Another my 52 a year with a differance (week 2 added)

After looking through all the 365's and 52's I wanted to do something alittle different.

As I am new to photography I thought it would be a good idea to show what I have learnt and also the results.

So my idea is to display one or a number of photo's taken that week and explain what I have learnt from them and how I have changed my techniques or settings.

I am hopeing this will both help me learn and also help others. Throughout the next year I would ask that C&C are made as this is the only way I can become better and also share my experiance with others.

Weeks run from a Monday - Sunday and I will try my best to change to topics throughout the year.

Sounds like a great idea, looking forward to the first piccie! Best of luck.

Very good idea there looking forward to this, hope it will learn me a thing or two. Good luck.

Sean

Nice twist on the 52, very much looking forward to seeing some of your photos.

Week 1 of my 52 is near an end already, what have a learnt????

Well this week has been one of the hardest times I have had since getting my camera. Untill early last week I have always shot in TV mode, so I thought it is about time I learned AV mode :shrug:

During the week I have been out everyday lunch hour and spare minute taking photo's and trying different settings to understand what all the settings do and how they affect the picture. The one main problem I found all week was the weather and light conditions were just always terrible, but I guess there's not alot I can do about that. To make things easier I did myself a list of settings and then shot the same subject whilst changing these settings. Once completed I went through each pic with the settings wrote down to see how the picture changed and also see what did and didn't work.

Well on Thursday I was feeling really low about the quality of pictures I was getting so I decided to go back to basics. I took my trusty Fuji bridge camera out with me and just enjoyed shooting in auto mode with no stress of what the outcome of the picture would look like or what settings did I have to use. When looking through the pictures I had taken in auto mode on the Fuji it reminded me why I wanted to learn more about my dslr and its settings, I wanted better pics.

Friday morning and I have the day off work so out comes the Cannon again. First thing I did was to look through some pics I had posted and read the comments received. With this in mind I went off with my camera determined to get some good shots with the AV mode.
I was even lucky to get some sunshine so all in all it was a good day and I enjoyed being out and taking shots again. I am now starting to find myself changing settings without thinking to much about it which is also good even though I still had quite a few shots which could have been better if I had checked or altered things before shooting.

Here are some shots from this week, the 1st being early this week and the last being from today.

1) This is one of the 1st shots taken in AV mode.


2)


3)


4)


5)


6)



Here is a quick summary of what I had learnt.
1) When to increase the ISO due to bad light or to allow a high shutter speed.
2) Use a tripod or find something to lean/rest against when taking shots with a lower shutter speed. I am not a fan of tripods so I have been leaning up alot of things this week.
3) Try to keep the shutter speed equal or there abouts to the focal length
4) What the difference is and when to use evluative metering and center-weighted-average metering.
5) The advantages of shooting in RAW

I still have not got my head fully around what aperture gives the best focus for different shots and also how to determine the exposure levels. So i will be continuing this onto next week. Hopefully not so many deer pics next week :nono:

Ain't it fun learning? 1 and 4 are excellent shots IMHO.

fabs said:

Ain't it fun learning? 1 and 4 are excellent shots IMHO.

Click to expand...

Thanks Fabs, yes I am having fun learning right now

I agree, the depth of field on no1 is perfect imo and then capture is great

No 4 is a good shot too, and you've captured some lovely light effects in the last one. Looking forward to seeing what you get next week

The last is my favourite. Good series though!

Love the depth of field in #1 but what a difference in quality by the time you get to #6, and in just a week. Well done

Well this week I was unable to do alot of photography during work days due to either work load or bad light and rain

Yesterday morning I was able to get back into my element of motorsport
Then I thought "I have to keep pushing myself and trying new things to improve" With this in mind I tried some out of norm shots for me. On prev visits to Oulton park I have only really done side panning shots, so it was time for a change.

When I was trying to shoot new angles I was also trying to remember everything I had learnt from the prev week, although it was not motorsport the idea's were the same.

I know there are still alot of improvments to be made but I was really happy with my attempt of new angles etc. I feel as if I am starting to understand the camera alot more now

Here is what I would call a Norm shot during the christmas period.

1)


Here are a few examples of the shots I took yesterday

2)


3)


4)


5)


And just one side panning shot to see if there has been a improvement
6)


I wonder what next week will bring ??????

Good efforts Sturs, it's all a learning curve Looking forward to seeing what next week brings

I like #4 from week 1 and several of the car shots, very good! The borders are quite nice too