Pirate_girl, sure it does work!
Congrats on your new camera. That was a good shot! Looking forward to seeing more photos of your plants.
Thanks for sharing.

Xuan

WooHooo!! What kind of camera did you get?

A couple of suggestions...use some fabric for a back drop so we can focus on the subject at hand and not be distracted by what else in the photo. Get a dark velvet or something that doesn't reflect the flash back into the lens. When taking the photo have the subject a 2ft or so away from the back drop so it will be slightly out of focus and fill the frame.
{{gwi:482894}}

Now get shooting! hopefully you have a large hard drive to store all your new images! I just bought a 500gig because I filled the 100 I had previously. Taking photo in high resolution eats up storage space fast!

Pirate Girl,

Congrats on your new camera! Nice ZZ plant you have there!!

Like Xuan said...looking forward to more!!

Well I'm so excited, I've been wanting this forever! Thanks for the congrats -- it's a Panasonic MDC LZ10 10 megapixel, Lumix digital w/ a Leica lens.

My Patron Saint of quilting saw the Quilting Blog I just started ("karenthequilter") & wished to encourage me further w/out my being dependant on others to take pix for me (tho' lucky lady that I am, I've had my friend Sage Reynolds of The Ceropegia Journal as my photographer).

The Patron St. knows I'd be shooting Quilts & Plants & did some research & found this camera to be well regarded & have gotten good reviews.

So much technical stuff to learn -- yikes!! Got to clean out my hard drive to make enough room for programs.

Caudex, thanks for the tips, you were very diplomatic -- too much stuff in my kitchen/quilt table distracting for the view. Frankly it was the only surface I didn't have to clear first! I see dusting the leaves would help too!

Someday I will get more than my 8 yr old point-and-shoot, but hard telling when!!

As Keith says, get anything black....anything.....put the plant in some light (sun, bright shade, sun plus diffuser....whatever) and put the black sheet, cardboard, whatever far enough away so that it is outside the focal length for the given f-stop (if you are syncing a flash with a diffuser this will determine the distance), but all you really need is a few feet back and it is all moot. You can even do this with simply having the plant in sun and shade behind it and it will drop to nearly complete black....then have fun taking pics......if you have the option of shooting a RAW image that will give you the most flexibility after the fact. This pic of a Haemanthus was taken with an 8 year old camera and a piece of old black cardboard from my daughters class project so with a decent camera you can likely work wonders like Keith does :o) Dan
{{gwi:429485}}

I appreciate it folks (I AM an artist which you folks may not know, I tend not to discuss it here). Right now, I need to learn the technical stuff of the camera, the editting software, the posting software, sizing, etc.

I just was so thrilled to have the camera & needed to get an image up online to post 'cause I needed to see it to believe it. I even have the black drape from staging C&S exhibits w/ the group; don't esp. have the space for that in the apmt, think I'll go w/ the idea of the black cardboards.

Thanks for the tips & that last shot is exceptional!

Wow...haven't been on this forum in a really long time, and imagine that...Karen's got a camera! yeehaw! LOL!!
Anxious to see more, Karen...good job!

Finally!
I can't wait for you to become familiar with your camera! Let the show unfold!

{{gwi:482895}}

Josh

Wow, thanks for the kinds words everybody.

Nice woodland Josh, can we go there for a lovely picnic? These trees look amazingly tall!

Caudex, I forgot to say & thank you for cropping my pic, I looked at it late last nite & too early this morning, I only just caught that now -- DUH Karen! Also I imagine I'll be shooting during the day; not late at night as that shot!

I've scaled down my collections considerably, but maybe now my no-ID Hoya w/ the 6 penduncles that teased me ALL winter long will finally bloom!

I look forward in future to sharing pix of a couple of Hydro growing experiments I'm enjoying w/ multiple Hoyas & a Spider Plant. Thanks again!

I love sharing pics, Karen!
It's a great thrill, especially since I'm able to hike in parts of northern California that most folks will never see! That pic was taken this fall/winter in a place called Bear Valley, about 5,000 feet elevation. Those Incense Cedars (Calocedrus decurrens) are very tall! The scent of that particular grove is intoxicating when the air is chill and brisk....in the heat of summer, however, the smell can be damn right stifling!

Josh

For awhile-long before I even had a camera-somebody had given me a white cardboard for use of picture taking. I can't even remember why he gave it to me!(part of my university work)..but,my question is,are they good for plant pics?..it was light and folded.

Congrats on the camera! I, personally, find shooting plants a bit tricky... I have the camera (Nikon D40), but I cannot seem to match the quality of the other folks who post their pics on this site. Not sure why, but I do think that background and technical knowledge must come into play. I just don't have the patience to understand all the technical inner workings of the camera - I just want someone to tell me the optimal settings, set up my environment...and then I'll snap the pics!

I guess I am a point a shoot guy, but that definitely can't get you to the quality I have seen folks like caudex and joscience post (there are others, too, so sorry if I missed you).

I am also intrigued by Karen's comment of "scaling down" her collection. How does one do that? I can't even part with my sorriest seedlings - and I always want more!

T

Karen,
for close ups, you'll want to identify the "macro" setting. You'll be amazed at the detail you can achieve, even with relatively low megapixel cameras. A tripod will also greatly increase your ability to capture detail.

Another tip: start organizing your pictures as soon as you load them onto the computer. I make a main folder, such as Gardening, Bonsai, or Cats - then split it into sub-folders, and double-sub-folders. For instance, Jades Josh

Congrats Pirate Girl.....I'm gonna have to upgrade our camera one of these days. It's a dinosaur!

Pirate Girl,
Sounds like a sweet camera! Youre in NYC right? I too am an artist, and my new cam (Canon 50d) is actually from some store on Coney Island. Trust me, just read the book, and play play play!! Advice.. Dont shoot in raw if you're just using it for pleasure. It takes up a ton of memory on the memory card and in the computer, and most (like my window photo gallery) cannot even load it, so I have to go into Photoshop and convert.. And kudos to you on gettin the darn thing on the page.. Im a photographer and still cant figure this sites pic features out!! lol
Blue Bonsai... stunning photo.. a lot of my best pics were taken with a simple Canon Powershot!

Hey Josh,

Thanks for the the tips, but I hope not to be doing much shooting other than quilts, plants & architectural details. I'm still am looking for work (15 months later, thank G_d for Unemployment Insurance extensions) & trying to prevent Quilting from upstaging my job search efforts. So pix will largely have to keep, it's really to be a vehicle for my Quilt Blog, you'll are invited to come on by for a visit & drop thoughts, comments, critiques, etc.; all are welcome -- ("karenthequilter" (no spaces)). I'm trying to start selling my Quilts as folks have been asking me for years if I sell them. I hadn't been interested in doing so 'til now, & have a larger enough body of works to get started. Also I haven't known how to before, am trying to figure this out, so had my friend of Ceropegia fame take some pix so I could start having an online presence (a quilt forum to get feedback) & there's a handmade art site called Etsy where I hope to be posting for sale (my stuff is kind of pricy for there, not sure it'll work; I do more Art Quilts & one of a kind work rather that more traditional type quilts).

Hiya Christoula,

Yes, I'm in NYC, actually Sheepshead Bay, all the way at the other end of the Coney Island Boardwalk (approx. 3 miles away). You bought your camera in Coney Island? How bizarre, small world, didn't even know it had camera shops; hope you got a receipt. Maybe we can meet on the Boardwalk sometime, say hello & grab a coffee somewhere.

What pls. is "shooting in raw"? I've spent some time w/ the manual & have now cleared out sufficient room on my hard drive. Patron St. sent me some freeware editting stuff I still have to check out.

As to getting it on the page, I'll confess, going thru Photobucket as intermediary. So far I've shot to the build it-in memory card & the removable one & played back from each to my PC. But I didn't know how to upload to here w/out copying the salient lines of code from Photobucket.

Anyway, lots to learn, have just spent my first batteries, got to go buy more & a recharger. Bummer that I've discovered is my built memory card holds 3 pix -- 3???? Whose brilliant idea was that I ask you ...?

Hey John,

Thanks, nothing wrong w/ dinosaurs, if it ain't broke ... as long as you can take nice pix, I wouldn't hurry.

Anyway, sorry to be sort of OT, but I will be shooting more plant pix SOMETIME & besides, it's my thread right, so I can't sort of veer it in a semi-off T direction? We'll blame it on new camera delirium!!

> What pls. is "shooting in raw"?

It means that the data from the the sensor is stored in a file without converting it to a bitmap picture (JPEG, TIFF etc.) first, i.e. it is the "negative" in the digital world and they contain much more data than the JPEG files. These "RAW" files are not meant to be viewed directly, they must be converted. They are very useful when you learn more about how to process your photographs, but I don't think your camera can save in RAW anyway (you meant a DMZ-LZ10, right?).

Hi Tjicken,

Well thanks for trying, but that's still rather Greek to me. Don't think I need to worry about this yet (or even at all really).

No, the camera is a DMC LZ10 (not DMZ).

RAW files are just that: Raw. It's the picture you take without any sharpening, whitebalance adjustment (if you don't know what this is, don't worry about it for now), or resizing done. When your camera saves the picture in its memory, unless you tell it to save in RAW format, it will do all these things and then save the result as a common format like .JPG. This is usually fine and makes it easier for you to quickly upload pictures to the web or email or whatever.

If you saved your pictures in RAW format, you would have to make them into a common format first, before being able to share them, since RAW files are usually encoded differently from camera type to camera type, and so most programs can't read them. They're also very big; in your case they'd be around 10mb.

Well thanks, but I knew I didn't need it -- my object here is to keep things simpler, not more complicated.

Having studied photography in college including developing & printing my own photos (black & white only), I sort of have a good handle on what I DO & DON'T need to know.

Citosa, thanks anyway, but you needn't have even brought this up - for the average, non professional taking pix like me, this is brain clutter I just don't need. -- Thanks but no thanks!

I understand that everyone is different, but personally, I shoot *everything* in RAW. True, it is substantially more involved, and requires some careful learning, but ultimately, it gives you *way* more control over the final image. Also, with most SLRs (especially the low end ones like mine), the onbaord processing just plain sucks, ruining otherwise lovely shots. I personally can't stand the idea of letting some heartless chip in my camera make all of the artistic decisions (beyond subject and composition) in what the final image looks like.

This does come with some drawbacks as has been mentioned. RAW files are larger, and harder to manage. It also generates more files as I have all my RAW files, and then the converted TIFFs for each of the photos I want to print/share.

Lots of people don't have the time, patience, or desire to really learn and understand digital photography. For those, a nice Point and Shoot is the smart buy, and will yield lots of pleasant snapshots with a minimum of effort. But, for those of who want total control of their photos, and enjoy learning technical processes, rich with complications and frustrations, digital photography is just about perfect! I guess what I'm really trying to say, is don't be afraid to try RAW if you want to take your photography to the "next level."

In any case, congratulations on the camera Pirate Girl! Now I expect to see pictures of all of these plants you talk about! I know you've got a bunch! ;-)

Joe Science,.. I totally agree with you also. Someone had told me that (about the raw storage thing) before. I did my first paid job last year, so as far as the tech world of it, I am still a novice. I have an awesome shot I got of my burros tail the other day, but still cant get anything to this site!! ...gee, could you direct me to a thread for that?? lol
Pirate Girl,.. Yes, Coney Island.. but I had it air shipped to me @ my home in the North west corner of pa, just south of Lake Erie (whoo hoo, summer fun is coming!). I wish I could say Ive been to NYC! Cant wait to see more of your pics! will definitely check out the quilts!
Josh,.. Northern Ca.. Is San Jose up around there? just curious.. awesome pic too.. love the lengthiness of it! I have also finally identified my other jades.. Crosbys Compact.. Im pretty sure, could still be wrong! Man I love this forum! Ive learned so much! Picked up some white gravel and verm., bark, because now I have a ton of clippings that I just cant seem to get rid off! Im attached to them all! Crazy obsession eh? lol
Christina

{{gwi:482896}}

Nice isolation!

Josh

Where is the pics?