Nice shots. This one of mine has a frame.

Strong frames. Great composition. And I think your desat of the last frame was a great choice.

Loved this little point and shoot before it gave out - just too much travel and being banged around.

Flat.


Bucket of wet sand


Surfset

Here are 3 more. I think these were all with my Digilux 3 (which I love) and my 25mm lens (50mm full frame equiv).

I will soon bore you with abstracts - which I seem to shoot a lot of at home.

the lineup at pipe


my muse, my wife at sunset


love this shot of her - the reflections and lines

Thanks guys. You give me confidence.

In terms of framing/cropping -- I tend to live with what I shot, except for leveling the horizon. Don't post produce much, as my God, what the cameras do with their computers pretty much does it all. Although noise reduction in Lightroom is fantastic.

These shots were done with a Leica Digilux 3 (7.5 megapixels) and a Canon Powershot G9 (the silhouette of the guys in the line-up). I tend to up my blacks a little - a matter of taste.

I spend a lot of time on Oahu's North Shore in front of Pipeline. Have a ton of shots. Here are a few - hope you like them.

cocktail hour & chatter


find the surfer


catching air

Y'know, folks, this is a pretty discouraging thread. Check out Andreas Gursky's body of work. He's a true artist who sees things that most of us can't. His work, in person, is breathtaking. It has true artistic concept and execution.

Think of this photo as a Diebenkorn painting. Embrace its minimalism, line and textures. Look at his other stuff and learn from it.

Is it worth 4.5M? I leave that to the rich collectors and their speculation. I'm shaking my head, too.

But art bends the rules. We should all be trying to push our own envelopes. Shoot a series that's out of focus and concentrates on color and composition.
Or one that's entirely about texture. Open your eyes and experiment. Rock it.

What Snaphappy said. An easy way to think of it: JPEG files have their values (tone, contrast, saturation etc.) picked by the camera. All but the relevant information is lost in the compression. When you go to change any of these values in a photoshop or Lightroom - because there's much less information to draw from - you will be limited in the amount you can change a given value before you start to affect the photo as a whole. A RAW file keeps all of the information and can be 10 times the size of a Hi-JPEG file. But when you edit, you will have all of that information available to make changes.

I'd say, if you're not really into editing your photos, or only want to make minor adjustments, you'll probably be perfectly happy with JPG files.

I have a G-9. Worthless in low light, 400 ISO and above. But a great day camera and a joy to use.

Yeah, wow. So many variables. Do you want a big zoom? Does it need to fit in your pants or shirt pocket? In any case, it won't be a professional camera.

But, if a fixed lens rangefinder is good with you, the fairly compact Fuji X-100 is getting a lot of attention from pros, and I'm seeing stunning images in many photo blogs. It's tops on my personal lust list.

By the way - big aperture, opened up, is REALLY narrow depth of field. Would the bags with candles in them even be in focus at, say 1.8, 400 ISO, with a shutter speed of (I'm guessing) 100? I don't think so. Her composition includes the trees. This is a tight aperture and long exposure.

I really disagree. 400 plus with her camera is going to be noisy. What she's asking for is a sharper image - not a motion freezing shot. This shot is a woman standing in front of a memorial. Motionless. For the best possible image... do 200 ISO or less.. and stop down. Yeah, I know - crazy. The guy on the left is going to look like a ghost because he's moving. So what? Stop down all the way to F16 if you have to . Long exposure. Still subject. Big depth of field.

It's what you would do with a landscape in low light.

Think the idea of a remote shutter release is excellent. And, if your subject remains still, go to an ISO of 200, stop down to gain depth of field, and expose for a second or longer.

If you still aren't happy, it's your glass or your sensor and you should think about another camera.

... tends to happen if someone moves and your shutter speed is half a second. :wink:

Hey - isn't the X-100 a 23mm (in actuality) and a 35mm equivalent?