New Camera/I suck [Archive] - TriStateTuners.com :: Home of Tristate Auto Enthusiast

LSHatch

12-18-2006, 10:02 AM

thewake

12-18-2006, 10:50 AM

Ok. I don't have a tripod, I just got the camera, I don't know what I'm doing, I need help.

I'm not looking for criticism, I know they are terrible. I'm looking more for, "you should take it from this angle, try these settings." Stuff like that. Kind of a , what would you do in this scenario.

Also, the quality of the pictures doesn't seem great for a Rebel Xti. It doesn't seem as clear as all of you on here.

I would really appreciate any help and whatever pointers you may have.

Just quickly:

Picture 1 seems to need more depth of field. Try to have both bowls and stems in focus. An increase of the aperture f-# (makes the opening smaller), and/or being further away will widen the depth of field.

Picture 2 needs to have more light in the foreground. A little fill-flash here would have helped. Or you can take a second shot that will overexpose the background and merge them in photoshop.

Picture 3 needs a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion of the dog. Also you can try to pan with the dog and blur the background. Panning takes practice.

Picture 4 feels over exposed to me, a shorter shutter time would have left the hill and trees as silhouettes. Long exposures demand a tripod. Also a remote shutter and mirror lockup help as well.

In general, use the manual setting section of the dial (M, Av, Tv, P) stay away from the more automatic section (green box and picture mode icons). Get a tripod. Invest in good lenses. Take lots of photos. Bracket your photos (AEB & f-stop). You may already know these things so forgive me if you do.

One other thing I noticed, your ISO settings are 400, 1600, 400, 200. Higher ISO numbers lead to quicker exposures, and would use faster shutter speeds. They also lend themselves to more digital noise. I would have used 100 or 200 for all the shots except the dog, where I would have gone higher than 400, perhaps all the way to 1600 or 3200. Long exposures increase the noise level as well. 30 seconds (4th picture) is a very long time for a digital camera.

LSHatch

12-18-2006, 11:08 AM

Just quickly:

Picture 1 seems to need more depth of field. Try to have both bowls and stems in focus. An increase of the aperture f-# (makes the opening smaller), and/or being further away will widen the depth of field.

Picture 2 needs to have more light in the foreground. A little fill-flash here would have helped. Or you can take a second shot that will overexpose the background and merge them in photoshop.

Picture 3 needs a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion of the dog. Also you can try to pan with the dog and blur the background. Panning takes practice.

Picture 4 feels over exposed to me, a shorter shutter time would have left the hill and trees as silhouettes. Long exposures demand a tripod. Also a remote shutter and mirror lockup help as well.

In general, use the manual setting section of the dial (M, Av, Tv, P) stay away from the more automatic section (green box and picture mode icons). Get a tripod. Invest in good lenses. Take lots of photos. Bracket your photos (AEB & f-stop). You may already know these things so forgive me if you do.

One other thing I noticed, your ISO settings are 400, 1600, 400, 200. Higher ISO numbers lead to quicker exposures, and would use faster shutter speeds. They also lend themselves to more digital noise. I would have used 100 or 200 for all the shots except the dog, where I would have gone higher than 400, perhaps all the way to 1600 or 3200. Long exposures increase the noise level as well. 30 seconds (4th picture) is a very long time for a digital camera.

Awesome. Thanks for all the tips.

Picture 1: I keep just leaving my lens in autofocus mode, so the camera kind of just does it itself. I will have to try some of the things you told me on that to see if I can improve.

Picture 2: Don't have photoshop, and what is a fill flash?? The only light I had there was from the red X-mas light behind me.

Picture 3: I was trying to pan with the dog. I had that picture in an automatic mode for "sports." So, I'm assuming that is what ruined it. How do I go about taking pictures like that in a lower lighting situation??

Picture 4:
Definitely overexposed. You hit the nail on the head when you said in the last paragraph it was 30 seconds. hahaha. I had the camera just sitting on the deck in my backyard. How do I go about making the colors in the back more vivid also??

Also, how the heck do you know what my ISO settings are? Can you tell just by looking at the pictures?

A tripod is definitely on the list of things to get, I just need to get out to the mall and buy one. I've been trying my best to use the manual modes, but it's much more difficult than my Canon from the early 90's. hahah.

I will definitely be retrying all the pictures with the comments you made. Thanks for the help.

04BlueSRT4

12-18-2006, 12:45 PM

As for #3 lower light usually needs a slower shutter speed...which is hard to do without a tripod. You could try a higher ISO setting but it will get kinda grainy, but will let you use a higher shutter speed to capture the pic...as for follwing the dog you could try a continous autofocus. as then follow it. I'm still learning my new camera but they are a few things I picked up

Renegade_

12-18-2006, 12:50 PM

Shutter speed helps a lot when dealing with blurryness. However, the faster the shutter moves, the less light the camera will capture. The longer you leave something exposed the more light you capture so you can capture more details. However, it is kind of a problem if you leave it exposed too long as then the object you are taking a photo of can move.

grimm

12-18-2006, 01:02 PM

you suck give up!

#1) focus
#2) focus, and fstop, the water is clear, but so should the majority of the pic. Raise the fstop.
#3) high speed shutter, good luck getting a clear shot of a dog running in poor light! (flash would help getting a clearer shot, but would eliminate the natural lighting)
#4) expososure, no tripod, exposure was too long, and being you don't have a tripod, night time pics will be blurry!!

criticism for composition:
#1 dead on shots are slightly boring, I might have moved the rear(smaller vase) away more and then taken the picture from a slightly higher and slightly to the left more. this would have made the picture a little more dramatic.
#2 good composition
#3 kind of a good example of the 3rds rule, composition is pretty good.
#4 I would have had the 4 little trees on the left be at the edge of the pic and or tried to make the power lines create a good linear effect that flow'd with the rest of the pic.

My learning experience with digital cameras.
1) Don't know what setting do, take the same pic multiple times changing the settings with each pic.
2) own and use a tripod!!! almost always!!!
3) Take lots and lots of pics. the more you take the more you learn.
4) The rule of 3rds. will help with composition, do a search :)

I have no formal photography training, but you know my work and style, all I can say is get a tripod and take lots and lots more pics. :)

thewake

12-18-2006, 02:30 PM

Awesome. Thanks for all the tips.

Picture 2: Don't have photoshop, and what is a fill flash?? The only light I had there was from the red X-mas light behind me.

Fill flash is when you use a regular flash to illuminate (fill) the foreground subject. Usefull when there is either a back lit subject or a very dark background that you want to stay dark. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea as it would most likely ruin the red shade of the rocks and water.

Picture 3: I was trying to pan with the dog. I had that picture in an automatic mode for "sports." So, I'm assuming that is what ruined it. How do I go about taking pictures like that in a lower lighting situation??

Raise the ISO setting in the camera. The "sports" mode tries to open the lens and have a short shutter time. This would tend to freeze the action, which is what you want. In this case there probably wasn't enough light to have a short enough shutter at ISO 400. The higher ISO levels will boost the sensitivity/gain through the sensor (more noise).

Picture 4:
Definitely overexposed. You hit the nail on the head when you said in the last paragraph it was 30 seconds. hahaha. I had the camera just sitting on the deck in my backyard. How do I go about making the colors in the back more vivid also??

Also, how the heck do you know what my ISO settings are? Can you tell just by looking at the pictures?

There is probably a setting for the color saturation in one of the many menus. However overexposure pushes everything toward white. The colors may be to your liking as they are set.

There is lots of info in the EXIF data in the pictures. ISO, Shutter time, f-stop, focal length, etc. Right click -> properties should bring up most of it. Your camera software should show it to you as well.

Keep shooting.

sisforsurfing

12-19-2006, 02:41 AM

Keep shooting.
Agreed. Also remember that professional photographers, for every 1 roll / 35 pictures they take, they're lucky to use one or two of them. Don't get discouraged.

I'd advise learning how to read a light meter and putting the camera in all manual controls for a while. The learning curve will be a pain at first but you'll figure out what settings make certain things happen.
Remember the basics;
-low aperture (f-stop) number for low-light. This will let you use quicker shutter speeds (ideally above 1/60th of a second for hand-holding) so you don't have any camera shake/blurriness.
-Like thewake said, you can raise the ISO (if you want to use a higher # f-stop, lower shutter speed, or just don't have enough light), which is the sensitivity to light basically, but the picture will get more grainy with a higher ISO. Each camera's different with how grainy it gets, but you'll figure it out.

That kind of stuff you can read in the link in Bryan's post: http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/fototech/apershutter/index.htm

First picture: I'd use a manual focus, sometimes auto focus just isn't perfect. Also a higher f-stop to get the back vase in focus like thewake said.

Second: That's just hard lighting, haha. The other guys said it all :)

Third: Use as low an f-stop as possible so you can get a higher shutter speed. For something like that I'd set the ISO to 800, aperture priority for the lowest possible, and then just pan. Let the camera pick the lowest shutter speed it sees as possible. If it's still blurry, either a higher ISO, manually pick a lower shutter and deal with a dark picture, or get more light.

both thewake and grimm said good stuff, just thought I'd add my .02. Keep shooting and asking for critiques!

TROLL

12-19-2006, 02:50 AM

everything everyone is saying is on point, but i've got a much simpler bit of advice... take some photos in daylight. shooting at night or indoors throws a whole bunch of new 'hurdles' into the mix, so if you're just trying to get a feel for the camera then just go out and take some photos outside. it sounds like you could benefit a lot from learning the basics like shutter speed, aperture, depth of field, iso, etc. so i'd try to learn a bit about those and how they affect the photo, but in the meantime just find yourself some daylight and keep shooting :)

BoM

12-21-2006, 02:43 AM

Did anyone download the fotos and have his settings? i'm just going by the look of the picture.

#1 - looks like alotta compression as well as very shallow depth of field. Don't know if thats what you wanted it to look.

#2 - is nice, but can become awesome with an off-the camera flash to light the front. You can't really fix this too much with just the camera. You have to understand the compromise between capturing shadow and highlight details. You can't always get both.

#3 - Indoor action shots are hard because you just don't have enough light to even get any shutter speed close enough to stop that dog. You would need 1/250th sec to stop that dog not to mention get it in focus. Low light limits both shutter speed and focus speed. A fast lens will help alot almost 2 stops. Usually a flash will work better for that.

#4 - just too long of exposure. Too much noise appears. And the highlights are gone....

I usually just shoot in P for anything with a tripod then switch accordingly to A or S (Tv). I love digital the histogram and review is awesome. Try learning on film and see how much $$$ you can waste.

Good luck, learning exposure. Also, while at it learn some rules of composition to help your pictures look more pleasing. Rule of thirds, framing, s-curves, ect...They are just guidelines you don't always have to use em.