Please be gentle, this is my first post.

[Dekz]

Alright, well I've been into photography for a grand total of about 6 days now. I bought an HP PhotoSmart 435 just to snap pics of cool cars I see around town and such. But then I started to really enjoy it, the next day I bought a 512 MB memory card for it and I knew I was hooked.

So I decided to return that camera and get a better one, my Kodak DX6340 is on order and should arrive any day now. Anyways, here are a few shots I've taken with the HP. Sorry, I didn't have time to resize the pics before I got to work so they are huge, I'll make them links instead of displaying them.


I was just hangin out with some friends at the local pizza place and thought the sky looked cool so I got a shot of it. I accidentally got my car in the pic but I think it turned out pretty sweet.

http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/coug.jpg

I took these two while driving, I knew that they would turn out something like this, I just didn't think they would be so cool.

http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/lightshow.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/shaky.jpg

These last ones I took at work. I had some awsome pics of the view from here but I'll have to resize all these and upload more when I get home.

http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/duck1.jpg
http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/rocks.jpg

I've been trying to get a good shot of this tree for a few days now, but they never turn out right, this is the best I've gotten so far.

http://members.shaw.ca/dexterg/pics/tree.jpg

 

[StvShoop]

welcome man
photo 2 is phat. i love the blue streak in the upper left, nice 'n contrasty

i'm not sure about the kodak... i haven't liked kodak's when i've looked at them in stores. someone else is probably more informed about this than me.

 

[vonnagy]

welcome to the boards detz!

just a few thoughts on the pics, take'm for a grain of salt:

coug:
nice capture of the sky matey, but you cropped off the coug :cry: just a thought, next time try to get som closeups with the sky and the reflection of the sky on the car as an abstract

lightshow:
cool abstract. not sure about the semi circle on the bottom, but the colours are quite wicked. what are the dots in your shots?

shaky:
same as above, perhaps the shadow on the bottom can be cropped as its slightly distracting. the rest is a cool abstract

duck1:
not a favourite of mine, looks like its been 'lightened' it up too much. there is a sun flare in the lower right hand corner. The angle it was taken doesn't appeal to me.

rocks:
hrmm doesn't say much to me either. perhaps if you got some cloud reflections on the water here it would do it for me.

tree:
looks like its been overexposed. The colouration is cool, but the crooked horizon bothers me. The lights on the corners distract me from the main subject which is the tree. perhaps a different crop would help.

Anyways, good to have you posting here matey, thanks for sharing these with us

 

[daniel_p]

Those dots (most evident in the tree pic) are not natural man, I think I can safely say that camera is a piece of crap. I'm not a photography expert, I'm a newbie myself, but I just want to say I think you made youself a huge favor by returning that camera. Good luck with the 2nd one, and consider buying a tripod too for night shots.

p.s. the sky shot was nice (although not nicely executed :twisted: )

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome

Sorry, those pics are way too big to get a feel for them.

With digital photography, you should take it as a given that you need to "develop" your pictures. You should get a good image software program (like Photoshop) and develop a work flow protocol.

It doesn't have to be complicated, for example...Upload the pictures from the camera. You may want to save these files as originals. Then open them, do any editing or tweaking and save the files separately from the originals. Then finally when/if you plan to post them to the web, you can change the size & resolution and save them again for uploading to your photo host.

Or you could do any editing/resizing and just save one finished file. The problem is that you can't just go back to the original state. But if that's easier for you...that's OK too.

Again, welcome to the Forum.

 

[captain-spanky]

love your lightshow and shaky pics... but am also wondering about all the little dots in the pic.... me too thinks your camera was duff.

oh and WELCOME btw..

 

[DarkEyes]

love your lightshow and shaky pics... but am also wondering about all the little dots in the pic.... me too thinks your camera was duff.

oh and WELCOME btw..

Hello. Just a comment on the dot's. How damn annoying- no wonder you returned the camera! I get a simmilar thing when I scan my photo's from film, because my scanner needs a good clean. The only thing that makes sense to me regarding the dot's is digital noise. What ISO setting did you have it on (if u can remember)?

 

[Artemis]

Nice work matey

All id say, is try resizing, and then cropping some pics.

Thing is, like the duck one, tis great, but you have alot of stuff you dnt want.

Im a newbie...so i dnt mknow everything.

Anyways, good job, keep it up, i wanna see more.

 

[jadin]

I can tell you exactly what those dots are. It's noise. If you look at the daytime photos you can see noise in them. The camera's ISO setting was probably like 800 or higher. When the camera tried to take photos at night the shutter speed had to be way slower, when the sensor is on for that long some of the pixels overheat and become the little glowing dots you see in the night shots. Chances are reducing the ISO would've eliminated them from your photos. You'll want to reduce your ISO regardless to get less noise in your shots. I had the same dots on my D1X, but only when I set it to 400 ISO and a 20 second exposure. Lowering the ISO made them vanish.

As far as the tree is concerned, you'll have to use a tripod to get the photo you're going for. if not a tripod, set the camera on a fence post, or picnic table anything flat and sturdy that will reduce shaking. Then turn the camera's auto-timer on and step back while the camera does it's thing. I use timer even with a tripod for most of my night photography.

 

[Dekz]

Thanks for all the replies.

I haven't been back on here in a while because I was cameraless for a few weeks waitig for my new one to be shipped but I got it a few days ago so you can expect to see me around more often

Ya the HP was a POS, I couldn't set the shutter speed I wanted to i'd basically have to trick it into doing what I wanted by setting it to night mode and then turning flash off, even then it would just expose for as long as it saw fit. Anyways, it's gone now so let's never speak of it again, lol.

I'm lovin the DX6340 soooooo much better.

And yes I realise that I need to do some post production on my pics. I just haven't had time lately, I don't have photoshop but my camera came with some software that should do the trick.

Anyways, thanks for all the comments, this site is an awsome resource and I hope to see my photography improve in the posts to come.