Progression of a NEW Photographer (At least I hope to be)

[crismateski]

2. This is great, exactly the input i am looking for. The Nikon has two slots so I have one card recording in RAW and one recording JPG, however I do not do any post processing (I have not learned, or even bought Photoshop or anything yet), so all these are strait out of the camera.

Most of those are a auto focused I think, however, the night shots I think i mostly do manual focus (I always try all kinds of different methods, so I cannot remember exactly).

I will pick up some books on Photoshop and start trying to learn how to post process the shots.

Do your self a favor and dont get books on photoshop, or photoshop for a while. You are doing it the right way, play with the camera, and try and get the results you want off of the camera. Anybody can make a decent photo with photoshop, it is another thing to take a good photo.

That being said, a lot of the star path photos you see are many exposures "stacked" to make one photo showing the movement.

 

[barlowrs]

Do your self a favor and dont get books on photoshop, or photoshop for a while. You are doing it the right way, play with the camera, and try and get the results you want off of the camera. Anybody can make a decent photo with photoshop, it is another thing to take a good photo.

That being said, a lot of the star path photos you see are many exposures "stacked" to make one photo showing the movement.

OH ok..that explains it. I noticed as I tried to do them, when i went with even longer exposures, the sky got very light (looked like day time with stars) which makes sense as long exposure allows more light in...I was always wondering how people were able to get the star trails but still look like night time.

 

[barlowrs]

So if my photos are "soft" how do I correct that (sorry dont really know what that even means)...i mean do i need more/less ISO, longer/shorter shutter, larger/smaller apperature?

I finally just learned about the exposure meter in my view finder and how to use it, so now im trying to play with different combinations of shutter, iso and aperature (mainly just shutter and aperature) to get a "proper" exposure in the meter and take the shot. If they are soft, does that mean i should go over or under exposed?

 

[crismateski]

"soft" if referring to the focus. Look at the edges of your subject, they are a little fuzzy, not a crisp line. It is like it is just barely out of focus

 

[Ryanmb21]

Softness is likely (1) mis focus or (2) motion blur

To correct this, ensure focus and (1) shoot at faster shutter speeds, like faster than 1/250 or (2) shoot with a tripod

 

[LaOutbackTrail]

I have the d7000 with kit lens and a 50mm prime and have approached photography and learning in a similar fashion. Learning as I go.

Regarding the softness of the images, it means the camera is either slightly out of focus or the subject is moving too much for the shutter speed. Often, being in one of the auto functions (even aperture priority) can give poor results. When i do portrait photography, I try as conditions allow to shoot in manual mode. I need to use auto focus for portraits, or I have issues (bad eyes, glasses, and the viewfinder don't work that well together...). The kit lens does a pretty good job of getting the focus right, but I have had quite a few images ruined by being ever so slightly out of focus...

I really like playing with depth of field. Its apparent in most of my images. I shoot on the lowest F-stop my lens allows. For the most part I do ZERO cropping in post processing, I compose the image in camera. I've been using Lightroom 3 and now 4 (highly recommended, btw) to give images my own style. Its a digital age, and I use the tools available. You can see the colors added to the pics at the bottom...

Have a look at my website, www.lifestylesinlight.com All of the images were taken with my D7000.

A couple recent shots:

Unedited pic

On this one, I should have gone up two or three stops to get the kid in focus.... It looked PERFECT on the LCD screen when reviewing. This is user error.


Now, even worse:

An example of a missed auto focus.

Same spot, next shot... a little better...

Composition. Composition. Composition. And rapid fire!

Sorry to hijack your thread, if you have any questions about how I captured and processed the pics, let me know!
You picked a good camera, it can do a lot. My next step will be to purchase a Nikkor 17-55 F2.8 then a 70-200mm F2.8. But in the meantime, I'm going to travel, take pictures of clients, and have fun with what I've got.

 

[Clark White]

At least on the last photo of the little girl it looks a lot to me like it's miss focused, probably due to aperture and depth of field. I say that based upon how edges just seem soft in all sides, not blurred in one direction. I agree with LaOutbackTrail about Lightroom 4, it's fairly simple to use (WAY more so then Photoshop) and does everything you will need to do as a beginning photographer. It's also a fraction of the price. As far as RAW, it's great, but chews up a lot of space if you are shooting RAW and JPG at the same time. After a while you manage to chew up a whole lot of memory space which starts to get old trying to keep up with.

Clark

 

[barlowrs]

OK a few more from this weekend. I tried a few tricks I got off of people. Again, ALL ADVICE AND CRITIZISM IS WELCOME AND ENCOURGAGED, only way I will learn is by ppl calling me out on my mistakes!

First off, I owe thanks to Justin (Gear) for showing me how to "paint" objects. So I did a long 15 min exposure to get the trails while painting my truck with my headlamp (If I were to repeat the shot, I may only paint it a bit less to the truck is not quite so bright, but I was tired haha):

Next up is my frist attempt at an HDR photo, kinda fun haha:

This one is just a random cloud, but for some reason I REALLY like how it came out:

And Lastly, more of a question to you guys who know what you are doing. For some reason when I take shots like this, the clouds come out red, is this normal? Everything on my camera is set to neutral (not red biased or anything).

 

[psykokid]

A lot of the time when the clouds come out red its because you are getting noise light reflecting back from cities in the distance.. Even out in anza, there is still a lot of light pollution from LA and SD..

 

[barlowrs]

OK a few from last weekends trip..also the debut of my flippac..woo hoo!

First Attempt at an HDR shot:

Random Hardwood in desert (I wish I had adjusted the aperture so that the bush immediately behind the "tree" was more out of focus):

Very full moon (I would have liked to try an HDR shot with this but didn't):

Crazy clouds on the drive home:

 

[LaOutbackTrail]

I like this one. Nice composition and I like the colors. Plus it doesn't look over HDR'd...

 

[kevint]

Random Hardwood in desert (I wish I had adjusted the aperture so that the bush immediately behind the "tree" was more out of focus):

Actually, it looks to me like the autofocus may have locked onto the bush instead of the tree.

 

[barlowrs]

Actually, it looks to me like the autofocus may have locked onto the bush instead of the tree.

Yeah, after looking at it big on this post I think your right..the tree is not as crisp as I was hoping..so maybe I did have the depth of field right, just focused on the wrong thing..shoot.

 

[nwoods]

As far as RAW, it's great, but chews up a lot of space if you are shooting RAW and JPG at the same time. After a while you manage to chew up a whole lot of memory space which starts to get old trying to keep up with.

Clark

If you are using Lightroom, there's no reason to shoot JPG+RAW. LR writes "sidecar" files for each image imported into the program, and everything you do to an image, from previewing a thumbnail to cropping the full size version, is all nondestructive editing to the sidecar file, not the original image. So you're RAW's are never at risk, and your system speed is less of a factor because you are just using text files, not true images. It's takes some time to import into LR, but its pretty fast at everything else because of this.

This should help you save a bit of drive space

 

[LaOutbackTrail]

What they said. I've moved to shooting RAW only.