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comment by kleinbl00

Excited to see the results with the camera.

PROTIP: I can do everything full manual, but it really slows you down. I started shooting aperture priority in like '99 and aside from taking pictures of the moon, night cityscapes and really challenging contrast situations, I get the picture 100% of the time.

Chances are good that you'll be happiest with the results with the aperture fully open (I'ma guess the lens you have is an f/4-f/5.6). If you get vignetting at the lens' widest, bump it up a stop.





user-inactivated  ·  2284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks. I'm excited to learn to work the camera. We picked out the Nikon D3400 Bundle because it was basically a camera with an extra free lens and a bag and there's barely a bad review out there for it. Compared to the more than half busted point and shoot camera it's replacing, it looks both awesome and a bit like a lot to take in.

I really appreciate the pro-tip, but I have a question. I'm familiar with the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and exposure, but the term vignetting is new to me. What does it mean and what does it actually indicate?

kleinbl00  ·  2284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Vignetting is where the light distribution isn't even from edges to center. It generally means your light-gatherer (the lens) isn't a perfect match with your light-recorder (the sensor of the camera). It's most likely to happen when the hole the light goes through (the aperture) is at its largest (lowest number; for your lenses, f/3.5 and f/4.5).

This is not limited to cheap lenses; I've got a 16-35 f/2.8 that cost me $1500 used and wide-open it vignettes on a 35mm frame size. Granted, enough people griped about this that Canon remade the lens within the year. And you can usually deal with this sort of thing in post.

I don't know how stretched your finances are at this point, what with the camera and all, but please god start to use something more friendly than Gimp. You're now investing in your own skills and your own skills are heavily reliant on the tools they're trained in. Don't invest in software that nobody with any self-respect uses.

user-inactivated  ·  2284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Vignetting is where the light distribution isn't even from edges to center.

Interesting. Partly because there are software filters that people use to actively get that effect, but also partly, because I figure with software it'd be less of an issue, because people are able to take a wider shot than needed and then crop it to their desire on the computer (at least, that's what I do).

Speaking of software, I've heard good things about Krita but that's more for drawing than for editing photos. The only other open source program I know of other than GIMP is LightZone which strikes me as a simplified version of Adobe Lightroom. Wikipedia has a whole list of programs, so I'm gonna do some looking into that this week as well.

GIMP? I'm pretty decent at it, but I dunno, I'm stubborn in the "making things work whether or not it's easier to get something new" kind of sense. But then again, I never thought about taking photos that I really care to edit really well and now here I am.

kleinbl00  ·  2284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Plenty o'Instagrammers love the old vignette. I've been known to use it myself. However, you'd generally rather have control of it than have to deal with it. Decent software like Lightroom will allow you to apply lens-specific profiles to deal with all the optical distortions introduced by the hardware.

I don't know any of the free stuff, unless you're talking phones (I use Snapseed). It reflects my bias, no doubt: I believe photo software should make it easier to get what you shot so that you can spend more time shooting. Thus, I never made more than a half-hearted attempt at doing any processing in Photoshop. Lightroom I can process a month's worth of photos in half an hour. Anything needing more hard-core tweakitude than Lightroom can do, I throw at creative kit.

Although, Lightroom is now shit on a stick and apparently Macphun saw enough weakness that they're now making Luminar for PC. I might go that way myself.

user-inactivated  ·  2284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Darktable is the best I've found in FLOSS land.

https://www.darktable.org/