Canon 600D

[Bonnie Lee]

Hey guys
So I've recently bought myself a canon 600D I think it has more names but I'll just
call it that for now...

I did wet process photography in year 10
then wet process to digital manipulation in grade 11
and last year for year 12 I did straight digital photography
but... I feel like this camera is at a whole new level and half the time I can't figure
out where anything as...

I was just wondering if anyone else has this camera?
also when the flash comes up i dont know where to switch it off to not...

http://paperxbunny.deviantart.com/#/d4pvtpf

also... I have some sort of addiction to using the toy camera effect on it...
since I feel it just makes everything better but is there a lens with the effect
already on it I can buy?

 

[MikeScone]

I'd never seen that effect in a camera before. No offense, but I'd not be interested in it, myself.

If you want to buy a lens which does that, get something cheap, fuzzy and really, really bad optically. There are some lenses which are intended to produce "Lomo" type images (the "Lomo" is a cheap, low-quality film camera which has an inexplicable popularity among some photographers for its low quality pictures). Although why you'd want to put such a lens on a really good camera like the 600D is beyond me.

Don't get me wrong, there are places where vignetting, soft focus and low contrast might enhance a picture. I wouldn't want to do that by limiting the initial quality of the image, though. I never shoot in black and white or sepia, either, for the same reason - why throw away the color information, or deliberately blur or vignette a photo, when you might want a good color image later? Much better to get a good image and then turn it into black and white or whatever later.

The paramount rule in digital photography, in my opinion, is to capture the best image you can in the camera, and then play with the effects in post-processing.

You can find all of the effects you're looking for, and many more, in any good photo editing package. Photoshop Elements is one of the more popular, and will do most of what full-blown PhotoShop will do, but at a fraction of the price, and with the advantage that if you want to transition to full PhotoShop later on, the basic layout is the same. There are other good ones, I'm just most familiar with PS and PS Elements.

While you're doing that, never save over the original image. That's your "digital negative", and you always want to be able to go back and start over again if some other idea hits. What I do is to resave every image after I edit it with a meaningful name, but leave the sequential number part, so that I will know which negative goes with which image. So, MFB_1234.jpg as it comes out of the camera becomes Natasha_1234.jpg after I clean it up.

Then, I'll apply whatever special effects I think I'd want, and resave using a suffix to differentiate the various versions of the picture. So, trying to emulate your "toy camera effect" in PS Elements, I get Natasha_1234-filters.jpg:

That's a combination of "correct camera distortion" (used backward, to add vignetting), "smart blur", "hue/saturation" (to reduce the color saturation) and "film grain". If I was home, using full PhotoShop, I could have saved a few steps using the "old photo" action I'd downloaded from the Adobe site.

If you are looking for a lens which can do interesting things which are hard to do in post-processing, the "Lens Baby" can be worth a look. It combines very shallow depth of field with a "sweet spot" which you move around the image by squeezing the lens on its supports. I got one as a gift some years ago. I don't use it much (see my rule about getting the best picture saved first, above), but I've had some fun with it at times.

 

[Bonnie Lee]

Thanks Mike

I suppose it probably isn't worth getting a low quality lens with the effect I just wanted something a bit different I think... The photos on my camera are so clear I keep feeling like it's too much...

Thanks for the tip for never saving over the original...
when I edit stuff and press save it never replaces my original pictures anyway but I didn't really pay attention to that plus side of it...

Would having a fish eye lens be any good though do you think?
I really want one but when I look at the price I'm not quite sure it's worth it or if I'll even capture anything worth while with it... I have the fish eye effect to edit but they just don't look good so I was wondering if maybe a fish eye lens would make it look that much better???

 

[MikeScone]

Bonnie Lee wrote:

Would having a fish eye lens be any good though do you think?

I suppose it depends on whether or not you like the distorted images they produce. I like wide angle lenses, but prefer those that don't have the extreme distortion of a fisheye. About 10mm is as wide as you can go before the distortion sets in for real, it seems. My widest is a 12-24mm zoom.

A friend of mine invested in a fisheye, and in the end he got rid of it. He decided there were so few times he really wanted the fisheye effect, it wasn't worth tying up the money or lugging around the lens.

You can simulate some of the same effect in post-processing.

Starting with this picture:

With the "pinch" filter (backward: -94%), you get:

Or, select the whole picture, and use Edit|Transform...|Warp, and set the type to "Fisheye":

I'm sure Natasha wouldn't be impressed.

 

[Bonnie Lee]

thanks for the reply
it's muchly appreciated.
now that i've talked about it kind of thing...
I'm not too sure I really am interested in those effects...

I'll always have them in my camera to play around with if needed but I guess i don't actually need those types of photos.

What types of lenses do you think come in the most handy?

Once again thanks heaps for the advice it's really great

 

[MikeScone]

Bonnie Lee wrote:

What types of lenses do you think come in the most handy?

It's a very personal decision, and depends on what sort of photography you like to do.

Besides pictures of Natasha and of Scouts at activities I attend, most of my pictures are either landscapes or nature (some closeups, but more birds and other animals). My lens lineup is:

• 18-200mm VR zoom - my everyday lens, used for 90% or more of my pictures. Ranges from wide-angle to telephoto
• 12-24mm zoom - ultra-wide angle, great for landscapes
• 70-300mm VR zoom - telephoto, used primarily for animals
• 55mm f1.8 - for low-light situations, and when I want minimum depth of field to make subjects stand out from the background
• 105mm macro - for extreme close-ups (flowers and insects, mostly)
• 600mm mirror telephoto - I don't use this much, but when you really want a long lens for birds it's great.

We've got several threads about lenses here in the Camera Corner which might be helpful:

• What are those numbers on lenses? - with examples from all of the focal lengths in my collection.
• Need some lens help - discussion of Canon lenses, among other things
• Fixed length lenses - discussion of fixed-length lenses vs zooms (and available light vs flash)
• Spring's here... - examples from my 105 macro

 

[Bonnie Lee]

Thanks a bunch for the help!
I'll have a read into the other camera threads
muchly appreciated.