Luxor4u

Kiya - no spiders tonight

Horus - Thanks for explaing RAW and DNG

BigKen - although not posted here [yet] I like your lily - nice raindrop

Following on from BK's use of a telephoto I tried some non-macro pictures - not very successful [mainly due to lack of subjects] but I did manage this photo of a butterfly that I wouldn't have been able to get close enough to take with macro.

BB Thanks for the warning & Thank you Horus for the explanation on Raw & Dng I think I have an understanding of it all

BB Lovely butterfly but we can clearly see what difference in using the Macro & Telephoto does

Early this morning I took some cloud formations just to experiment converting to B/W using different methods.
The 1st photo I used only greyscale.
The 2nd photo I used Levels.
The 3rd photo which clearly is the best in my view I used Raw then only I could save it as .dng but pure luck was on my side when I went back to Elements 7 & opened the .dng it then opened in another program I have PS CS3 Extended which I was able to save it as a jpeg. I never look at this program, it looks way to complicated for me at this time.

I see you are getting to grips with this photo editing Kiya, you have really made some novel changes to your cloud pictures to make them more interesting and I agree about the third one being the best.

Brian, like your Butterfly close up, did you know that it is called a ‘Gate Keeper’ or ‘Hedge Brown’

Kiya you also wrote:

but pure luck was on my side when I went back to Elements 7 & opened the .dng it then opened in another program I have PS CS3 Extended

I thought that you may like to know that it was not luck that opened the PS CS3 program, it was the file extension that was on your photograph that did it.

All of the 3 digit extensions that appear after a photo or any file that you save on your PC (this has recently increased to 4, but we will skip that for now) will tell it which program it should open in order to read that particular type of file. So for example if you had a document sent to you it would probably have the extension .Doc, if you tried to open this document the .Doc extension would tell your PC to open Microsoft Word or another word processing program in order to read it.

The same applies to photographs, all picture files have an extension that tells the PC that it is a Photograph and not something else like a letter or an engineering drawing.
Your PC uses something called ‘file associations’ now all that this means is that it associates a particular program with that particular file type. So for example, you may be sent a pattern for a cross stitch sewing picture that can be printed out, so it may be sent as a .PCX file. If you click on the received file, your PC will recognise the .PCX file extension and attempt to open a suitable program on your PC, in this case a graphics program such as ‘Paintbrush’

Nowadays lots of programs are capable of opening all sorts of files so it is unlikely that you will encounter a file that cannot be read by some program or even several programs on your PC. On occasion you may receive a file that gives the error message “File type unknown” this is just the PC’s way of telling you that it does not have a program that can read that particular file type.
So in your case Kiya, the PS CS3 program is the one that is associated with the .dng file type and should always open if you click on that type of file.

"Here endeth the third lecture"

I knew I had taken a break for a few days but hadn't realised it had been ten days until prompted by one of our regulars by email.

Havn't had any photo opportunities lately so have put a few together as discussion examples.

Firstly, this is a picture of a single rose positioned between two mirrors displaced at 60 degrees. You can therefore see all around that rose. (I then cut it out and layered it onto a sky background.)



This one is just a bit of fun where the title is very much part of the picture (with tongue in cheek ) 'Spot the Bubbly One'



In this series of 4 pictures, I took 18 pictures in panorama from the centre of a grassed area in front of my house. They represent a full 360 degree sweep. I did assemble them as a single panorama but it was not too successful so I tried two variations. The first are simple rectangles on a white and black background. In the second two I graduated the images to produce a more perspective appearance. Just for fun.

Just looked back over what you have all been up to.......lots of goodies there and I think a set of those inexpensive close up lenses with solve my 'lack of macro' problem.

And Kiya, you are talking RAW already......no stopping you lass!
But it is good to see you experimenting. Already light years away from your old compact.

Great bit of originality and lateral thinking going on there Grandad, I actually think that there is a kaleidoscope feature available on your PSP program, but I doubt it will give you as good a result as the mirror technique that you used, I must investigate it further if I get the time.

Very much liked the panorama pictures, I think the black background with the uniform boxes worked best for me.

I have to agree about the close up lenses and although I have macro & super macro features they still look like a handy accessory to have, where did Brian say he purchased them from? Can anyone remember if they were a regular sale item?

I was given the close up filters in a box of other filters a few years ago but they are available on e-bay. I did buy an extra wide angle lens with macro off e bay but haven't used it yet.

I know I haven't contributed much to this thread lately but just went back to work this week after 6 weeks off so been a bit 'tired' getting back into the 'routine' of it all.

Kiya - Darn you! You've hooked before with your cloud photos and now I'm getting a krick in my neck constantly looking to the clouds to see what I can photograph ;);) Ever since you took that first cloud photo I've been walking around staring up and have a shedload of cloud photos!

Grandad - love the cork photo. I marvel at what you photograph and absolutely unique and stunning it looks. I'd of never thought of the rose photo nor would I have ever thought of the pencil crayons either. TERRIFIC and so inspiring to me.

Horus - I always find your explanations so understandable and am SOOO appreciative of them. I'm not a dullard usually but when I come to some of these manuals and all the techie stuff it just does not compute in the brain.

I love all the insect photos and close ups. Those are really great cause I get a chance to look long and hard at all the details of something I wouldn't otherwise even see.

I am glad that the explanations are of some help LLL, it makes the effort of writing them worth while
I agree that Grandad does seem to have the knack for some great original ideas for his photographs

Thanks for your generous comments folks. Yes I DO try to find something original and a little different. It comes from popping the odd pic into competitions.....it is often the one that stands out for being different from the rest that does well.

I agree LLL about Kiyas cloud pictures. Kiya, you have the advantage of living right on the north east coast with all the North Sea weather coming in. Perhaps Kiya you should specialise in big seascapes with vast skys.

Those close ups of insects on flowers make me a little jealous....don't really have a garden, just a small mediteranean style townhouse patio. But we DO have an embankment at our furthest boundary that has a nice little bit of history attached to it. I must put together a short story with pictures to tell you about it.

Off to Dover White Cliffs NT for coffee this morning, with camera of course but have been there so many times there is seldom anything new.

Kiya - SPIDERS - well only one twice and no eyes.

Kiya, Grandad and Horus - just read LLL's previous comment - couldn't have put it better myself.

As you can see from the first two pictures I seem to be stuck with spiders lol so I decided on a little tease for picture 3 - it's part of a flower but which one?

I have to agree with all about your explanations & all your advise,help you give Horus ....Thankyou...we'd be lost without you.

Grandad you pics are beautiful especially the rose but I cant get my head around it, how did you do it without the mirror showing?

And your panorama's are fantastic, I agree with Horus the black background with uniform boxes are really nice.

LLL keep looking upwards there is always some lovely unusual cloud formation to capture & I hope to see some of yours soon.

BB thanks for the warning! have to say I did look from a distance, still think they're creep critters, omg! that 1 got a face on its back.

I did the same as Grandad and went out for a walk early on before lunch.
I took my camera, but struggled to find anything of real interest the only one that I was happy obout was this Hoverfly on a Blackberry flower.



I am just off out again and I may have a look at a place that someone has told me that they see Buzzards on a regular basis, so who knows

PS. Brian I give up on your third picture, more clues required

Brian, I know nowt about flowers but are you being really sneaky? Is it the centre of one of the many hundreds of varieties of Protea???????

I had to look up Protea before I could say no. These are fairly common although not wild in the UK - except when the birds drop the seeds.

Decided to forego the macro and try tele instead for this shot [quite heavily cropped - a tad too much me thinks]

This probably won't be any help at all but it's the un-cropped photo.



I'm in the process of editing a full picture of the flower hopefully will be able to pinpoint the exact spot

Here it is - a drawf sunflower - little leo

Ah yes should have guessed sunflower by all the seeds, bit of a sneaky one that was Brian