Digital beginner -lamb to the slaughter - c&c welcome!

slapshot · Jul 13, 2008

My first foray into the digital age. Went to Glacier/Waterton (Montana/Alberta) for my first spin around the block with my brand-spankin' new Nikon D300 18-200mm DX lens. Played around with shutter/aperture/auto settings as well as checking out the VR abilities of the lens (tripod stayed in the backseat for this excursion).

After years of using my Nikon FE-2, it felt like going from working in Lotus 1-2-3 to the latest version of Excel overnight (to use a spreadsheet analogy). You try to achieve the same results but the familiararity isn't there.

Pick apart the pics and have at 'er, gals & guys!

aperture priority - 1/50 sec - f16 (darn twig on the top right of frame!)

aperture priority - 1/200 sec - f8

aperture priority - 1/250 sec - f8

automatic 1/200 sec - f7.1

shutter priority - 1/10 sec (hand held) - f25

My comfort zone isn't at a level where I'm happy yet. Also, having used fixed lenses for years, it's a little different for me to use a zoom.

LaFoto · Jul 13, 2008

Little to nitpick about, other than the fact that in the last, there simply was too much light to expose for only 1/10sec to get the fast motion of the train plus that of the water, even when the camera stopped down to f25 for you. The water's totally blown... Maybe forsake the waterfall (pano-crop) to save the train?

That twig in the first will no longer be ANY problem for you once you start using Photoshop to give your photos their "polish", for that can ever so easily be cloned out then.

The colour of that lake is out of this world ... where does this intensely turquoise colour come from?

Overread · Jul 13, 2008

Like LaFoto said little to nitpick about.
One thing I would suggest is when shooting in ap and sp modes look up about exposure compensation in the manual. During the day in bright light its easy to get overexposed whites - to counter (if you find it a problem) set the exposure compensation to -1 during the brighter parts of the day = photoshop or any other editing program can then be used to add light to the shot if needed - getting rid of a blowout is difficult as often there are no details captured to restor the shot to,

TamiyaGuy · Jul 13, 2008

They're all very nice photos! I would agree that in the last photo, it is a little overexposed. I'd have used an ND filter (if I had one

). The other photos are great, although the mountains look a tiny bit on the soft side.

Still, nice job! I like the train in the last one, it just gives it a little something.

Parago · Jul 13, 2008

I like them a lot, the last one could've benefited from a Pol-Filter, but you can easily fix stuff like that in PS or whatever you work with, just like the 'darn twig' in the first one:

..

I still think those are wonderful shots, very nice job. Now just get your hands on some nice post-processing software and 'beautify' away.. :thumbup:

Computer_Generated · Jul 13, 2008

Very well done. Maybe it's 'cause I'm new and don't know... but I gotta kinda disagree on the last photo though... I know the water's blown out but without filters that's kinda hard to expect someone to get around. I think you got good shutter speed on it and hand-held!!! I guess you could have stopped down on the apature a bit? I gotta love 'em. That blue water one was in Alberta right? I went there for a year and loved the view!!

Ron Evers · Jul 13, 2008

My opinion:

Too much foreground in the first four.

Last one over exposed & too short a shutter speed causing the train & falls to blur too much.

aramator · Jul 13, 2008

you have been doing this for a while huh?

i like the blured effect in the last one, though maybe not the train as blurry. you can do alot in ps!

Ron Evers · Jul 13, 2008

aramator said:
you have been doing this for a while huh? i like the blured effect in the last one, though maybe not the train as blurry. you can do alot in ps!

As a teenager I was heavy into photography with a Minolta SLR but life took over. Now in my sixties I am getting back into it with digital & a big learning curve.

As you can see, we do not all agree on pictures. Make yourself happy.

You are doing good, keep learning.

Easy_Target · Jul 13, 2008

I'm going to have to agree with the comments about how the last one was exposed too long. I'll also have to agree with Ron about too much foreground, but only in the first three.

slapshot · Jul 13, 2008

Some good critical comments, peeps!

My composing of the foreground with a stopped down shutter +f16 for a wider DOF is a result of pouring over so many Ansel Adams coffee table books! I try to give things a different perspective - sometimes it works....other times...meh.

The shot of the falls & the train was a tough one. I wanted the water to have a "silky" effect and started at 1/30 of a sec and ended up at 1/10 sec. It was also to see what the VR was capable of handling. As I'm fiddling with the camera I look up and see the train crossing the trestle and quickly thought, "oh, this is too perfect...what a touch!"

I s'pose in hindsight it would've worked better if I had a "graduated neutral shutter speed filter" on, which woulda allowed me to capture the falls with the silky effect and the train crisp in focus. Oh well....yikes!

:]

Oh...I was using a polarizer....but due to the angle of the sun it didn't do much for the sky in that shot. 9 times out of 10 I use a polarizer....when I don't, I use a UV filter for lens protection.

slapshot · Jul 13, 2008

Parago said:
Now just get your hands on some nice post-processing software and 'beautify' away.. :thumbup:

Nice touches on the pics, Parago! What do you use for software?

Currently I have the 30 day trial of the Nikon Capture NX that I'm fumbling with. (BTW, those shots I've posted were all JPEG - now I'm shooting both RAW + JPEG).

I see Photoshop is running around $600 IIRC but the Photoshop Elements is quite a bit cheaper. Seems many prefer Light Room. I haven't read too much on that one yet.

Any suggesions would be appreciated. I'm looking for simple tweaks at this stage and nice borders would be swell!

reg · Jul 13, 2008

Lightroom isn't for really intense processing. It does a lot of stuff, and it will do just about anything basic. It handles sharpening, bw conversion, exposure issues, etc. and does it quite well.

But if you want to, I dunno, take out power lines then you'd need Photoshop.

Overread · Jul 14, 2008

Lightroom is very good for dealing with batch RAW processing - something that elements does not do (though I have heard you can trick it into some batch work its not a listed feature)
Elements is a stripped down photoshop, but for most people its more than enough editing power - and its considerably more affordable.

If you do go elements I recomend this update:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/qt/layermasktool.htm
a layermask is an often refrenced and used feature that is very very useful when editing

driftking2k · Jul 14, 2008

Nice pictures, and nice editing parago

Those things are easily fixable in photoshop, just let one of us know and we can fix it for you. Or just let parago know ..lol