Newbie Looking for Tips

[nlefaivre]

Hello,

I just bought my first digital SLR today, it is the Nikon D70s. I went with the Nikon because I already have 2 lenses from my film camera and figured I could use them.

So, I have a few questions and they may seem fairly basic, but important to me none the less.

I have looked through a number of the photos on this site and they are fantastic, it gets me excited for getting out there and taking my own shots.

Can someone tell me how they manage to shoot at such high resolutions and then post such unbelievable clean, crisp and colorful images while keeping the file size soooo low???

Also, do you think that a person with little experience with photoshop can produce images of good quality (like the ones on this site) without manipulating the heck out of them? Are there a lot of digital images that get posted without any post camera work?

I am sure to have many more questions, but that will be a start. I look forward to sharing my images with you and getting back insight on how to make my photos better.

Thanks
Nathalie

[bytethis]

Welcome to Byte Nathalie

Excellent choice the D70s...and chances are, the lenses you already have will suit your new baby. Congrats

Firstly, I shoot with the D70, essentially the same cam as yours, so I speak from experience.

I always shoot RAW, that is, the highest resolution possible from the D70, and it's also the 'native' format, straight from the sensor. I shoot with no 'in camera' mods, that is, no sharpening or contrast/whitebalance adjustment etc...it's all done in my digital darkroom...more on that in a sec.

I shoot RAW because I want to work with the closest representation to what I see in the real world. This is what RAW will give you. Because it's 'native' and using all 6.1 megapixels, most file sizes from your D70s will be about 5 - 5.5mb, RAW gives you as much data from your camera's sensor as possible.

It pretty much is what the eye sees and gives you option to play with or adjust no less than 22 separate important components of the image in post software (like exposure, whitebalance, contrast, sharpness, tint etc)

Shooting less than RAW (e.g JPEG) utilises less of the sensor and in fact compresses the data recorded and therefore gives you a smaller filesize. Perfect for emailing, storage etc, but not so good for final representation on a web page.

So...I shoot RAW, edit my images for cropping, resize for web, lighting, exposure, sharpness etc and then I save for web in Photoshop. This is essentially my digital darkroom as previosuly mentioned.

After I've made all my respective modifications, and saving for web, I then choose an option to optimise the image for a certain filseize. This has several benefits.

1. It ensures that the file saved is able to be quickly uploaded to a web site, and downloaded fairly quickly by those that wish to see it.

2. it preserves much of the important data to ensure the image is pretty much what you saved from RAW, except compressed with high integrity.

3. Keeping to within certain websites upload limits for images.

Yes a person with little PS experience can produce images of very good quality. In fact, you'll find many of Byte's residents don't have huge experience with post processing software, and I'm one such person...I learn more every day I use it.

In terms of manipulating...I actually manipulate EVERY image I take...because I shoot RAW, almost every aspect of the image needs to be manipualted (or edited is more the correct terminology) Sometimes, it might just be a crop, horizon level, levels adjustment and a sharpen. Other times for conversion to B&W, I need to spend perhaps half a day working on an image to get something I'm happy with.

I'll stick my neck out here and say that what I do, and what you're chasing is NOT digital art. Paint and effects filters are not what I specialise in, and these are the sorts of things that Byte preclude from the weekly competition.

In fact, you'll soon discover that RAW files are designed to be edited. It's rare and I'd even suggest highly unlikely that images shot straight out of the camera, even by professionals, are untouched before you see them.

Maybe get used to all the features your cam has by shooting at the highest JPG level and then gradually warm to RAW. Once you do, you won't look back

Hopefully I've been of some help. don't hesitate to ask lots of questions!

Look forward to seeing your images!

[famjad21]

Hi Nathalie,

Welcome to the site.

First, you should shoot at the highest resolution possible. Always keep the original and work on a copy. Photoshop is an incredible tool but many of the posted images have little to no post processing so PS is not a necessity.

When you're happy with the image and want to post it, use PS to resize the image -- try to leave the maximum dimension to 800 pixels with a maximum resolution of 80 pixels per inch. These monitors can't reproduce more than that.

Good luck, keep asking questions and post your images for comment.

Frank

[nlefaivre]

I will definitely work on shooting in Raw format, because at least I can delete the images that don't work out.

I suppose my biggest hurdle however will be trying to figure out "what" needs post editing once I have the shot on my computer. This will be my biggest learning curve.

bytethis - you mentioned "optimise the image for a certain filseize." is there a setting in PS that does that for you, or do you need to manually set this in your image size?

Thanks for the feedback, I will look forward to more...much more. There is so much to be learnt from all the experience on this board!

Nathalie

[dave2music]

Greetings fellow Vancouverite!

You can shoot in RAW, and what the others have said definately holds true. Work on copies of the image, not the original just in case you edit it and save over it by accident.. then you still have your original intact!

You can convert the RAW's to JPEG in photoshop (along with other software out there if you don't use photoshop) but I find in 2 steps I can get a decent size pic quite good sharpness by using:

1) The crop tool. I usually set the crop tool options at 8in x 10in at 72 pixels/inch. Most monitors cannot display any higher res than that... and that will dramatically reduce your filesize. 8x10 will be quite large on the screen (without scrolling), but you can play around with the size and see what you like

2) I also use: Save for Web... when saving the file... I still save it as a JPG (sometimes it defaults as GIF, but you can change that)... and set the quality to between 60-80 depending on how the preview looks.

Give it a try and see if that works for you.. hope it helps!

dave2music
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