dSLR thread

ddrueding

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There were quite a few threads about specific topics, but not really a "something random" for cameras...so here it is ;)

Now that I am the proud owner of a used Canon 20D (Thanks Tony!); I, too, feel the need to spend more money. ;)

I have the Body and the kit 18-55mm lens; more than enough to saturate my very poor camera skills/knowledge. But after some test shots, it is clear that I need a tabletop tripod for some indoor, low-light shooting. My last newegg order included a free Dolica plastic POS that can't handle the weight of the body alone. Complex adjustments aren't necessary, just the smallest/lightest thing out there will be perfect. And maybe a remote shutter mechanism as well.

Suggestions?

~TIA
 

ddrueding

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After having the camera for about 9 hours and taking about 300 pictures, I've got some ideas about what I like and what I don't.

I don't like anything to be out of focus. My favorite shot so far was a 10s exposure at f38 and ISO100 on the 55mm end of the lens.

My hands shake way too much. I'm very, very lucky to get a decent shot at 1/16th. I'm going to need a tripod for just about everything.

I hate flash (the built-in one, anyway). It is really unnatural, particularly if things in the distance are also in-focus.

dSLR Remote Pro
, helped significantly in my understanding of all the possible adjustments and their interactions. I suspect I'll be installing this on the laptop for landscape shots, it's elapsed-time feature looks particularly awesome.

Gotta go, more to come.
 

P5-133XL

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Yes, if you are getting 1/16th @100 ISO, then you will need a tripod. The general rule for hand holding is never to have a shutter speed faster than your lens. So to get a totally sharp photograph and still hand hold a 55mm Lens (x1.6 mag) you really shouldn't be faster than 1/88th of a second. That is a general rule and yes some people can do better with practice.

One thing you can do now, is to up the ISO. Every doubling of the ISO is also a doubling of the shutter speed. So increasing from 100 to 400 ISO (2 f-stops) will change the shutter speed from 1/16th to 1/64th which at least gets you into the range of possible hand-holding. The cost will be additional noise in the picture.
 

Tannin

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On the 20D, ISO 200 is no cleaner than ISO 100, and ISO 400 is very little different. 800 is perfectly usable, and 1600 can be used at a pinch. Good noise reducion software (Neat Image or similar) helps a lot.

As an example of just how good the 20D can be at very high ISOs, have a look here: http://tannin.net.au/2006/061213-102442-0121fc.html at a 3200 ISO example.

For sharpness, try to stay in the middle of the aperture range. With the 18-55, about f/5.6 up to f/16, f/22 as an absolute maximum. Best is f/8 or f/11.
 

blakerwry

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dd, if you don't have a remote shutter release you can set the camera down (or tripod mount) and use the auto timer function (10 sec countdown I believe).

I use a ~$10-$20 table top tripod I got in high school for my FG. I now use it with an XTi and the same lens you have. It's not a great tripod, but it fits in the camera bag or pocket and can sure help out in a pinch. I don't see the one I bought available any more (if the brand is even around after a decade), but B & H has lots of models to choose from.


If you're interested in sucking your life away, check out http://photography-on-the.net/
 

ddrueding

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Please excuse the n00b question...

I've been reading a LOT, and one thing still evades me. What property makes a macro lens a different category than a regular lens? Wikipedia says:

...the image on the film is the same size as the object being photographed.

So for my camera that would mean an object only 22mm across would need to fill the frame? Is the only difference the ability to focus on very close objects? What is the mechanical difference?
 

Tannin

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A true macro shot is indeed 1:1 or greater (object size to size of the image on the film). But that definition obscures the real differences between macro and non-macro lenses.

Dedicated macro lenses can be distinguished from non-macro lenses that have close focus ability in several ways:
  • Pretty much always a prime lens (non-zoom)
  • Very flat focus plane. Imagine taking a picture of (say) a map on a wall, using a very shallow depth of field. Focus on the centre of the map. Although all lenses are supposed to have a flat plane of focus, with most lenses you will see the edges and corners of the map are OOF because the "plane" of focus isn't exactly flat. With dedicated macro lenses, it tends to be just about spot on.
  • Slow, accurate focus. Dedicated macro lenses tend to be slow to focus, but focus very accurately.
  • Design priority is given to sharpness over bokeh - e.g., if you are designing an 85mm portrait lens you probably spend a lot of time getting the out of focus blur nice and smooth, where with a 60mm or 100mm macro lens you concentrate more on ultimate sharpness.
  • Middle-range speed: most are around f/2.8. No attempt to go for an f/1.4 or even f/1.8 design. In practice, of course, macro lenses are typically used at f/11 or f/16. The f/2.8 ability, however, keeps the viewfinder nice and bright (vital for manual focus) and lets the macro lens double as a very handy portrait lens.
I love my Canon 60mm macro. Absolutely brilliant lens. I use it for macro work a bit (though a 60 or 100mm might have been a better choice), for portraits a bit (best lens have for portriats, though I use the 100-400 too, and sometimes the 50/1.8 (a bit short) or the 24-105 (only f/4)), and for landscapes a lot. I love doing landscapes with the 60 macro. (But a 50/1.8 is a good substitute.)

It might be worth mentioning Canon's 50mm macro, which can't do 1:1 without a special converter, but in all other respects is a true macro lens. Compare this with the various 3rd party multi-purpose zooms marked "macro" which although they might be able to do 1:1, do not have any of the other characteristiscs we normally associate with a macro lens.

The convetional wisdom has it that pretty much every dedicated macro lens on the market is razor sharp and nice to use, be it Canon, Tokina, Nikon, Sigma, Pentax, Tamron, or whatever. I've only used the Canon 60mm macro, but that popular wisdom makes sense to me as the design requirements for a macro lens are clear and fairly simple, so any good lens maker should be able to make a good one without having to make too many akward compromises.
 

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There were quite a few threads about specific topics, but not really a "something random" for cameras...so here it is ;)

I thought that's what the Another Digital Camera Thread - P&S was for ;)

Indeed, natural looking flash photography is not easy. First of all, get an external flash like the 430 or 580EX. You could check out the 220EX as a compact albeit slightly limited option. Diffusers like the Gary Fong Lightsphere and Whale Tail help, so do using bounce flash and the flip down diffuser.

But most importantly, learn to balance the flash's contribution to the overall exposure for the given situation. Your primary adjustments to this effect are: (1) shutter speed, (2) flash exposure compensation (FEC), and (3) ISO.

Natural flash photography in low-light indoor situations requires you to ratchet the flash power down to more of a fill flash level and rely more on exposing for the ambient room light. Use negative flash exposure compensation (FEC), ~-1 to -2 EV, depending on results. Use shutter-priority and use speeds around 1/8 - 1/30 sec and an ISO of 800-1600. Use exposure compensation of around -1/3 to -2/3 EV to protect highlights if necessary (not sure how the 20D meters) and accept slight underexposure that you'll fix in post-processing.

Shoot in RAW + JPEG mode so you have more to work with for post-processing. Adjust exposure, WB, and curves in your RAW converter, convert CRW to 16-bit uncompressed TIFF, and run it through Noise Ninja or Neat Image for selective noise reduction (NR) (select areas that need more NR vs less NR) without sharpening. Get the noise-processed back in your photo editor for local adjustments, resizing, and sharpening (USM).

Voila! Semi-natural looking flash photography without a pro lighting setup ;)
 

ddrueding

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I thought that's what the Another Digital Camera Thread - P&S was for ;)

I saw the "P&S" part and ruled that thread out. I don't think a single thing we've discussed here even applies to most pocket cameras; the adjustments simply aren't there. That is why I got an SLR, so I could learn all this stuff ;)
 

udaman

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I saw the "P&S" part and ruled that thread out. I don't think a single thing we've discussed here even applies to most pocket cameras; the adjustments simply aren't there. That is why I got an SLR, so I could learn all this stuff ;)

Damn, e_dawg, dd (tannin's in Oz so he don't count ;) )...don't you guys ever sleep...wait it's 1AM same time as DD, and I'm awake too, but somewhat buzzed on a bottle of wine (where's Clocker? Coug? ;) ).

DD, if you're still around in 10yrs or so, (along with jtr, Merc, me and a host of others ...Handy will be married again, and still be incessantly running this site in 2030, when it will be so passé, as video something high-speed something will have relegated this to 'old-farts' tech??? ) you may have learned something by then. There is just too much too learn, though you can always fall back on full auto mode, which is usually better than a PnS.

But, when traveling, except for the members of the tribe of fanatics, like e_dawg I think you'll want to find a PnS camera that gives you some control. maybe in a a few years they will be better, more control better spec's in the PnS lines, but you can't put a dSLR in your pocket, bottom line. There is utility in PnS, just as jtr can't fathom the usefullness of a Mac & MacOSX. Once you go Asian, you'll never go back...once you go Mac (something for jtr, that he might be able to relate to ;) ).

I did mention it's 1AM, and I'm buzzed and in few mintues I'll be sound asleep only to awake in 5hrs?
 

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But, when traveling, except for the members of the tribe of fanatics, like e_dawg I think you'll want to find a PnS camera that gives you some control. maybe in a a few years they will be better, more control better spec's in the PnS lines, but you can't put a dSLR in your pocket, bottom line.

I like a fully adjustable P&S while traveling too. I use the Canon A710is with CHDK firmware extension as my "go-to" compact travel solution. Works great. Check out this pic I took with it in France:

http://www.pbase.com/e_dawg/image/84349202
 

ddrueding

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Fantastic shot e_dawg. And that brings up another question.

Where is a good place online to host pictures? I like flickr's speed, tagging, and comment capabilities; is there something else I should look at?
 

ddrueding

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Based on Tannin's post about Macro lenses above, it seems like they are great for general purpose stuff as well. Where would they not be a good choice? Action shots?
 

Handruin

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My Canon 100mm Macro probably isn't the best choice for action only because the auto focus isn't very speedy compared to my other lenses, but it has a reasonable-fast aperture (much like Tannin said). Otherwise it is an extremely sharp lens and can be used for portrait if you have enough room to backup. The pictures I've taken with it so far have been very sharp.
 

ddrueding

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Is there a reason I can't see the camera as a drive when it is connected via USB? Is there a reason that the Photoshop "Import->WIA-EOS20D" can't see the RAW images?
 

e_dawg

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flickr's great, but the user agreement states that you cannot use flickr to host pics shown elsewhere on the net, like discussion fora, banners, etc, but must link directly to the appropriate flickr page. I know a lot of people who just ignore it, though.

pbase is great but costs more $, photobucket is good, and of course, there's Picasa.

If you like the photo album style and don't need to use it as a service to host pics you'll link to directly from elsewhere, I love Picasa's online viewer and downloadable application.

The great thing with Picasa's online viewer (that people who view your pics must use) is that it has the best image quality of all the image hosting sites I've found. Whoever looks at your pics gets the best looking, largest, automatically scaled and optimally sharpened pics that puts your best foot forward.
 

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Is there a reason I can't see the camera as a drive when it is connected via USB? Is there a reason that the Photoshop "Import->WIA-EOS20D" can't see the RAW images?

There's a setting for PTP/direct printing shite, set it to mass storage or whatever the option is.
 

ddrueding

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There's a setting for PTP/direct printing shite, set it to mass storage or whatever the option is.

Communication is set to "Normal". The only other option is "PTP".

The OS Detects the camera, but "Disk Management" doesn't display it as a drive. When I'm in Photoshop CS3, it will import all the JPG images, but doesn't display the RAW ones at all.
 

blakerwry

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PTP works fine for me (400D), but it doesn't show up as a disk like a mass storage device... it shows up as another device type beneath the removable storage devices on the PC.

Though I think there are some limitations of PTP mode (MTP with the newest firmware), it seems like only one application can reliably access the camera at a time.

I would think that CS3 would have no problem with the RAW files from the 20D. However, you might update Adobe Photo Raw to the newest version. Adobe releases new versions all the time specifically for adding support of additional cameras. I had to do thist with CS2 in order to view raws from the 400D.

-Blake
 

ddrueding

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Yup. It shows up as "20D" beneath removable storage, therefore SyncToy won't work with it. :(

CS3 will open the RAW files after they are copied to the HDD, it just wouldn't see them on the camera via "WIA" mode.
 

udaman

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Fantastic shot e_dawg. And that brings up another question.

Where is a good place online to host pictures? I like flickr's speed, tagging, and comment capabilities; is there something else I should look at?

flickr's great, but the user agreement states that you cannot use flickr to host pics shown elsewhere on the net, like discussion fora, banners, etc, but must link directly to the appropriate flickr page. I know a lot of people who just ignore it, though.

pbase is great but costs more $, photobucket is good, and of course, there's Picasa.

If you like the photo album style and don't need to use it as a service to host pics you'll link to directly from elsewhere, I love Picasa's online viewer and downloadable application.

The great thing with Picasa's online viewer (that people who view your pics must use) is that it has the best image quality of all the image hosting sites I've found. Whoever looks at your pics gets the best looking, largest, automatically scaled and optimally sharpened pics that puts your best foot forward.

Hmm, if it gets automatically scaled, then it won't be in the pixel dimensions you specifically cropped your image for, correct? Which means "largest" is a misnomer??? How large? Photobucket (free version, which also allows quicker FTP uploading now) has an option to specify size of file, rather than pixel dimensions...so in theory you could upload a huge pixel dimension file that was severely compressed down to the file size max. of 1MB.

"Optimally sharpened"? In whos eyes, I'd rather do my own sharpening, or *not*, TYVM. On what basis are you determining 'image quality' for comparison purposes of various sites, which do the least screwing around with your image? That's the site I want to use---the ones that leave my image alone, as best possible. I notice that vBulletin, at least on some sites does all kinds of image compression screwups, sometimes it appears (I have no ideal, maybe Handy does?) your images are automatically compressed even more (I purposely set compression when saving for web in PS, usually the minimum file size before I can start to see significant artifacts, more compression screws my intent!) and then I've uploaded some images where vBullentin has nearly doubled the file size, WTF? vBulletin has a default 800 x 800 pixel dimension limitation (I suppose to keep thread width managable. But I wonder if only a link to a users gallery could get a new window pop up for the full size image, with the 800 x 800 serving as a large 'thumbnail'..anyone know if this is possible?

Any specific recommendations on a USB CF reader? What are the fastest CF cards?

Barefeats (beat Eugene on testing the wicked fast Hitachi 200GB 7.2k laptop drive by several months) usually does some photo related stories like tests of card reader speeds. If you have a laptop with never Express Card interface, that will get you the fastest transfers, but if you're not transfering a lot of RAW images, then plan old USB cable direct from the Canon might be all you need?

Galbraith has a data base of older card readers, not updated, but you can search the site for news releases, which like the article linked to below, contains his own testing of the card readers 'real world' performance.

see mention /links here at Feb23 on the page (*pre-edit*, just noticed when I copied the text from barefeats below, I can't click on the links embedded, but in the preview post I can):
http://www.barefeats.com/quick.html
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]February 23rd, 2007 -- Lexar FireWire 800 CF Reader and 300X CF card beats the SanDisk Extreme IV combo, according to Rob Galbraith. [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]You might recall we tested the SanDisk Extreme FireWire 800 Reader and Extreme IV CF card back in December 2006. We plan to do our own shootout between the newest Lexar combo and the SanDisk combo.[/FONT][/FONT]
Now onto some interesting discussion, where is our photo brain trust now (LM still MIA for now many more weeks?).

HD Photo (JPEG XR...or extended range) specification, and what it all means.
 

ddrueding

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So, this combination doesn't get me as much low-light/fast shutter goodness as I was after. Is the EF 50mm f/1.8 II going to be significantly better? Based on my understanding so far, it will require about 1/4 the shutter time @ 1.8 that my current lens does @ 3.5? Are there other factors to consider? Does focal length play a role?
 

udaman

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HD Photo, comments, explaination for the dense like me?

Next gen format in the JPEG standards, so when will digicams be adding this recording option?

High Dynamic Range Editing

http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/archive/2007/07/12/high-dynamic-range-editing.aspx

Pixel Formats (Part 2: Fixed Point and Floating Point)

(oh crap, my eyes are starting to glaze over from the extensive techospeek, can't absorb it all as quickly as I'd like, need to re-read it several times...arggh!)

http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/archive/2007/07/31/industry-standardization-for-hd-photo.aspx

Industry Standardization for HD Photo

http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/archive/2006/06/22/642213.aspx

Ok, so now there's a HD Photo plug-in for CS2 & 3 for both MacOSX 10.4 (superior OS jtr, that's why so many pros use it, lol, Windows for consumers who don't know any better ;) ) & Windows, current beta supposedly near release candidate standing.

So what's it all mean, can someone like dd, reduce it down to several short sentences, instead of pages of info (see, my posts are really short in comparison, lol)

As I understand if from ultra-quick skimming the blog pages above, you take your RAW images, then can convert to HD Photo, with this plug-in? So you edit in PS in this file format, after you've acted/edited directly on the RAW images with Adobe Lightroom, or Apple's Aperature...I'm confused? Does this mean a Fuji S5 Pro could in theory get even greater dynamic range from the processed images (not that the Fuji's sensor changes anything, just that you retain more info in final output with HD Photo, yes/no?).

Discuss :)
 

ddrueding

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superior OS jtr, that's why so many pros use it, lol, Windows for consumers who don't know any better ;)

I'd rather not start a flame war on this, but I had an interesting discussion on this topic today, the basic conclusions are listed below.

1. Being a photo pro does not make you a computer pro.
2. The people that say what is quoted above take it as gospel; they have no benchmarks or actual facts, they just sit there in their smug-ness and feel superior.
3. Based on what I've read, this hasn't been true (for Photoshop performance, anyway) in a LONG time. Longer than many of these people have been into it. That means that they got it from someone else who is equally ignorant.
 

udaman

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So, this combination doesn't get me as much low-light/fast shutter goodness as I was after. Is the EF 50mm f/1.8 II going to be significantly better? Based on my understanding so far, it will require about 1/4 the shutter time @ 1.8 that my current lens does @ 3.5? Are there other factors to consider? Does focal length play a role?

That lens is supposed to be super crap, all plastic, no DOF (IIRC) indicator on the lens ring. Find the metal used, version I, on e-bay or someplace. Let me find the link:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-24726.html

http://photo.net/equipment/canon/ef50/

There is a much more expensive 50mm f1.4 Canon lens, but I'm not sure you'd realise significant advantages in your uses.
 

ddrueding

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There is also a much, much more expensive 50mm f1.2 Canon lens.

$75
$350
$1200

I wasn't even aware there was supposed to be a DOF indicator on the lens ring. My current lens doesn't have it. If being plastic makes it lighter, I'm all for that.
 

e_dawg

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Hmm, if it gets automatically scaled, then it won't be in the pixel dimensions you specifically cropped your image for, correct? Which means "largest" is a misnomer??? How large?

What I mean by that is that Picasa will automatically scale the image to 75% full-screen in normal mode and full-screen in Slideshow mode. This is a superior alternative to other hosting services, which usually display your pics to other users at tiny standard resolutions, like 450x300 or 500x533. So, largest in the sense of largest possible dimensions but still be able to see the entire picture on-screen. Most services allow you to download the original, as does Picasa, but people just want to see your pics as large as possible on one screen with a minimum of clicks and not have to jump through hoops/

- Sony ImageStation, for example, that has a ridiculously small (450 pixels in the longest dimension) fixed viewer size that does not change no matter how big your monitor is or how much resolution you have. If you have the right membership level, users can view the original image, but you have to specifically click through several links to view the original, and then it's way too big to view on-screen all at once. Add to that you have to repeat those several steps for every image, it's a lot of work that most users are not willing to go through to view your pics.

- flickr is better, but not by much, as it normally displays your images at medium size (500 px in the longest dimension), and then the user has to manually click on different sizes and click on Large (1024 px in the longest dimension), and even still, 1024 is not that big either these days. But that's too much work for most users, and they won't bother to do that for every one of your photos... so they usually see your stuff at 500x333 or so, which is a pale representation.

- pbase is better, as you can specify large or original sizes as the default viewing size and can control the user experience

"Optimally sharpened"? In whos eyes, I'd rather do my own sharpening, or *not*, TYVM. On what basis are you determining 'image quality' for comparison purposes of various sites, which do the least screwing around with your image?

Whenever a pic is resized / resampled, you need to sharpen or it will be blurry by virtue of the extrapolation or interpolation algorithms. Since Picasa automatically scales your images to 75% full-screen or full-screen depending which viewing mode you're in, it has to sharpen your images before displaying them, otherwise they will be blurry.

I say optimally sharpened, because no matter what size the browser window is, no matter what screen resolution I'm running, no matter what size of monitor I use, viewing my images on Picasa tends to look great.

And who am i to say "optimally sharpened"? Well, I took the originals, I did all the post-processing, and I set how sharp I wanted the images to look right before I saved the final JPEG. And in most cases, Picasa is able to make the images look just like how it looked when I saved that final JPEG in Capture NX or CS3, or at least, fairly close.

If Picasa butchered the images and made them look like ass, trust me, I would tell you. It does not. The images remain fairly true to the originals no matter what size they are auto-resized to. And because of that, I say "optimally sharpened".

That's the site I want to use---the ones that leave my image alone, as best possible. I notice that vBulletin, at least on some sites does all kinds of image compression screwups

Picasa leaves your originals alone and does not resize or compress them up to a maximum of 10 MB per picture. You have full control over resizing and compression settings for uploads using the Picasa2 application. People can download the originals if you let them. Picasa only optimizes viewing on-screen so that it automatically shows pics as large as possible up to full-screen.

The only drawbacks to Picasa are: (1) you cannot link directly to the image itself, but rather only to the viewer page in Picasa with that image shown through the viewer, and (2) the username of the picasa account is displayed in the URL, which means you don't want to post links to your picasa album on public fora like SF if you are using the picasa account tied to your gmail address! You must create a separate account for public posting online, otherwise you'll expose your main e-mail account to spammers, fraudsters, etc.

Just try it, man! You'll see what I mean after comparing it to sites like flickr and ImageStation.
 

e_dawg

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... (2) the username of the picasa account is displayed in the URL, which means you don't want to post links to your picasa album on public fora like SF if you are using the picasa account tied to your gmail address! You must create a separate account for public posting online, otherwise you'll expose your main e-mail account to spammers, fraudsters, etc.

Silly me. I looked around in the settings area for Picasa and found that you can create a different "alias" username and assign it to your URL instead of your actual gmail & google account username.
 

Tannin

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Udaman is spot on. I don't like any of the picture-sharing sites. Sorry to be harsh here, but they are all crap. Different strokes and all that, but the way I see it the only way to host pictures is to run your own site.

The key points from Udaman's post follow:
  • if it gets automatically scaled, then it won't be in the pixel dimensions you specifically cropped your image for
  • "Optimally sharpened"? In who's eyes? I'd rather do my own sharpening
  • On what basis are you determining 'image quality' for comparison purposes of various sites, which do the least screwing around with your image?

They cover it pretty well, I think.

I've had my own sites for ... oh ... more than a decade anyway, I forget exactly, since Netscape 2 days, anyway. Currently I pay .... er ... so little that I can't remember how much it is, something like $30 US a year to have full control over everything with (for all practical purposes) no limit on bandwidth or space. (There are actually limits, but you will never get anywhere near them unless you start hosting a massive free pr0n site or something.)

Right now, I'm deep in the process of replacing the entire http://tannin.net.au site which, as is my habit, is entirely hand-coded, with a new version which will look exactly the same and produce exactly the same HTML output but be entirely generated by php scripts from a mySQL database.

This is a new adventure for me, as although I have done a reasonable amount of sometimes fairly tricky php hacking running and customizing MediaWiki, I've never written a php/mySQL application from scratch.

I'm actually finding it surprisingly smooth sailing. For once in my life, I'm not forever spending hours staring at a line of code and wondering "WTF does that do, and will everything break if I remove it?"

Also, because I know exactly what I want it to do and what I don't need it to do, it's easy to focus on stuff that I care about and ignore all the possible functions that I don't intend to use.

But why? Isn't the hand-coded site perfectly OK as-is? Yup, but it's a right bugger to maintain a site of that size: there is a moderate amount of painstaking copy and paste to do every time I add pictures, remove pictures, or repost a modified version of an exosting picture, and masses of tedious copy & paste whenever I decide that I want everything in a different order.

One I have the whole thing administered by a PHP script and a database, I can also do stuff like create new indexes on the fly (a taxonomic index, for example). And finally, it's a useful upgrade to my skills.

Ahem ....

Sorry. Didn't mean to wander so far off topic.
 

Tea

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
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Location
27a No Fixed Address, Oz.
Website
www.redhill.net.au
People who use Macs mostly say nice stuff about them. This is largely because people who use Macs, in the main, are incredibly ignorant about computing. We know this because we know that they voluntarily and of their own free will use Macs.

AOL users, on the other hand, at least have the decency to feel slightly embarrassed about themselves, which indicates that they are, at least on average, slightly more intelligent than Mac users. But then, so is the green stuff at the back of Tannin's fridge.
 
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