2012-03-08, 20:29 | Link #582 |
dn ʎɐʍ sıɥʇ
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Northern Ireland
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I suppose they do or at least they make the whole photography process a little more involving since you really have to move about a lot more, learning benefits aside they are cheap and useful little lens to have since they are particularly good for portraits and still life images.
Here is a stupidly quick photo I took with a canon 50mm prime lens that I bought for about £50 on ebay.
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2012-03-09, 01:18 | Link #584 | |
スーパー素晴らしいカメラマン!
Join Date: Feb 2012
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Yes. You have to buy lens' that are compatible with Canon. (IE: Sigma, Tokina, Canon.) Do your research on lens' before you buy them.
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2012-03-11, 00:25 | Link #585 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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I enjoy using primes, though. It can feel restrictive, at first, especially to a beginner who is trying to photograph anything and everything (I admit it - that was me when I started). Yet once you get the hang of it, it becomes a very interesting experience. Your "photography vision-awareness" shifts to accommodate the lens that you're using, and it's different with each prime.
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2012-03-31, 12:50 | Link #586 |
Hail the power of Fujoshi
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: hahahahahahahahaha
Age: 35
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Nothing spectacular, just that my friend's expression was so darn hilarious I just have to share. Two of my other friends weren't fast enough to capture a nice shot, but luckily I did.
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2012-03-31, 17:41 | Link #590 | |
Paparazzi
Join Date: Mar 2008
Age: 41
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On a typical consumer DSLR this doesn't actually work quite like that however because of the crop factor. 50mm no longer produces the field of attention equivalent field of view but narrower. With typical DSLR crop factors something like 30-35mm would be more like it. That being said there's one big advantage to f/1.8 50mm primes. In terms of image quality and low light performance there's absolutely nothing on the market that can even come close to beating them in terms of bang for the buck. You should be able to get a brand new Canon 50mm F/1.8 II for about $100 and for that money it's a deal pretty much impossible to pass. Out of 50mm lenses available for Canon that would be my recommendation. As for it helping you get better at photography I'd have to agree with Ledgem. It's a tool just as anything else it's restrictions will force you to to think more of what you're doing if you want to end up with a good result and thus it will probably help a bit with becoming more comfortable with planning your compositions ahead. It will also allow far more control of depth of field than your kit lens. At 50mm 18-55mm Canon if I remember correctly has a maximum aperture of F/5 which doesn't really allow to do that apart from very very close focusing distances. So it will open the world of bokeh balls for you. Just don't get lost in there. But there are really no tricks to improve yourself as a photographer. It's all in the effort you put into it. To actually get better you need just need to go out there looking for something to shoot come hell or high water. There's no substitute to experience and there's only one way to get it. Your equipment what ever it is, is just tools. Some tools are better than others, some are not necessarily better in absolute terms but better suited for the job and so on. Having to adapt to the tools available is a useful learning experience. Because no matter what kind of gear you have you'll have there's always some of it to do. I've never found myself in a position where I would have had the perfect lens and a camera with me there's always something you'll need to work around of to get the shot you want. What ever gear you get should be suited for the kind of photography you want to do. While a 35mm or a 50mm are good for general photography, street photography, portraits and so on they're pretty much useless for sports or nature photography. And then again something like 300mm f/4 which is great for nature and sports photography is completely useless for street photography. So I would recommend getting a 50mm or 35mm it's with a reservation. They're great as long as you know what they're suitable for. If you want to try your hands on nature photography for instance I would recommend not wasting your money on either 35 or 50mm and would recommend going for Canon 55-250mm EF-S instead. It's a rather nice performer for its price. However be warned if you do end up finding that to be a lens that works for what ever photography you do, you'll probably run into it's limitations quite quickly. I myself shoot almost exclusively on primes. Even though I don't really have large collection of them. I'm a graduate of film age as a photography enthusiast and equipment being a bit too expensive for a budget of a kid of his early teens I had to make do with what I had which was an arcane semi-automatic film camera and a few prime lenses. Seems old habits are hard to kick. ___ Here's one shot from a recent experimental set I shot. Taken with Olympus PEN E-PL1 and Voigtländer 25mm F/0.95 Nokton. Lit with two candles. |
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2012-03-31, 19:48 | Link #591 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Age: 24
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7 Gorgeous images Drake, love the last one.
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Looking good escimo! Nice work. |
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2012-04-01, 15:09 | Link #592 |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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@escimo: How did you stage that to get it to get away with a low shutter speed at that angle?
As for primes, for my purpose - cosplay photography at conventions - the ability to do background blur would be useful because there's often limited opportunities for good backgrounds at convention sites. However, there's a couple issues (aside from costs as I don't actually have an SLR body at the moment so it would get pricy: 1) I tend to like to give my subjects some "space" and hence tend to shoot a lot at 24-36mm equivalent. 2) When I do shoot 50-ish mm, it tends to be in conjunction with wider 24-36mm shots. As a general rule, I wouldn't count on cosplayers to hold the pose while I swap lenses. 3) As mentioned, on most budget SLRs a 50mm prime is actually 75-80mm. It's unusual for me to use focal lengths that long unless I'm shooting down on the subject from a balcony or something like that. In conjunction they tends to put a bit of a damper on the idea of using a 50 prime for my shoots.
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2012-04-01, 16:23 | Link #593 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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Those are all good, but they ultimately still can't match a "full frame" body with a 50mm f/1.4 for blowing out the background. I don't think that people talk about the 50mm prime as being important because it's 50mm. The significance of 50mm is that, on 35mm film (or a "full frame" sensor), it has roughly the same angle of view as the human eye. Hence, it's a vision-equivalent lens. Around 35mm for APS-C sensors (the exact number depends on whether it's a Canon or Nikon APS-C sensor), or 25mm for 4/3 sensors, are the same equivalent. It's just easier to keep referring to the 50mm lens, and figure that people will calculate the equivalent for their specific sensor.
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2012-04-02, 16:40 | Link #596 | |
Paparazzi
Join Date: Mar 2008
Age: 41
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It wasn't all that difficult just a bit of creativity with the use of tripod and a table. Tucked two of the legs of the tripod below and placed the figurine on the corner of the table. It was a bit of an awkward setup since the focusing distance is just above 20cm on that shot and there was very little room to play with since a good portion of the setup including parts of the camera and the lens were below the top of the table. Center post of the tripod was resting against the table in fact. Final composition was done by moving the figurine. Actually had to use self timer for the actual exposure since I had to hold both candles that I used for lighting in my hands since I couldn't get them to fit on the tabletop. |
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2012-04-06, 18:42 | Link #598 |
dn ʎɐʍ sıɥʇ
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Northern Ireland
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Thats a good little tut, I used to do something similar with sheets of white card and a lamp.
Anyway this studio talk put me in the mood to try out something similar. Spoiler for another:
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Last edited by Drake; 2012-04-08 at 19:33. Reason: added another image |
2012-04-11, 06:17 | Link #599 | ||
Hige
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: God only knows
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Spoiler for photo:
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Spoiler for photo:
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2012-04-11, 07:14 | Link #600 |
Paparazzi
Join Date: Mar 2008
Age: 41
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@Solarfighter
I don't have personal experience of it outside MS Flight Simulator but that SXM approach is madness! (Well... It's not Kai Tak but pretty crazy anyway.) I've wanted to visist there for a while and do some plane spotting with something like 12mm lens. --- On another note, has anyone here tried to get something like 365 project done (a photo a day for a year)? I started one yesterday (don't see why it would have to be started on Jan. 1st) and I'm already starting to regret it. |
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