sagebrushfire

Honestly I think it's worse to give someone something that's 60%+ painted and it shows, especially in the picture where the baby's foot mysteriously just cuts off and where the little girl looks like an angry swamp monster. It would be better to just use the picture as a slight reference and make a nice looking painting based off it.

Using a large aperture and getting a shallow DOF in-camera gives you an effect that you can't truly replicate in post because there's certain information that the camera didn't pick up and is lost forever.

That being said, there is some merit to the "use a camera as a data capturing device" approach. If you shoot in raw, use small apertures for the greatest depth of field and make your exposures as bland as possible (try to avoid any blown highlights or blackened shadows) you have a LOT of creative freedom in post. This is sometimes beneficial for a client that doesn't know what they want or needs many different effects but doesn't want multiple shoots, etc.

So I think there are merits to getting it right in the camera and making it right in post, it all depends on your workflow. Some people don't have time for ANY processing so in-camera has to be perfect; other people have no time for setting up shots in the field but all the processing time they want.

That doesn't matter; a work protected the moment it's created. Searching for stock images via Google or any other search engine is the problem here; there are plenty of free and cheap online sources for stock photos (sxc.hu, morguefile, istockphoto, etc.) so I don't know why people insists on looking for stuff on Google. Google should either get rid of image search or have an incredibly annoying popup/disclaimer every time you search to remind you that you could be infringing on someone else's rights if you use the images you find. Then again the ultimate lesson here is that exposure opens you up to opportunities and risks at the same time; having your pictures online doesn't make your rights any easier to maintain.

What? That's called a derivative work and it most certainly will NOT protect you in anyway; it's copyright infringement. Is this supposed to be sarcastic or something?

300 FPS? There's no logical reason to ever present anything at 300 frames per second, your eyes and your brain could not process that much information, not to mention things that *should* have motion blur will mysteriously not have it. Look at your hand and wiggle it back and forth, see how blurry that is? Kiss that goodbye at 300FPS, how exactly would that be like "real life"? The sad thing here is that YOU are criticizing peoples' ignorance when you don't actually have the slightest clue what you're talking about. High frame rates can deliver certain effects but the most practical use for anything over 60 fps is to remap to a lower fps for slow motion effects (300fps would be awesome in that respect, you could turn 1 second into 10, more than enough for most cinematic effects). And re:real life, frame rate is not analogous to the way your eyes perceive visual stimuli. For the sake of video and animation, 60-120 fps is the reasonable limit; any more is a waste of resources.

This was not bad but ... why on earth did you compare Lightroom and Capture One Pro at two different preview sizes? They BOTH support 2048 and 2880; what on earth would make you think that changing Lightroom's setting but not Capture One's setting wouldn't be biased?

That is just such an incredibly amateur mistake I really had to make myself continue reading because I was expecting a train wreck of uneven and biased comparisons.

Overall I think this came to the right conclusion but would have benefited from ar least one section where you do a "Best Case Scenario" comparison and take a really noisey, poorly exposed image and try to make it as best as possible in each program - that's what a lot of people really care about: how far can I take my shooting and get good results? How many more images will I be able to save? Journalists and sports photographers are probably more interested in that sort of thing.

Yeah I wish I had been more specific/strict with the rules so I could disqualify some of these, a few of them aren't even worth being voted on ...

That thread is too disorganized to sift through; we need a better way to deal with cheaters. I've had a few on my challenges.

Sorry didn't see this; I didn't mention it in the rules so I suppose yes; the only problem is that you're only going to get a tonally even look with JPEG and cheap monitors since sRGB only has 256 values in gray scale.

Sorry I'm so very behind on my congratulations. This definitely deserved to be in first place, it's a brilliant image!

Sorry my description got cut off, I must not have saved it when I was in the middle of editing.

For the additional rules: You get the point, technology has grown exponentially in the past 100 years so don't limit yourself to pictures of things like iPads and Digital Cameras if you don't want to; here are plenty of items we might consider to be "retro" that were actually incredibly advanced for their time.

The ultimate camera is one that is essentially only a sturdy, well-built frame that can house interchangeable lenses, sensors, batteries, memory media readers and pc connection devices.

Ideally something that has a standardized design than can be upgraded in modules. Something similar does exist but it's far from being within a reasonable price point (I think it's a type of High Definition Camcorder).

I would really like to see a camera that can split it's resolution to become Full Frame or APS-C or M4/3, So maybe you shoot at 30MP M4/3, 18.7 MP APS-C and 15MP FF. The design would allow for various lenses and it would have to be mirror-less or the mirror would have to allow for the different types of lenses.

There are many times when I would gladly cut my resolution in half for a wider DOF and better low-light noise. Of course I don't know if that's logistically a sound idea, I just like the concept of an "all-in-one" camera.

I doubt that was the intention but it's not like Apple doesn't deserve it. Their products are awesome but their business practices ... well they have more in common with a prison shower scene than I'm comfortable with.

With freedom you just cannot have it all; to have absolute freedom would be a paradox because that would mean you're free to detract or take the freedom of others, who would then no longer have absolute freedom themselves.

So we argue and organize and find a balance that can satisfy the majority while giving the minority certain rights that allow them to coexist peacefully.

If you're in a non-essential public place or at a specifically planned event where photography is permitted, you don't have a reasonable right to privacy. You went out of your way to obtain access to a publicly available area.

Now, if you're walking in a business or residential area where you don't have much choice, perhaps you're traveling to work or school, I have less sympathy for photographers trying to snap your portrait because you have limited control over your ability to maintain privacy. That being said, photos of crowds or where a person is more or less unidentifiable are mostly harmless.

Oh ahahaha I don't know what I was thinking, all the same it totally works in Google.

Okay it's official: it's everyone else and NOT me. This is such a wildly popular theme, just Google "Leaning Tower of Pizza" and you will see thousands of examples of large things appearing small. Google "Photograph Toy Effect" for more good examples.

I'm honestly miffed; the vast majority of these submissions make absolutely no sense ...

I'm not even going to disqualify this because I wan't it to drag down your overall challenge rankings. You obvioulsy don't care, you haven't even withdrawn it.

Read the rules next time. How on Earth is it fun to enter challenges with random photos that have nothing to do with the themes? You don't actually win anything so what's the point?

As for the picture: this proves that an expensive camera doesn't magically take good pictures. You might have wanted to manually focus this on the iris for a shot with much more impact. If you're going to troll my challenges with unrelated pictures, at least upload really good ones.

Update: The Color Isolation pictures are great but they really don't have anything to do with split-toning and thus are being disqualified. That's a wildly poplar technique so I may hold a challenge for that but I can guarantee you there are probably already a couple (hundred) in dpreview's past so I'm on the fence.

Okay it looks like people are getting it. If the challenge starts getting full I will be disqualifying pieces that don't fit the rules that well; if you think a piece really just doesn't belong please file a complaint and I will see to it ASAP.

I provided a sample; probably 80% of the current entries don't really fit the theme - I guess it wasn't that clear. If I could change the rules I would probably make it a broader challenge including BW+Color images or something.