Any photographers here?

[fastbilly1]

I dont buy digital cameras from anywhere but KEH, B&H, or Samys.

Film cameras, accessories, and lenses, I will buy on on ebay.

[fastbilly1]

Wait a second, Oxy, you are in LA. Go to Samys down on Fairfax ave. Its five stories and they should have a good used section. Tell them you are a beginner with a budget and they will get you setup.

[oxymoron]

Is that specific store better than the others?

Edit: By store I mean location.

[fastbilly1]

It is simply the biggest one, it is four stories. Any of them should work though - if you are closer to the Pasadena or Santa Barbara.

[oxymoron]

I'm in the Inland Empire so they're all equally distant. I'm in LA every week so it doesn't matter really though. Thanks for a bunch the help. I'll PM you if I have any more questions. Which I will.

[fastbilly1]

Oh man, you are in a cool area for street photography. San Bernardino is gorgeous. Yeah, you can hit me up whenever you have a question. Fair warning though, I may not be able to answer them.

I posted up four images I took in one of our old topics:
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... 9&start=10
The flower pictures was taken with my telephone through a quadchromatic prism. It has no post processing done to it, it is a blue flower with red tips, but the prism superimposed other colors ontop causing the camera sensor to freak out. On a DSLR with a bigger prism device, this is controllable, however on my Galaxy S3 it is not.

My main advice is four parts:
1. Study more than you think you need to
2. Shoot as much as you can
3. Dont get equipment lust
4. Less is more - dont put up 40 images when three can be just as powerful.

The best advice I was ever given was by Emory Kristof (a professional photographer who is not well known but is a good friend of my family), he said "Make your pictures tell a story." Which was exactly what I needed to hear. It may or not help you

[marurun]

These are important for a variety of reasons, like if you are planning to do landscapes the best cameras are all film and heavy.

Why? Are even the large-sensor digitals not up to the task? Tell me more. I ask because were I to get into photography it would be for landscapes and other natural stills.

[oxymoron]

Oh man, you are in a cool area for street photography. San Bernardino is gorgeous. Yeah, you can hit me up whenever you have a question. Fair warning though, I may not be able to answer them.

Just curious, did you live around here? I live a walking distance away from Mt. Baldy (In Upland) so that's where I'll be going to shoot first.

[fastbilly1]

These are important for a variety of reasons, like if you are planning to do landscapes the best cameras are all film and heavy.

Why? Are even the large-sensor digitals not up to the task? Tell me more. I ask because were I to get into photography it would be for landscapes and other natural stills.

Dont get me wrong, you can take a digital camera and get a good landscape shot. However the professionals use a medium or large format camera. To explain it in an image:


The 35mm is your standard camera size sensor - also called full frame. A 35mm sensor is what is in most DSLRs. All of those other sizes are medium or large format film sizes. The dark grey area is roughly the right size for the other common size for large format, 8x10 (that is in inches). Most professional landscape photographers I know use a Sinar or Linhof 8x10. By using a much large sensor, you can get more depth of field (stuff in focus) to your images. Now people have built scanner backs to get gigantic pictures, but again this is not for amateurs (the possible best camera for the job, is not the best camera for you).
Negating the scanner backs, the closest thing you can get to a large format digital camera is the Hasselblad H5D-200c, which shoots four 50mp shots almost instantaneously to give you a 200 megapixel image. And that starts at 50k for the body only.

Now here is the thing. Like I said earlier, dont get into gear lust. While a Hassleblad is awesome, if you are not making a living shooting pictures, dont buy one! Annie Leibovitz, one of the worlds best portrait photographers, once said "6 megapixels is all you need for a billboard" and it is true. If you dont believe it, my little brother was doing video for a shoot for a major company a few years ago and snapped a few stills on his iphone because the moment struck him. The photographer for the shoot passed on that night and his wife sold all his photography gear so they lost all the photos. One of his offhand iphone shots was turned into a billboard in Brasil.

Oh man, you are in a cool area for street photography. San Bernardino is gorgeous. Yeah, you can hit me up whenever you have a question. Fair warning though, I may not be able to answer them.

Just curious, did you live around here? I live a walking distance away from Mt. Baldy (In Upland) so that's where I'll be going to shoot first.

I have never lived there, but I have traveled there several times for work. In the past I had a cool job, now I am a desk jockey.

[samsonlonghair]

Hi gentlemen. I'm just brazen enough to call myself a photographer.

Fast makes a strong point regarding large format film (that is, film way bigger than 35mm). Old pros and photogs with deep pockets use these. Don't lose hope though. I can tell you that you can shoot great landscape photos without a professional-grade camera. I shot this with a four-year-old Canon EOS Rebel XS and a plain ol' kit lense.

Full size