quote: Joe Redifer

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What is HDR?

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High Dynamic Range photography.

You take two, three or more exposures of the same scene with bracketed exposures, at least two stops apart. Then you use Photoshop, et. al. to combine the exposures into one image.

The smaller stops (higher ƒ-number) capture detail in the highlight areas but lose detail in the shadows. The larger stops (lower ƒ-number) capture detail in the shadow areas but get "blown out" in the highlight areas.

Creating an HDR composite allows one image to have the best of both worlds. You can really get some great photographs with it if you know what you're doing.

However, you need a tripod that's rock steady if you want the best results. While Photoshop can interpolate between photos that have small amounts of movement between exposures, the best results are achieved when there is little or no movement. Higher resolution photos like Bobby's become even MORE critical because of the number of pixels. A good, solid tripod is a must.

If it was me, I'd buy just the camera head and figure out a way to mount it on my own, homemade contraption made from 1-1/2" iron pipe and Kee-Klamps with the feet weighted down with 5 lb. barbell weights. "Weider" barbell weights should slide right over the ends of the pipes.

Oh! You want portability? Oops! My bad!
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-03-2009, 10:16 AM:
 
I'm with you Randy -- strap the head to a Simplex pedestal and be done with it. Oh yah, portable -- put wheels on the pedestal.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-03-2009, 10:50 AM:
 
Here is a link from Adobe on HDR.

Lately Dolby has been involved in developing HDR technology for LCD TV displays and other applications. This must be some long-term, forward-looking process since there are currently no video cameras or video playback formats that support 96-bit HDR color.

quote: Joe Redifer

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Are you taking super long exposure pictures at the most extreme of the telephoto range or something? My tripod doesn't seem to have any movement. It jiggles when I focus the lens, but after I leave it alone, it stops. Pictures are no more blurry than if I just set the camera down on the table with a wide angle lens and set it on a 2 second delay.

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My tripod (a Hakuba Carbon HG-503mx) is sturdy enough when I'm shooting single photos. Taking multiple shots and merging them together exposes this tripod's design weaknesses. The images are couple or so pixels off from each other. That's not great if you're taking evening shots of cityscapes. You get ghosting around street lights and other annoying nonsense.

I'm shooting these photos with the mirror locked to avoid mirror slap. And I'm remotely controlling the camera by tethering it via USB to a notebook computer. Tethering is also recommended for HDR imaging because most cameras auto bracket no more than 2 stops. That may not be enough of a difference for some shots. Some HDR images may be derived from several shots. Anyway, the camera and tripod is not being touched at all. Still, movement is happening. That leaves the tripod as the culprit for what's throwing off the images.

A lot of less expensive tripods have 3-way heads with cork built into the platform. That stuff can flex. So I'm getting a very good ball head and camera L-plate instead. That Hakuba tripod has carbon fiber legs, but I don't think they're sturdy enough to dampen out all vibrations and I suspect they flex a bit in the wind. Gitzo puts 6 layers of carbon fiber into their tripod legs. Their tripods have other design features to eliminate twisting and flexing. I just have to decide if I want to spend $725 or $950 for one.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-03-2009, 11:56 AM:
 
There isn't $700 worth of anything in a truck load of tripods. Even the most expensive get loose after a couple years of just moderate use.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-03-2009, 03:24 PM:
 
You must ask yourself if $700+ is worth it to take these photos. If there is only a couple of pixels difference in Photoshop, move one layer over a couple of pixels and crop it. There might be a few pixels here and there that won't perfectly match, but trust me, people will not notice.

Bobby, you should start a photography thread or something where people post their shiz (re: pics).
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-03-2009, 03:37 PM:
 
If you're doing photography for pay you'll make the $700 back. If photography is your hobby and you don't mind spending the money, it could be worth it. But think about what other things that you could spend 700 clams on compared to the use you would get out of it.

I don't know those tripods very well but that's how I would decide on whether to spend the money.

For me, the decision came down to whether to buy a bicycle or the parts to complete my AR-15. I thought about it and decided that it would be better to get healthy than to buy guns. I can always buy the gun later.

In retrospect, maybe I should have bought the damn rifle!
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-03-2009, 03:51 PM:
 
I still have an old Bogen tripod I had used for many years that served me very well when I used to do my environmental portrait photography with a Hassleblad camera and long lenses during my film days. Now that I only shoot in digital with a DSLR Nikon D200 camera, I usually shoot my portraits either hand held or with a Manfrotto monopod that had cost me about $200.00. I had never spent more than four hundred dollars for a tripod during all my forty three year photographic career.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-03-2009, 04:45 PM:
 
I used to have a Gitzo (don't remember the model number) and indeed it was a fine heavy tripod. Gitzo is good stuff.

Like Claude, I too have a Bogen which has served me well since the late '80s for shoots where I used an old Mamiya 645. I think the Bogen is a good bang-for-the-buck tripod, though it might not be good enough for the kind of work Bobby is talking about.

By the way, all of my old now-out-of-production, film-based shooting gear is up for sale. Just need to cut down on the junk level in my storage. Inquire within...
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-03-2009, 06:00 PM:
 
The numbering scheme for Gitzo tripod models is pretty confusing, which is why Gitzo has a product key in their catalogs and web site explaining all the numbers and letters.

There's lot of others models similar to the GT3530LS and GT5541LS, but with different features. Those two models are similar to each other in that they have removable flat base plates and no center rapid rising column. The 3-series model has 3 sections per leg whereas the 5-series model has 4 sections per leg, is significantly larger and heavier. The GT5541LS is beefy enough to hold some of the heaviest camera/lens combinations. The GT3530LS is no slouch either, but the GT5541LS is even more stable.

quote: Joe Redifer

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Bobby, you should start a photography thread or something where people post their shiz (re: pics).

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quote: Claude S. Ayakawa

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I had never spent more than four hundred dollars for a tripod during all my forty three year photographic career.

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quote: Randy Stankey

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If you're doing photography for pay you'll make the $700 back. If photography is your hobby and you don't mind spending the money, it could be worth it. But think about what other things that you could spend 700 clams on compared to the use you would get out of it.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Sounds like a good idea, although I thought the random pictures thread served kind of the same purpose. Still, the 550 pixel width limit for uploaded images kind of limits what one can show.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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I do some paid photography work on occasion and am looking at this tripod purchase as one of the pieces of equipment needed to help me make more money. Photography as a hobby alone can be very expensive, especially if you want to pursue something like nature photography.

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Doing work for pay to subsidize a hobby is why I bought this computer. I haven't made nearly enough money to even put a dent in the cost but it's paid for the extra memory sticks and the two 1TB hard drives, plus a little more.

If you take on a couple of extra jobs you can pay back at least PART of the money you spend on tripods.

So ask yourself this: How much money do you think you can make from taking on photography work?

Next, figure out how much money you would be comfortable spending if you were just buying the equipment for yourself. Add the amount of money you can make from jobs.

Factor for the amount of salivation you have been doing on this item and that's how much you should spend on tripods.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-03-2009, 11:02 PM:
 
Unfortunately, the thing with photography is often either the equipment you're using for a certain task works well or it just doesn't work at all. You either got the shot or missed it. It is very very easy to waste a whole lot of money buying cheaper stuff that just doesn't work good enough to get the job done. It hurts the wallet to buy right the first time but it cuts out the cycle of buying a few sub-$500 tripods that don't measure up to a professional grade platform. I'm done with spending good money after bad for "good enough" quality.

$720-$950 for a tank-rugged still camera tripod base is expensive, but isn't quite so much relatively speaking. Check out what a good quality "head and legs" video tripod costs. Sachtler sells some tripods that cost 10 to 15 times the price of what I'll potentially spend for a top quality still camera tripod.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-03-2009, 11:36 PM:
 
I wonder if the parts and materials really add up to that much (especially for the ones that cost ten times what Bobby is planning on paying) or are they just all pure markup? I can't imagine parts for a tripod equaling even half of $7500.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-04-2009, 12:51 AM:
 
Oh, I agree 100%.

The penalty professional users and very serious amateurs are paying is "amortization" cost. You throw down the money for a $12,000 Sachtler platform to hold a broadcast quality or digital cinema HD video camera. How many other units of that particular tripod are going to be sold? Not many. Divide that by the development and manufacturing costs that go into making that model of tripod. That's a big part of the cost. Still, there's a lot of price gouging for handsome profit involved in the equation too.

I think there's a lot more still photography professionals and enthusiasts out there than video professionals. So something like a 5-series Gitzo tripod that represents the top end of still camera shooting is only going to set back the shooter a cool grand instead of ten grand or more.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-04-2009, 08:04 PM:
 
With some of you mentioning doing paid photography work, I thought about my personal experience during my memorable photographic career. There was a time when cost was no problem for me when it came to purchasing equipment. I have always used nothing but the best starting with a 8X10 sheet film camera when I opened my studio in 1965. All of my portraits were photographed with this camera with either full 8X10, or 4X5 sheet film in color and Black & White. The image quality was just amazing. Because there was no need for larger than 8X10 B&W prints from the negative of this size, they were contacted printed. The 4X5 negatives were enlarged with a 4X5 Omega enlarger. When the quality of roll film improved, I started to use Rolleiflex cameras and eventually settled with Hassleblads. There was a time when I had three of them. I alway used to shoot a lot of color slides for personal use and I bought nothing but the best Nikon Cameras starting with the Nikon SP in the late fifties before I went to Brooks Institute to study photography. When the quality of 35mm color negative film improved, I started to use it a lot for many of my individual environmental portrait work just about the time when professional digital photography was taking over the industry. I shot my portraits in 35mm and had the negatives scanned and created the final images with photoshop before sending the files to my professional color lab to be printed.

The portrait photography business in the sixties, seventies, eighties were very profitable and spending top dollars for photo equipment was no problem because it was possible to earn enough money from a couple of assignments to pay for them. Things started to change in the late nineties when the business started to become very competitive with the so called 'Weekend Photographers" who had regular full paying jobs and photograph weddings on weekends. Most of their work was horrid but to the untrained eyes of many consumers, they were fine as long as the price was right. Because I had maintained a very high standard in my photography, I had customers who would come to me because of my fine reputation and the quality of my work. Thing started to change even for me during the past couple of years when digital photography became established and anyone could get the top of the line Nikon & Canon cameras, Photoshop,Lightroom powerful computers and fantastic photo printers. Now with the downturn in the economy, the portrait photography businesshad pretty much dried up. Thank God, I am semi retired and no longer operate a studio with the one employee I used to have. I am pretty much on a "Call" basis now and work when I have to.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-04-2009, 09:27 PM:
 
Those complaints are similar to the ones I have about what has happened to the graphic design profession in the United States. It's not much of a profession anymore. The well paying, high profile jobs are few and far between. The only way I could recommend anyone pursue a career in graphic design is if they just obsessively love doing graphic design work. Otherwise, there's lots of other career paths that offer a much better living.

Customers and even many employers can't tell the difference between good and bad design, so they choose whoever wants to work for the least amount of money. Who needs a degree or any formal training at all? Being self-taught at clicking around in Photoshop or Illustrator seems to be enough, regardless of how bad that person's portfolio looks (if he even has a portfolio). As long as the work merely gets done, every thing is just fine -even if the work is done badly.

I agree about the photography business being affected in much of the same way. So many people competing for paid photography work are self taught and often have minimal investments in equipment. Many are "weekend warriors" offering to do gigs like weddings for less money. At least around here, very few people want to pay a photographer decently for a wedding shoot. They often get mediocre results and perhaps even some critical moments missed.

I don't do any wedding shoots for pay. I usually try to avoid them completely, but I've photographed a few for friends and co-workers with the understanding clearly stated my equipment setup was modest and expectations should not be high. To shoot a wedding right (and expect to get paid well for it) I think the shooter needs at least two camera bodies with two different zooms, portable lights (umbrellas with strobes or speed lights), a great close portrait prime lens, speed light flash bracket and perhaps a couple other things I'm not thinking about. A photography assistant would also be a big help. I know only one photographer in my town who shoots weddings with all that stuff. Weddings are difficult, high pressure gigs. If the pay isn't there the gig isn't worth farting with in the first place.

Photographers and graphic designers both can make better money by finding a certain unique niche. With certain genres of a photography that can mean spending a scary amount of money on equipment that allows you to get shots none of the weekend warriors would get. It may also just be as simple as coming up with some brilliant images that achieve the status of being art. Yeah. That sounds simple, but it's actually hard as hell.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-04-2009, 10:04 PM:
 
You guys are right but I think it has to do with the fact that digital multimedia is transient.

The old saying said, "Today's newspapers line the bottoms of tomorrow's bird cages."

The same thing applies to today's digital multimedia but only about 1,000 times faster. Images can become "stale" after only moment's of existence.

The ease of taking digital images plus the availability of computers to process them is a big factor in this but, moreover, people aren't spending money on professional photography because most of those photos aren't going to be around long enough to be seen more than once or twice.

I believe there is a market for good quality photography, especially good quality "wet" photography. Do people want their photos to be around for their children and grand children to see? Digital photography is probably NOT the answer! The only kind of photographs that are guaranteed to be around 100+ years from now are real photos, not digital. Provided there are no fires, floods, natural disasters or just plain accidents, photos could last indefinitely. We'll be lucky to see digital images still around after 50 years. It's barely been 20 years since digital photography hit the market. Has it?

Somehow, the public is going to have to learn the difference between digital snapshots and professional photography.

But that's just the part I haven't figured out yet. I'll let you know if I do.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-04-2009, 11:11 PM:
 
I could never be a wedding photographer. I was a wedding videographer exactly two times, once for a real client who paid and once for a friend as a wedding present. Now normally I hate being at weddings to begin with, but to be lugging around all that gear and talking to people you don't really know and at the same time trying to stay out of people's way is a huge pain. I don't even like being seen, but at one wedding I was stuck up in front of everyone to get another angle for an entire 1 hour mass plus wedding. What is about a billion times worse than that is the editing. It is very difficult for me to edit something that I am not interested in. Editing weddings are sheer torture even if you have a ton of great shots. Suffice it to say I do not do that any more.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-04-2009, 11:16 PM:
 

quote: Randy Stankey

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The only kind of photographs that are guaranteed to be around 100+ years from now are real photos, not digital.

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Unfortunately, film negatives and photographic prints often won't last 100 years either unless they're handled with great care or even locked away in a climate controlled vault. Prints are particularly susceptible to fading and color shifts, not to mention damage. I've seen a lot of photograph prints decades old that had all sorts of problems. Some people actually make a decent amount of money doing digital restoration work to such prints.

So many photographic prints these days aren't developed in the old school method of putting film negatives in an enlarger and exposing them on photographic paper. Instead, many are simply printed with ink jet printers or another printing process that involved a kind of solid or liquid ink being sprayed or melted onto a paper surface. That kind of stuff has a lower lifespan than an old school print.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-05-2009, 12:14 AM:
 
You're right. My phrasing wasn't entirely accurate.

Let's just say that the mean lifespan of a photo is a better known quantity than a digital printout.

For one, we have actual photos which are 100 years old. Digital images barely been around 25. We can study old photos and learn what makes them last longer. We can reprint old negatives. We can restore old prints. Assuming that disk drives and storage media last that long, there's no guarantee that people will be able to view digital images 100 years from now due to technological obsolescence.

I'm not saying digital images are bad. Nor do I imply that photographs are better just because they are "traditional" photographs. I'm just saying that each has its own strengths and weaknesses. We should learn to use them according to their usefulness for a given purpose.

It's up to photographers, be they digital or traditional, to educate the customer on this.
(Within limits of practicality.)
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2009, 09:58 AM:
 
Digital photos can last forever, just keep copying the file to new storage formats and new image formats if need be.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-05-2009, 10:46 AM:
 
First, I would have changed all my old bitmaps and RLEs to GIF, then copied them from 5-1/4" floppy to 3-1/4" floppy. After that, I change them all to JPEG and store them on CD-Rs and hard drives. What am I supposed to do with all the RAW and DNG files I'm generating now when, in 10 years, some new format comes out?

Yes, I'm being a little silly. Point taken, Joe.

However, you and I are more than one standard deviation above the mean when it comes to technical know-how. That puts us above about 70% of the population.

What percentage of the population has the knowledge to keep up with technology changes? Out of those, how many will be motivated enough to keep their digital images up to date?

My bet is 50% or less.
 

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Posted by Galen Murphy-Fahlgren (Member # 4535) on 10-05-2009, 10:53 AM:
 
The longevity of film-based photography can be astounding. I have some prints from my grandparents wedding 60 years ago that are in phenomenal shape. They were stored in a folder in a cardboard box in my grandparents' attic for a couple of decades, and one of them had clearly spent some time in an album, because there were stains on the back from the kind of low-quality adhesive you often find in photo albums. Even so, the image had suffered no degradation. My grandparents spent no small sum on their wedding photographer, but they certainly got what they payed for, in terms of skill, and especially in printing quality.

While digital files can hypothetically last indefinitely, I fear that millions, maybe billions of pictures will be lost due to carelessness or because nobody gets around to converting them to whatever format eventually replaces JPEG. I have lost hundreds of photos personally because I never got around to backing up my hard drive and it took a dump. Now, there was no White Angel Breadline or the picture of Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot, but there were pictures of my little sister's senior year and high school graduation, and some other stuff that was important, on a very small scale. I can assure you that I am not the only person too lazy or stupid to back their things up. Now, in many of these cases, the photographs may not have lasted in a physical medium: people may just not have shot them, or not gotten them developed, and how many accidents did people have with roll film every year before the common man switched to digital? This is a pretty complicated issue, and the answer is to shoot what you like.

On the tripod front, I recommend one with three legs, but at least two. Seriously, though, do you have a store that will let you take them outside and test them? That would obviously be ideal, although then it would be sort of a dick move if you bought it online. The other thing is, how heavy is your camera, and just as importantly, how balanced is it? I only have a lowly $250 tripod, but it seems to me that a well engineered $700 tripod ought to be as able to withstand winds within its rated load capacity as a $900 one. And if you already have a well constructed CF tripod, maybe the issue is with the head. A ball head with too long a shaft is almost certainly going to have a tiny bit of sway in strong winds. You want a ball head with a very large ball, and a short, wide shaft. And it isn't my fault if Phil has anything to say about that.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-05-2009, 11:05 AM:
 
I have a $200 Bogen that works fine for 35mm, medium format, and 4x5. I can't imagine needing anything more substantial for still photography, except maybe for 8x10 or a very large 4x5 setup.

Obviously, one would want something better (and with a nice fluid or gear head) for motion-picture or video work, and, yes, those setups go for upwards of $7k (mostly for the head).
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-05-2009, 04:42 PM:
 
Joe,

During the peak of my photographic career, I used to photograph anywhere from six to eight wedding a month and I did them all by myself with an assistant I had hired. Although I had strived to do my very best and did good work for my customers, I never liked doing them because of the pressure and the fear that something can go terribly wrong. Many of you younger people do not know this but older film cameras had two sync setting on the lenses. One was for the new electronic flash (X) and the other one was for flash bulb (M). I was photographing a wedding with electronic flash in the seventies when I had noticed the camera shutter making an unusual sound after I made an exposure with one of my Hassleblads that was mounted with a older 50mm lens with a X/M sync. Because I always worked with backup quickly , I quickly
switched to the backup camera and lens when I noticed something was wrong . When I had time at the reception, I found the sync setting on the lens was on M instead of X even after I rigged it to prevent it from happening. After the incident, I put the lens on sale and replaced it with a brand new one that only had a X setting. If I was not an experienced professional wedding photographer, I would have totally screwed up on a wedding candid assignment and be subjected to litigation for damages. What had almost happened to me had happened to many others including a national reknowned wedding photographer I know.

Regarding the longevity of photographic prints, I have always and still use a professional color lab to print my customers pictures from my digital files. Photographic paper today especially Eastman Kodak's has a low fade emulsion very similar to 35mm motion picture prints and I have images in my portfolio that is over ten years old and they look just as vibrant the day they were printed. Unfortunately this is not the cast with many of my earlier images. My brother and his wife had been married for forty four years and I had photographed their wedding. All of the prints are all magenta (Pink) today. Sad!

-Claude
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2009, 06:14 PM:
 
Randy, why all the conversion after GIF? GIF is perfect for high-end photography. Who needs more than 255 colors, anyway?

Claude, I definitely prefer controlled settings for my photography when I can, I'm not much of a pap.
 

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Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 10-06-2009, 02:15 PM:
 
For quality tripods at reasonable prices I can recommend Berlebach tripods:

Berlebach Tripods (english site)

Their tripods are made of ash wood, well-made and rugged.
I have recommended these many times for video and photography workshops with kids, and they haven't managed to kill a Berlebach up to this day.

Of course, you can expect some nice muscle build-up with the larger models.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-07-2009, 02:37 PM:
 
The Berlebach tripods actually look like they are up to supporting a camera. By comparison the Gitzo line looks like sucker bait.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-07-2009, 10:24 PM:
 
Berlebach and Ries make great quality wood tripods. Unfortunately, their tripods seem best suited to studio photography or types of photography where the tripod doesn't have to be carried around much at all. Those tripods are just not designed for portability.

The models with weight capacity ratings I need are too bulky and too heavy to take on a hike of any significance to reach a scenic spot. On top of that, I don't like the leg mechanisms they use. I remember the wood tripod that came with the telescope I had when I was just a kid. That tripod was a pain in the ass to use. The leg locks on these tripods don't look much different. All those factors might explain why I don't see many (or any) professional photographers working outdoors using a wood tripod or wood monopod.

quote: Bill Enos

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By comparison the Gitzo line looks like sucker bait.

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