Tell me this isn't the cutest baby you have ever seen in your life! This is my brother-in-laws boy. I recently bought a 50mm f1.7 lens for my sony a300 (for 75 bucks) and took a buncha pics last night. BTW.. DSLR's are worth every penny if you ask me. Course now you can pick up an entry level one (like mine) for about the same as a point and shoot.

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Dear gods I have to admit that's a cute kid. Got a fairly new nephew myself who I think measures up though

Your camera clearly hides the evil. EVIL



See the cow? EVIL!

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lol tarot

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

The quality of the pic is amazing. And yeah, DSLRs>>>>>Point and shoots. Faster also.
I still use my SLR, need to save for a digital one!

Wow, fantastic shot. And freakin' cute baby. Could totally see him in a Gerber commercial.

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How about cute puppies?

Taken with my Nikon D40 I am still learning all the cool features and lens's I have for it.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Cak, did you apply any filters or anything to the photo? I'm curious as to why there's so much noise around the dog, sort of like an outline of noise.

Your dog is adorable btw.

Its not my dog and no added noise, I was shooting in very low light at 1600 ISO so lots of noise ;/

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Ah, I see. Take more pics! I've been looking at D40s for a while.

You should see the noise on my sony alpha at 1600. Yeesh.

For what I use it for though, it's not a big deal. Other than a bit more noise (than you would expect) past 800 iso, I am thrilled with it though. One of the big selling points for the a300 is it's great live view mode. I liked it at first too, but now I find myself using the viewfinder about 90% of the time.

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I played with a Sony A300 I did like the live view mode but Viewfinder feels more comfortable.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Yeah, I don't think I'd ever use the view mode on any SLR camera, outside of parties and stuff that is. Man, I really want a dSLR now.

Do it. One of the nice things about the sony is that you can use some old minolta lenses. The one I took that baby pic with sells regularly on ebay for about 130ish.. I hunted and held off till I got a good deal and got one off a guy on craigslist for 75. I also picked up 2 other lenses from some guy selling his "old junk camera" for 30 bucks. So I have 3 very good lenses (and the kit lens) for about 100 bucks.

It also has in-body image stabilization which is nice cause I am pretty shaky. That all being said, I have 0 experience with any other brand of DSLR. I reckon canon and nikon are so popular for a reason.

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I'm into DSLR photography big time. More landscape photography than anything.

When I go to Switzerland this summer, I'm going to start experimenting with HDR. Anyone ever seen the results? Pretty interesting.

HDR photography looks pretty fucking surreal, it really is interesting.

Jox, what camera do you have?

If I get a job soon I'll definitely get a dSLR camera, I'm still using SLRs, and, well, developing and printing costs too much money, hehe. The other day my camera somehow ate 16 frames from my 36 frame film. I was pissed. ;P

A Nikon D50. I'm going to get some fixed focal length lenses so I can get faster, before my trip.

I have a D40 but I should of bought a d60 or 80, its nice but just not all I wanted.

I have a 50MM prime and a 135MM prime lens both are great. Both manual focus and from the 1980s but work great!

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Recent photo from a friend who likes to model for me, i really didnt do much touch up besides removing some un needed noise... This was taken with a Prime 50mm lens

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

I love your composition. She's a nice model too.

Cak, are you still shooting at high ISOs? If so, get a trippod and shoot at lower shutter speeds (or open a window! hehe), because your photos are really nice, except for the noise. The noise reduction option should probably help a little too.

But yeah, I checked your deviant art site the other day, and you have some very nice stuff.

Also, when it comes to noise, apparently the d40 is better than the d80. :O

Oh, also, make sure you shoot in RAW format.

Well its the lens I use aswell, and it was dark outside and her house has very little light what so ever. lol!

I want to buy some booms that are compact that I can take with me so I can bring my own light.

Also I will be added a lot more to Deviant art soon. 4000 pictures takes a while to sort through =(

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

About 80% of the time I shoot in Raw format. Just really not use to using Adobe Bridge CS3 for all my editing, its really night just not use to it yet!

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

I have been goofing around with some HDR stuff. It's not difficult. There are some good programs out there. You can do a HDR merge in photoshop too. http://www.hdrsoft.com/ seems to be what most people use.

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You all should post your shit in the Art forums.

I think you can abuse HDR.. it's not intended for all things. And, I have some qualms about the purity of basically using a trick. Having said that, to me, it creates images that more closely resemble what you see with your eye, and removes the limitation of exposure on the camera.

Here's an example of the power of HDR, in making an image that would never expose properly.

Google "Stuck in Customs" for some examples of someone that does HDR right.

I look at his HDR as "capturing how someplace FELT rather than how it LOOKED". A lot of times, his HDR photographs instill a sense of wonder and mystery to locations... and while a straight photograph would have been "correct", wouldn't have captured how it felt seeing the place.

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BTW Rugen, that Stuck in Customs site has been invaluable while learning how to shoot HDR. Good site in general.

God that fountain picture is GORGEOUS. I could just stare at it for hours.

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it and Strobist have been my two favorite photography sites for a long time.

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I'm way behind on editing and compositing all of my better shots, but here are a few HDR shots I finally finished. I'll post more later this week. Overall, I found that just shooting a mid-ranged on aperture priority, then exporting 5 exposure levels from the same RAW image worked best. Much sharper, especially if you're handholding, than using 3 bracketed images.

I'm using Lightroom to organize and export the RAW images, and Photomatix for the HDR compilation.



View from Kleine Scheidegg with the Wetterhorn on the right, Grindelwald (where we stayed) in the valley below and the Faulhorn on the left.



An overlook at the start of the First-Bachalpsee-Faulhorn trail. There was over a foot of snow in mid July past this point once we reached a certain altitude (past the lake). I'll post some of the better HDR shots from the snowy areas later. One cool thing: the cows up there all have huge bells and you can hear them from very far away. There were tons in the valley below.

Nice work, Jox. Unlike a lot of HDR, those are not immediately obvious AS HDR.

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Really amazing! I love it

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Nice pics Jox