Need advice on shots

M

Milky

Messages
14
Name
Craig
Edit My Images
No
Ok, so after getting a new lens an a polarizing filter, I thought I'd try them out. I know these shots aren't up to much but I'm totally new to this so I just started snapping and took it from there.

Basically I'm looking for advice on settings and such like, most of these were taken on auto.

1.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/263.jpg

2.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/264.jpg

3.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/277.jpg

4.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/266.jpg

5.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/281.jpg

6.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/338.jpg

7.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/351-1.jpg

8.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff191/Quirky_06/358.jpg

Staff Edit : Images changed to clickable links. Pictures must not exceed current forum limits as per the rules.
Please feel free to replace this with a fresh/resized image and remove this text :)
 
I don't confess to knowing a lot about photography, I'm relatively new to it myself so please take my comments with a large pinch of salt.

There's definitely potential in your images in my opinion. The framing is good but I think your exposure is letting you down. For instance, 3 and 6 are overexposed whilst the last 2 are underexposed. 1 is also slightly soft to my eye.

I like number 4 a lot and is my pick of the bunch. With a slight crop and level it can be a great shot. A small edit on 3 and again you've got a great shot (y) You've nailed the blues in the sky which is great too.

I hope these comments aren't too harsh. As I say I'm far from an expert, I know I appreciate it when people comment on my photos so thought I'd do the same :)

ps. try experimenting with some grad filters to improve those last 2 shots. These will enable you to brighten the land (and thus bring out the detail) whilst not blowing out the sky.
 
That's great cheers, a lot more positive than I was expecting to be honest.

Overexposed = too light, underexposed = too dark??

It's good to get some feedback and a nudge in the right direction.
 
Don't mind the edit at all, looks much better, thanks.

I take it thats what it should look like with correct exposure?
 
Milky said:
That's great cheers, a lot more positive than I was expecting to be honest.

Overexposed = too light, underexposed = too dark??

It's good to get some feedback and a nudge in the right direction.
Click to expand...

Correct (y)

All I did with the picture was adjust the brightness and contrast. It darkened the lighter areas and helped saturate the colours a bit more. I also applied a slight crop and sharpen. You'll probably find that you need to tinker with nearly all of your images in some way, especially if you're shooting RAW.

It looks like you have a good eye for a photo, keep it up.
 
Thanks for the help mate.

I don't have any editing software at the moment so maybe that should be my next purchase.
 
With that last shot, try and use as wide aperture as you can to get nice, shallow depth of field. This will blur the background and give more emphasis on your subject without the risk of distractions.

A smaller aperture will give you the opposite effect, and give you more depth of field (y)
 
Hi Milky.
As you have noticed, the D60 auto mode is not too bad, but may not always give you the results that YOU are after. Have a play on manual M, its realy not too hard and unless you are printing everything off, its free. The thumb wheel normaly controls the speed, but pressing a button and moving the thumb wheel does the aparture, though I can't remember which button.

First off, decide what you want to acheive from the pic and prioritise accordingly... if its a landscape, you want most or all of the image to be in focus, so a high depth of field dof. To acheive this, use a fairly small aparture of between f8 - f14 Much smaller then this, like f22, the pics can become blured due to difraction. For a portrait or closeup where you want to blur the background, you want a shallow dof, so choose the largest aparture you have like f2.8 or more likely f3.5 for a kit lens.


For a moving subject, you want to prioritise the shutter speed to give the desired effect. High speed 1/300 to 1/500 will freeze most action, whilst 1/125 will allow a panned shot to keep the subject sharp whilst giving the background some motion blur to show movement.

Next look at the exposure meter +......I......- when you have set the most important part, you now need to balance the light entering the camera by adjusting the other two elements from Aparture, Shutter and ISO. Most of the time you want the exposure meter to be in or near the center.

For instance, take this as an example. You are facing the scene in pic3. you want the shed and boat in focus, so choose f8 as the aparture to give a reasonable dof. Its a bright sunny day, so you can easily get away with ISO 100.
Look at the light meter and at 1/500, It will be +...........I.- showing under exposure towards the - side. Alter the shutter speed to slow it down and it will move to the left and be centered somewhere about 1/250. Take the pic then have a look at the histogram and highlites ( look in the manual ) Any areas of the highlites that are flashing mean the area is fully saturated and will loose detail that would be hard or impossible to recover... Here, I'm guessing that the white boat would be saturated, so decrease the exposure a bit to 1/300 which would show +........I....- and have another go.

If it was evening and getting dark, you could easily end up with a very slow shutter speed and a blurred shot if hand holding. Now its time to increase the ISO to 200, 400 as this would let you keep the aparture you want, whilst getting the shutter speed back up to a usable level... there comes a point when the light is getting less, where you will need to compromise somewhere between a high ISO and a noisy image, or opening up the aparture and loosing some dof or slowing down the shutter speed to a point that you need a tripod to keep it steady.



Look at the background too. The last pic, has a nice anchor, but what about the benches... Do they realy add to the shot! or would standing in a better place have given a less cluttered background. Lots of the time, it can't be helped with imovable objects.

Finaly, because the forum has a max size alowed for posting pics, you risk the police chasing after you or they might change your pictures into clickable links. You can post links to larger pics, but any embedded images should be 800x600 or smaller. So bear this in mind when uploading anymore to photobucket. Edit - I see Yvonne has pounced already :LOL: :D



Hope that helps a bit :thinking:
Neil.
 
Thats excellent, thanks Neil. It's really helped me understand the different settings and what effect they can have on the photo.

Can't wait to get back out and have another session, I've found myself looking for a photo everywhere I go!!
 
If you want to play with settings yourself in any of the modes other than
the presets, i was advised to look at the Exif details to get some base
settings as a starting point & adjust from there (y)
 
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