[Lunatique]

First, the flowers:

[Lunatique]

Then the city of Hangzhou:

























Hangzhou airport:

[Lunatique]

Then the city of Shanghai:













I've never seen an underpass lit purple before. Very funky.

[Lunatique]

Then Elena in Hangzhou:

[Lunatique]

Then Elena in Shanghai:

[Lunatique]

And finally, we have:

Shooting out of a van:
http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/photography/1DMKII_portfolio/visions_of_china/fuzhou_2/fuzhou_2.htm

And the latest update of Kitty Cat Diaries:
http://www.ethereality.info/ethereality_website/photography/kitty_cat_diaries/kitty_cat_diaries.htm

[Max]

Lunatique, you are by far one of the best photographers I know.
These images are wonderful!!!! I love them.
Just wonderful,....I'll spend the next 20 minutes looking at them.
I even got some inspirations for paintings I would like to make taking the
atmosphere and composition of your images.
Never stop making such beautiful photos!!!!

[Basement bound]

Wow, luni these are fantastic.

I am sure you have posted this here before, but what are you using. Digital, Film, is it porfessional film, any filters, etc...? Where do you proccess your film.
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ICQ # 84220724
Vigourian Productions

[Capt. Fred]

yeah, I like em too.
I reckon they're from a Digital camera, though I couldn't say why.
I do think they're digital photo's though.

[Bandados]

great photos, non-digital right?

[B0b]

excellent pics the dof on some of those flowers is a little off

Canon EOS 1DMKII Digital

question is what lens/s?

u shoot all those hand held or do u have a monopod?

[Lunatique]

Max - Thanks! I'm just some silly amateur, and I have so much more to learn. The best is yet to come!

Basement bound - Canon 1D Mark II. Post processing done with Digital Photo Professiona that comes bundled with the camera. Then some Photoshop for sharpening or other tweaks. Some shots dont' require any post processing at all--those are always the best ones.

Capt. Fred/Bandados - Hehehe, conflicting views. Fred is right though.

B0b - I really hate tripods. I only use one if I absolutely have to. I think less than 1% of the 1,300 shots I took used a tripod. It pretty much just stayed in the hotle room for the 8.5 days out the 9 days.

My lenses:

Sigma 12-24, EF 50 1.4, Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 DI, EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS. The Sigma almost never get used. 28 is about as wide as I need to go 90% of the time. the Sigma gets used to capture the entire interior of a room a lot.

[asmodie]

Realy nice pictures. I have to go out and shoot some more my self.

Capt. Fred: The feeling that it's from a digital camera is the sharpness in the pictures that you almost never get with normal film. And the sharp color help to.
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Beeing evil as usual...

[B0b]

EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS - wow nice lens!!

only got a dodgy tamron 28-200 super 3.8/5.6 Zoom and the stock 18-55 that came with my rebel.. lookin @ getting a nice lens, after i get the new 20D of course

might start a photo thread

[Behemoth2029]

The photos are really great, but what I'm totally overwhelmed by is the hotness of that babe Elena. The second link kinda spoiled it though, is it really necessary to tell people that she isn't single? Dont kill people's dreams

[Malachi Maloney]

Beautiful work Luna, thanks for sharing.

M
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l i q u i d w e r x

[Lunatique]

asmodie - I think people can make film photos as saturated and sharp as they want, it's just that most have no idea how to do it. A darkroom is a lot harder to deal with, while the digital darkroom is much more precise and intuitive.

B0b - The more I shoot, the less I think the lens matters. In the end, it's the composition, lighting, and your ability to expose the picture just right and focurs dead on that makes the picture what it is. Differences between lenses are really not that dramatic in terms of visual quality. In construction, AF speed..etc is another story though. I mean, look at the EF 50 1.8. It's about as cheap as lenses get, but it takes pictures of amazing quality--beating out much more expensive lenses on a daily basis around the world.

Behemoth2029 - Ahahahaha. Elena laughted at your comment.

Malachi - Thanks bro.

[Impaler]

Asmodie's statement is sort of mind-boggling, that digital pictures are sharper than film. heh. Asmodie, you should check out the work of Ernst Haas. He's one of the all-time great masters of color photography. You'll begin to see just then how powerful color film can be.

Lunatique, there are about 10 truly great publication-quality pictures in here. I think that using an SLR has really improved your photography in terms of choice of focus, composition, capturing the moment, everything.

That being said, lay off the unsharp mask a little. I could see some distinct fringing in some of the flower shots, which is a good indication that they probably didn't need to be sharpened in the first place. I think it's just a natural inclination to over-sharpen right now with everybody. It comes from cameras being measured now in terms of megapixels and resolution and sharpness, instead of the old standards of build quality and functionality.

I also have to disagree with you when you say that lenses don't matter. There may not be much difference between a $200 Sigma and a $700 dollar Canon visually, or even in terms of build quality. Compare both that Sigma lens and the Canon to a $3000 Contax (technically, Zeiss) or Leica lens and you'll understand exactly what I mean. Colors with an expensive lens are more accurately reproduced with less optical distortion. Tones are more delicate. Contrast is higher, detail is sharper. You should consider yourself lucky if your cheap-o lens still works after 10 years. The plastic housing will warp with time, plastic mechanisms inside the lens will break with use. A quality lens is built to last a lifetime. The focusing threads will be made out of precisely machined metal. The housing will be a tough alloy. There should be very few signs of wear even after 80,000 shots. There IS a difference in lenses, and a good lens can be the most valuable investment you make to your set-up.

That's not to say that cheap lenses create bad pictures. You were dead-on accurate when you said the most important thing in a picture is "the composition, lighting, and your ability to expose the picture just right and focurs dead on that makes the picture what it is.", and these shots here reflect just that.
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QED, sort of.

[B0b]

i just want a decent tele that doesn't give me fringing @ top zoom i tooks some nice shots of the Red Arrows (aerobatic display team) but because i was @ the limit of my zoom, the fringing is noticable on some of the better angles..

just spotted a sigma 70-300mm which is @ a good price, so might go for that to replace my tamron for tele shots

[Impaler]

I would say go with a Canon lens then, and don't be afraid to check out prime focal lengths. Image quality on zoom lenses is always slightly degraded compared to a prime lens; the light is going through more glass with zoom. Mirror lenses are also extremely nice, but are pretty expensive.

The lens will consume a decent chunk of change (don't be surprised to spend 2000 euros or pounds or whatever you brits use), but it should get you the shots you want. Also, check out some photographer's magazines. You can almost always find a decent review of the hot new lenses on the market today.
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QED, sort of.

[Lunatique]

Impaler - Yeah, guilty as charged. I keep getting people telling me that my images aren't sharp enough at Fred Miranda's forum--but I think they were mostly talking about my people shots. I got a little paranoid, so I decided to just give all the picture a single pass of USM to make sure no one mentions it again. Sure enough, no one did this time around--except that you, including myself, find that some images are a bit over-sharpened. I'll lay off on it from now on.

I think maybe my thoughts about lenses only reflect my own lens collection, which are all quite nice in terms of quality and build. Maybe it someone put a really crappy lens in my hand, I'd feel very differently in a second.

B0b - Oh yeah, I forgot all about fringing. They can be a real bitch. I get them even on my EF 70-200 IS. If you look closely at the airport shots, you might see some purple fringing.

You might want to look into the Sigma 120-300 f/2.8. It is a highly acclaimed lens. No IS though.

Impaler - Primes are scary for shooting moving stuff though. Very restrictive for framing. For me, I feel that the quality difference is worth it to get a zoom. Some zooms are rated as good as primes in their focal length.

[Awetopsy]

love em. what camera is this? how much?

you sure got a thing going for her legs lately huh?

[Lunatique]

[B0b]

yeah like $1,500 on ur IS

here's an example of the fringing i get

[math]

the sharpen rool ruins something....

at least it noticed it as soon as i saw the photos....so something must be wrong -_-
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quit pro quo

[Lunatique]

I went ahead and replaced all the oversharpened files--pretty much all the flower shots and a couple of architecture/street shots.

[B0b]

i find that you need to run USM on images that you want developed..

[Impaler]

Damn, I don't even know why this didn't click in my mind earlier.

Bob, that fringing in your jets photo is actually more likely a CCD artifact than an issue with crappy lenses. All digital cameras get them. Bright light causes some of the cells on a CCD (or cmos, or whatever) chip to "bloom", meaning that colors and light bleed. Thus, you get that purple halo around the edges. Photoshop that stuff out with replace color or something similar.

dpreview has a more articulate explanation of this same concept here, but no mention of how to avoid or correct it. Bastards.
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QED, sort of.

[B0b]

thanx for the link Impaler

found a tool to help remove colour finging
http://www.shaystephens.com/ca.asp

[Impaler]

http://www.adorama.com/ICA1DM2.html

Jesus, Luna. Jesus Holy Hell of a Christ. I mean, COME ON.

And here I was thinking that you took all of these pictures with the Canon Digital Rebel. My god, man. MY GOD.
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QED, sort of.