photography in general help?

chris82 · Apr 1, 2007

Today I was out for 9 hours doing photography,I tried one of those nd grad filters then my 200mm zoom lens.I shot 139 pictures and on the way home I said to myself theres got to be some good ones in there!I set my ISO to 200 and tried shooting the same object lots of times at diffrent settings(using the thing that has from-2 to +2 on it)but alas theres not one shot in there that I would class as good.Or even satisfactory.My five year old niece could take a better shot with a disposable.What can I do,Obviously it must be my composition because theres a few shots that would have been good if composed better.Then theres hand shake,I cant seem to keep a steady hand,The shots that I was really hoping for were all un sharp due to cam shake.Is there anything I can do about this without having to brin my tripod?Sometimes I just like to take a long walk and shoot handheld.
Please help me?Thanks.

Torus34 · Apr 1, 2007

OK. 9 hours and not a single good picture. By your own admission, given a tripod, you might have gotten several.

So why are you so anti-tripod? You can rig one with some sort of a back-sling so it's not a problem to haul.

Incidentally, when a rig is on a tripod, you've lots of time to check composition.

EOS_JD · Apr 1, 2007

With a 200mm lens you need shutter speeds in excess of 1/200th. Unless you have IS which can allow slower shutter speeds depending on the subject's movement.

A good tripods will make a difference.

Garbz · Apr 1, 2007

You can get light and small tripods which may be of help to you, they often come with little carrying bags too. But sometimes nothing can save you. I spent an entire day in Vienna's inner city and did not get a single GOOD picture out of the 150 odd that I took. A week later I went out to the same place and I just snapped one keeper after another.

Digital Matt · Apr 1, 2007

When I go out, I always bring a tripod and a cable release. It slows you down, which is good. We are in no hurry here. Also, don't be afraid to increase the ISO. You can work with a grainy picture, but not with a blurry one.

chris82 · Apr 2, 2007

Yea I supose the tripod is the obvious thing,I do try to use mine I just cant get into the habit.Im not anti tripod just some times I like to walk and see if I can spot various stuff along the way.

Digital Matt · Apr 2, 2007

When shooting with my 70-200, it is always mounted to the tripod with the tripod collar. I leave the tripod legs extended, but fold them, and carry the whole rig over my shoulders. When I see something I want to shoot, I just drop it and spread the legs out, and I'm ready to shoot.

gmarquez · Apr 2, 2007

Can you post one of the "bad" ones and one of the "almost good" ones? I'd like to see what's up.

DeepSpring · Apr 2, 2007

I'm suprised no one has mentioned this yet.

If you are not able to get your shutter speed up, take off the ND filter. Those are usually used when you want to SLOW down your shutter. And yea raise iso some.

Exposure compensation prolly won't do much for you now. Just keep it exposed correctly unless you have a specific vision of "hmmm I htink this would look really good if it was darker" or somehting like that.