Feck thats annoying

paudie · 22-10-2006 7:53am #1

So I was giving out about red lights at gigs last week.
Well jaysus where were they last night?

Had to shoot God is an astro last night, but they use visuals on a screen behind them so basically use 0 lights grrrr..

especially when I'm meant to be be selling these shots, there's only so many shilouette shots you can take.

Bring back the reds

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 1:15pm

What camera were you using?

Cheap trick (Maybe a bit too late):

Run out of the gig, and into the nearest shop. Get a pack of tobacco papers, and you have a diffuser for your pop up flash if you have one. Better than shadows.

Alternatively.

Open in Photoshop, go Image-Adjustments-Shadow/Highlight. Your camera'll keep a fair bit of detail, you just might have to put them all into B&W!

Give us a look if you want!

paudie · 22-10-2006 1:35pm

I shoot a 20D and a Sigma 18-50 F2.8 RAW all the time.

Just finished sorting through them there, not as bad as I first thought. That's not a bad idea about the papers, I'm generally not a fan of flash, but after last night I'm considering one.

I've played around with my friends metz CT-4, confusing but I reckon it could be cool. Either something like that with an L-bracket or maybe a 580 with a diffuser?

The people I shoot for don't want B&W, colour only. I'll post some up when I'm done editing

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 1:48pm

I'm not a big flash fan either, but if it has to be done, it has to be done!

I just bought a f/1.4 instead though

L-bracket will be bloody awkward at a gig, and you'd have to diffuse anyways!

paudie · 22-10-2006 1:55pm

Which 1.4?

Does the 580 have a 360 swivel head yeah?

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 1:57pm

It does indeed have a swivel head.

The Sigma 30mm 1.4, essentially a 50mm on your crop. Works a charm

paudie · 22-10-2006 2:00pm

Jaysus your brave with a prime

Guess I'll start saving again

Stupid photography making me buy loads of things.

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 2:03pm

Ah ye think that at the time... but once you start shooting with it, you'll never go back!

paudie · 22-10-2006 2:19pm

A PC is my next need to buy item. The laptop I work from crashes if I have more than one program running at a time i.e. photoshop and anything else.

Priced one for about a grand from Dell, but I might get my dad to help me build my own (he's good at that type of thing) and I'll go with Linux/GIMP

What do you guys think of that, anybody else running that setup?

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 2:26pm

Be better off to build your own spec imo...or at least stay away from Dell.

Linux is good and runs everything and anything..if you know how.

I haven't used the Gimp much myself. Just Photoshop for me, but the Gimp is supposed to be really good if you get into it.

paudie · 22-10-2006 2:32pm

Well my PS skills are limited to curves, cropping and sharpening so I'm not throwing that much away by starting with the GIMP.

Right, I'm off to Peats tomorrow.

Only 3 photos left to edit yay

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 2:39pm

*sound of system crashing*

paudie · 22-10-2006 2:41pm

don't jinx me, firefox and DPP seem to work ok together,
I just can't batch process.

I'll have to leave you later when putting in the meta in PS

melekalikimaka · 22-10-2006 4:40pm

i'm currently using linux on my pc after a nasty wipe of all my hd's i decided to stuff windows. its working a treat Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper is what i'm using at the mo, get automatix and it sorts all your sound video codecs and then some. I'm using wing(an emulator) to set up photoshop in linux at the moment, the obly thing holding me back, its a bit of work but I just got Wow working so ps should be easy... I hope. what spec is your lappy, could just wipe it and put linux on it saving the need for a new lappy and leavin ccash for new lens

paudie · 22-10-2006 5:19pm

P4 2.5GHz,
512Mb Ram
40GB

That might be an idea alright, you think it wouldn't crash as much? I think it's the fact that I have a dodgy fan (loud as a motorbike) so it overheats real easy.
Is Linux a lot less processor intense?

rymus · 22-10-2006 5:22pm

Fajitas! wrote:

...or at least stay away from Dell.

Ahh a bit harsh. I've got an old dell laptop thats still up to the task and a Dell PC bought from the dell outlet store about 2 years ago now. Got a great spec for a low price, cant argue with that. But of course, don't buy from Dell if you are the kind of person that needs technical support, cos you won't get anywhere useful.

melekalikimaka · 22-10-2006 5:31pm

paudie wrote:

P4 2.5GHz,
512Mb Ram
40GB

That might be an idea alright, you think it wouldn't crash as much? I think it's the fact that I have a dodgy fan (loud as a motorbike) so it overheats real easy.
Is Linux a lot less processor intense?

thats more than enough, same as my current pc spec...well for nove at least(moving to duel core etc soon)

a fan is alot cheaper to replace than a whole laptop. with that spec you've have a rocket fast linux system, I dunno bout the crashing yet, so far so good for me, no problems yet, but its only day one. its as fast as my pc...tho windows was getting a tad slow anyway, i can multitask alot more on linux anyway

paudie · 22-10-2006 6:24pm

Cool, I might try that so.

I thought it'd be pretty hard to replace a fan in a laptop. Because they're not as accessible as PC's?

I had a quick run around Linux on my dads machine today (he has it on a disk), seems cool and I reckon I could get used to it pretty quickly.

melekalikimaka · 22-10-2006 7:12pm

i'd reccommend ubuntu...easy as pie to work with

Fajitas! · 22-10-2006 9:36pm

rymus wrote:

Ahh a bit harsh.

Ah they're crap tbh!

tab126 · 23-10-2006 1:21am

paudie wrote:

Is Linux a lot less processor intense?

Complicated answer, but IMHO, yes. The difference is you can control how your processor is used on linux; you cannot on windows. To get insanely technical (sorry - i promise I'll make it pertain to photography in a few), you can even install a program that will control how your processor speed scales (ie, my 2.4 GHz chip runs at 800MHz when I'm not using it and I know because I'm watching the status coming from the chip). You can also lock it at a frequency (lower = slower & colder).

I use linux to batch-process stuff because that's what linux does well. I can throw 400 RAW's at it, set the parameters of basically how I want them converted and scaled, sleep, and wake up with a website.

As for building computers -- do it. It isn't that hard. Just remember to buy thermal compound for the processor and get good stuff - it is worth it. I got a dual-core chip 64-bit recently for photoshop and love it (and yes, I know that i'm not really using the 64 bits, but the emulation for 32-bit is amazing). Also get at least 2 SATA 3Gbs hard drives. They're a heck of a lot faster than normal ATA or SCSI drives, and photoshop makes heavy use of a scratch disk (which should NOT be on the drive on your windows page file, usually C: ). Oh and a lot of fast ram. But that's a given. All that shouldn't set you back more than about $1200 USD (950 euro?). And that is for an absolute RIG... (k, sorry. end technical rant -- computers are what I love)

I think GIMP also has a theme/hack that makes it look like photoshop and even gives you the keystrokes. I use PS because I can find tutorials, but I know GIMP is nearly as good, if not just as good. And since you can compile gimp for YOUR machine, the optimizations will be nice.

Also, Slackware linux rocks (though I admit it isn't the most "user friendly" thing on earth... though it is perfectly friendly to me.)

paudie · 23-10-2006 7:43am

right. best start studying then.

JMcL · 23-10-2006 10:44am

paudie wrote:

P4 2.5GHz,
512Mb Ram
40GB

That might be an idea alright, you think it wouldn't crash as much? I think it's the fact that I have a dodgy fan (loud as a motorbike) so it overheats real easy.
Is Linux a lot less processor intense?

You should be OK with 512Mb, but I found that my laptop (running Fedora) was much happier with 1Gb in it (though I do use it mainly for software development, and tend to have IDEs, databases, webservers and whatever running so your milage may vary). If you do think you need more memory, try these guys. They're based in Kildare (despite the .co.uk), fast, and good value. Unfortunately given that laptops generally only have 2 slots, you'll probably end up having to replace the whole lot.

Also if you are changing to Linux, if your harddisk is anything less than 5400rpm, I'd recommend taking the opportunity to upgrade it. The 4200rpm drives are a real bottleneck, and this probably made an even bigger difference to mine than the memory. Essentially I ended up with a laptop which this time last year I was considering changing that will now last me (hopefully) another year at a cost of just over €200

JMcL · 23-10-2006 11:04am

paudie wrote:

P4 2.5GHz,
512Mb Ram
40GB

That might be an idea alright, you think it wouldn't crash as much? I think it's the fact that I have a dodgy fan (loud as a motorbike) so it overheats real easy.
Is Linux a lot less processor intense?

You should be OK with 512Mb, but I found that my laptop (running Fedora) was much happier with 1Gb in it (though I do use it mainly for software development, and tend to have IDEs, databases, webservers and whatever running so your milage may vary). If you do think you need more memory, try these guys. They're based in Kildare (despite the .co.uk), fast, and good value. Unfortunately given that laptops generally only have 2 slots, you'll probably end up having to replace the whole lot.

Also if you are changing to Linux, if your harddisk is anything less than 5400rpm, I'd recommend upgrading it. The 4200rpm drives are a real bottleneck, and this probably made a bigger difference even than the memory. Essentially I ended up with a laptop which this time last year I was considering changing that will now last me (hopefully) another year at a cost of about €200

Feck thats annoying

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