I doubt there's much you can do to get around it in-camera... the lens is a certain shape and without changing it, you won't change the levels of distortion it offers... this is where imaging software like photoshop comes in, which in the right hands (with a bit of patience) can eliminate all but the most fierce of distortions... if you indeed have photoshop, have a play around with the lens correction filter which (in cs2 anyway) can be found under Filter/ Distort/ Lens Correction.... but make sure to purge the cache beforehand if you're running anything other than a behemoth of a machine, as it's very memory-hungry!

hope that helps ;)
Adam

that is stunning, what patience that dude has, amazing!

wish I could be so nonchalent about my finances!!

I happened to be doing some food shots for stock and realised that this one might fit the bill for this month's challenge..... homemade (by me!) cherry & raisin flapjacks on a bed of jumbo oats.. enjoy!

Adam

for those who have been following the development of our newest family member, there has been a bit of a funny news.... when my step-sister took "her" to the vets to get her innoculations and whatnot, the vet told her that actually, Zoe was a boy!! guess we'll have to change that pink collar for a blue one before he gets old enough to notice!! .... in fairness it wasn't our fault though, the family who gave him to us introduced him as a girl...! anyway his name is now Snoopy, and after a few initial hisses is now becoming firm friends with our dog Millie... =)

Adam

dammit I just typed a huge response and accidentally closed the window... grrr!

ok, do excuse the slightly more "notey" form of this but I don't have time to re-type it all!

Rich makes some good points - the 10% upscaling method is the way I do it for images I submit to the stock site Alamy, which generally requires images to be longer than about 5100px on the long side (or about 15mp).... my 40d kicks out 3888px on the long side, so that's about a 25% upscaling.... in my experience doing a few 10% increases retains more of the detail than a direct, one-move upscaling.... the point made about a large radius usm is also wise...

Viewing distances as mentioned by Tom are a factor to consider and mean that sometimes the industry-standard resolution for printing of 300dpi need not necessarily be adhered to... however, assuming you are trying to keep the resolution nice and high at 300dpi, for a 20 x 30 poster you would need 9000px by 6000px. This is way beyond the sensor resolution most of us are probably shooting with, and with this knowledge printing labs have now started to offer lossless interpolation as part of their services.... this means you can submit your prints at half the dimensions of the final intended output - so for this 20x30 poster you'd submit a print optimised for 15x10, which is a much more achievable 4500px by 3000px.... use the 10% method to get to this size and then let the printing lab losslessly increase it for you ;)

I'm not sure how widespread this service is, but I now its available through the lab I personally use, and seems like a great idea to me - here's a link to the site anyway: http://www.digitalab.co.uk/prints_digital_files.html

hope that helps!

Adam

I have to say I do kind of agree, it's better to just keep your head buried in the sand until you're utterly convinced the equipment you're currently using is holding you back creatively.... it's very easy and tempting to get pulled into all the hype around new technology and better specs and of course a lot of it is driven by market competition.... however... I do have this to say - bout bloody time Canon incorporated the ability to wirelessly control flash units into the camera body.... I felt severely cheated when I had to shell out over £150 for Canon's ST-E2 control unit just to be able to take advantage of E-TTL metering from an off-camera flash... this technology has been incorportated into Nikon cameras for the past couple of generations so I'm happy Canon have finally levelled the playing field on that matter...

that may be a little more slick than this one, but I've used it and it works pretty well: -

http://tiltshiftmaker.com/

Ray (THROBBE) directed me to it, and it's a nice little app, only bummer is the 5mb filesize limit...

(and for those who are interested here's what I came up with by using it ;) - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1836123&member )

Adam

hehe yep that was some clever tinkering you managed that day Rich, totally over my head but very useful!

an aside in relation to 3dguy's comment - I think this is one of Canon's biggest ripoffs/failings, in that in order to wireless off-camera flash you gotta shell out nearly £200 for E-TTL to work... as I understand it the recent generations of Nikons all have this transmitting ability built in from the start, which is obviously hugely preferable..!

need me one of these, but just haven't had the patience to go about making one as yet! great money-saving idea, nice job =)

some lovely portraits and macro work, congrats!
very stylish collage Kort ;)

Interesting thread... I suppose common wisdom dictates that at any given focal length a prime of comparable price will usually outperform a zoom.. so if we're talking absolute quality of image, it's gotta be primes every time. There ARE good zooms out there (of which I own a couple) which do the job over 90% as well and add a whole degree of convenience... and I think that's really the tradeoff - convenience vs. constant lens-changing (risking allowing dust onto the sensor) in the name of slightly better image quality. I would say, if you're buying lenses mainly for studio work where you have the time to set everything up "just so" then go with primes... time isn't of the essence and you can readjust as needed. I find zooms invaluable when on the move though..

I have spent a good deal of time using the Tamron 28-300 VR, a lens designed as a kind of "all in one" lens solution, and though you do make some sacrifices in terms of absolute image quality (AF could also be improved), the convenience of not changing lenses makes it a perfect travel companion, and you're far more likely to nail those split-moment opportunistic shots than if you're fannying about switching lenses the whole time. Better to have to spend 10 mins in photoshop correcting the shot than to have missed it altogether....

Regarding my own gear, see my homepage for a full list...

My first experience with a prime was with the "nifty fifty" Bruce mentions, having only used the 18-55 kit lens previously. In terms of image quality, blows it out of the water. I am constantly recommending it to people still shooting with the kit lens. And it's cheaper. So with zooms you're paying for the convenience...

My latest addition is a 28-75 f/2.8 which nicely fills the gap between my 10-20 and 75-300... good walkround lens, and my firm first choice for portrait/ product/ studio photography. For getting the perfect angle on a shot it's much easier to twist the zoom ring a small amount than have to totally rearrange the tripod and refocus... in this respect it's a joy to work with compared with the 50mm, which also doesn't focus nearly as close....

Next on the list is hopefully the 70-200 f/4 L with 1.4x extender, and I'll ditch the 75-300... I think at longer focal lengths than that though, I'd be looking at going with primes.... 400mm/ 500mm etc... but those things ain't cheap!! Investing in such glass would make me really feel like I had to justify the expense, and probably wouldn't do so unless I chose to go the route of professional wildlife photographer, spending weeks in wilderness at a time - you'd just feel really really cheap if you were in the right place, right time, looking at a stunning scene, and you didn't have the equipment to do it justice....

For me then, zooms for the time being.... the convenience is a deciding factor and if you're aware of their limitations (likelihood of higher CA etc.) you can work around their small foibles.

Adam

thanks guys for the selection =) ... quite a colourful week with some lovely works!

instant bookmark, thank you David

=)