Beginner looking for feed back...

[Sept1785]

Here are some of my pictures. They were shot at the ATL. Aquarium. Nice, dark, crowded enviroment. Any tips, suggestions,improvements?

Nikon d40,
non autofocus telephoto(darn forgot the specs.),
and nikon standard 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S

#2

#3

thank you for your time.

 

[OrionsByte]

These are basically spontaneous, candid snapshots, so it would be hard to critique the technical merit of them because the shooting conditions you're in are not conducive to a controlled, thought-out approach. Is there anything in particular you're trying to work on? Focus, composition, exposure?

 

[Sept1785]

Im sorry, I should have been more specific.

I was shooting in manual mode. So I'm looking for input on focus (in low light),and exposure. Composition would be a problem anyways because, as you said, the enviroment was not to controllable.

 

[OrionsByte]

Actually, composition is something you always have control over. You may not be able to control the environment, but you can always use good composition techniques to minimize the distracting elements. You may not be able to get rid of them entirely, but depending on what your intentions for the photos are, that may be okay.

In terms of exposure, these feel really really dark to me, by at least a couple of stops. Lighting is something that you definitely don't have control over in an environment like this, and that means you have to compensate for it by opening up the aperture, increasing the ISO, or using a longer shutter speed. Since you're not carrying around a tripod, changing the shutter speed is not really an option (you'd end up with motion blur), and from what I can tell you were probably at the open end of your aperture, so that only leaves ISO as an option.

In terms of focus, they're a bit soft. I don't think that's a focusing issue so much as a shutter speed issue, combined with the camera being hand-held.

If you're really interested in getting in to photography, I recommend you get some practice away from this kind of environment. Do some reading on the exposure triangle (shutter speed, aperture, ISO), and take a bunch of crappy practice shots to test out what you learn and understand it better. Then, when you end up at the aquarium again, you'll have some additional knowledge to help you make better choices about your camera settings and such.

 

[Sept1785]

I did have a monopod. #2 and #3 were taken with the telephoto. The aperature was WIDE open, and iso was at 800 with noise reduction(hence the softness and a little sway).

lol If you knew I had to work on all three, why did you give me the choice?


Edit. My settings produced better results than the cameras auto, shutter priority, and aperature priority settings. That has got to count for something right :thumbup:

 

[OrionsByte]

Well, what I was trying to do is to get you to think about working on one thing at a time. I don't know who the girl is, or more importantly who she is to you, so I have no emotional connection to the pictures. You may look at them completely differently depending on what she means to you. For me, the only insights I can possibly offer are technical in nature, and since these are not very interesting from a purely technical standpoint, it leaves a lot of room for critique. New photographers can easily become overwhelmed with too much information such that it becomes impossible to process everything, so the reason I asked what areas you were working on was to try to constrain my critiques to a few areas you can work on for next time.

Also, you'll get more feedback by posting in the Beginners Forum - not a lot of people stop by this section of the site.

 

[Sept1785]

Eh, that's only my wife. No biggie.:lmao:
Thanks for the forum tip. I have modded a few forums before, and they were sticklers for categories. So naturally I jumped to the relevent place.


edit: Just to CMA, I am in no way looking for techniques just to make my wife look better... :thumbup: Just my photographs in general.