Hello everyone. just a short note to introduce myself. I'm David, 71 years old and live in North Wales - returned to photography after well over 60 odd years. My earliest memories are helping my dad load film into a developer tank whilst sitting cramped under the stairs Dad bought me a box camera to start with, then later one which had bellows... Happy days. I still have hundreds of old BW negatives from those days, but sadly no way of seeing exactly what they are. Over the years like most people I've taken the usual holiday snaps, but thought now is the time to give it another try. So I found on xxbay a brand new unused Canon 500D and a very little used Sigma 18:200 lens. Not really sure just why I bought these, other than I like the 'feel' of the Canon. Now looking at beginners courses to ramp up my knowledge ... Stay safe everyone ... David
Hi David and welcome I think my son was a bit young to remember but the cupboard under the stairs was my darkroom space! Enjoy using your Canon. I look forward to seeing some pictures. Keep safe.
Many Thanks Pete.... I have been playing with my new kit and for the very first time taken some photos without using the Auto.... Here is one - not too good yet, but I'm chuffed with it ... Not worked out how to place an image yet ..... durrrr..... I seem to have posted all my old garden photos .... Cheers David
Hello David, I'm new here as well.I love the picture of the bird. It is "crisp". You should post your pictures in the Appraisal forum to receive quite a few helpful suggestions and ideas. Take it easy!
Nice Puffin! There are two main ways to put a picture on here. The way I most use is to put the image on Flickr (free accounts are possible). In Flickr on each photo’s individual page there is an option to share a photo. It brings up a box with sharing options across the top. The right hand one is the one that is needed it is called BBC code. There is then a pull down menu for the size of image. Use the one with 800 pixels in it to get the right link. Then copy the link and paste it into your post text. Flickr resizing is a bit hit and miss. When you start editing your photos you will come across resizing as part of the process of saving your edits. Most programs call saving “exporting” - it is a very bad idea to overwrite a jpg file so the idea is that you are encouraged to save the results as “something else” and one of the options is to save as a smaller size. So save a copy as 800 pixels on the long edge, put this on Flickr and link to the original. This will stop Flickr messing with the file. If you have the 800 px file on your disk you can use the upload a file button on the post menu. It is a bit slow but it will give you a choose file menu. Choose the file. Wait. You will get options to post a thumbnail or full image. Choose full image. This will display the image in your posting box and you can add text. If you try posting a big file it will fail. If you try to make a big file small by saving it original image size but a high degree of compression (low jpeg quality) it will look horrible. A image of 800 pixels and best jpg quality will be about 300 kb in size and fit nicely. When look at a picture on your screen it is early always resized by the viewing program anyway - there only a few pixels across your screen. A photo editing program will make much better decisions about which pixels to remove than will a web-browser or Flickr. It works amazingly well. I have a Canon 5Ds - a normal image is ~8,000 pixels across. They downsize nicely to 800!
Hi David, I rather envy you for having lots of old negatives. My late mother chucked a lot of old 'rubbish' away in a somewhat confused state while I worked abroad, and even worse later. I have some contact prints but sadly many family photographs are lost for ever. Old negatives are easily scanned, repaired with the aid of inexpensive software, and printed to a standard never possible in purely analogue days. You might have a wonderful lockdown project. This thread is not the right place to go into the technicalities but is the perfect place to welcome you aboard. Welcome aboard. After you have processed a few B&W negatives you will develop (no pun intended) a sense of what a B&W negative might contain. Its amazing what might be contained in the almost hidden shadows and highlights of a silver negative.
Hi David and Welcome!, Just like you I also had a film camera few years ago and I still have some of the negatives from the first photos I took. Good vintage stuff as I believe. All the best! Jonathan
@PeteRob Many thanks for your advice..... I will do my best to follow it. Took some other photos in the garden yesterday which I would welcome critique so I'll head over the the correct forum.. Cheers David
@Learning - what a WONDERFUL idea..... I'll have to have a look at that and if I'm successful I'll post a few in the correct form .. Cheers David
My winter project is digitising 25 years of family albums from negs, most of the prints are fading. I already discovered my wet printing from FP4 was more fun at the time than productive of quality results! Over-exposed 110 colour negatives are a right pain to work with though. There was a reason high street prints were so small, the image quality of a 1970’s 110 instamatic was absolutely dire!
Hello David, and welcome to the forum! It was being shown my grandfather's collection of negatives/prints and darkroom equipment that first got me into photography - the magic of making an image still hasn't waned for me even though I primarily shoot digital these days - although I have been nagging my other half to finish off my 'convert the bathroom into a darkroom' plan for a while now!
Many thanks for the smashing welcome .... Having re-kindled my interest in photography it's wonderful to find so many like minded people out there .. I just may have to dig out the old negatives - once I get a handle on this new digital stuff......
