I'll slowly be putting everything on there over time!

Also, you're free to do anything you want with any of my pictures, just don't claim you were the one to take it :)

Nikon D750, iso 200, F/8, 1/320, Sigma 150mm macro

I took some photos on a nice sunny day with my old Pentax K-r. I used fixed aperture mode because I like depth of field in photos. Settings for this particular photo are f/5.6, 1/100s, 55mm and ISO200 according to the exif data.

As you can see in this about 2-3 times zoomed in version of my photo, the yellow surface that is lit up by the sun radiates into the shadowy part behind it.

How is this effect called? How can I prevent it?

Corvus brachyrhynchos, most likely, just based on where I am. But I'm no ornithologist.

Canon R10, ƒ/16, 1/800, ISO-1600, 400mm.

Part of the deal with what I post here is that I deliberately put up pictures straight out of the camera. The board is Photography, after all, not "see how much you can twiddle with it in your image editor." In this case I was experimenting with which aperture value on my Bird Lens produces the sharpest result at a distance. I'm not entirely sure this guy was the best choice of subject. A black bird against a bright sky is like the archetypal beginner's trap that'll get you to screw up the exposure. But anyway, this shot I took at ƒ/14 was the one I liked best overall.

Bonus bird fight picture:

These two were scrapping over some kind of morsel. The one on the left ultimately wound up flapping away with it, whatever it was.