First pics on manual mode

pistolero · Jul 16, 2012

I just started using manual mode on my Canon Rebel xti Saturday at a local park. A little C&C on this please, technical advice more than composition, this is a crop of a larger photo. Any ideas on how it could have been better? This was just the camera on a tripod, I don't have any extra flash or such yet.

pistolero · Jul 16, 2012

I did try a few shots with slower shutter speeds, but it was really bright afternoon sun, and at my tightest aperture and ISO100 they would still be overexposed at a slow enough shutter to blur the water.

SCraig · Jul 16, 2012

Much slower shutter speed so that the water falling looks silky. You shot it at 1/200 and should have shot it at about 1/2 or slower.

amolitor · Jul 16, 2012

Looks pretty good to me. You've lost the shadows underneath things, but clearly it was either the shadows or the sky upper left (and I think the sky is slightly blown too, but it's such a small part of the image it hardly matters). You put the important tones in a good place, I think. The vegetation looks natural. The light from above is surprisingly effective with the clapboard (?) siding on the mill in the center of the frame.

Somebody will probably recommend HDR pretty soon here, but I don't think the scene suffers from losing the shadows a bit. You've some detail in under the building on the right side there, again, nicely placed. I think this was metered perfectly well.

I have some quibbles about the fetish of manual mode, but that's another subject and one you're probably not interested in.

pistolero · Jul 16, 2012

Thanks!
Here's a couple of shots from a different angle, I tried to get the "blurred water" shot and I did, but it was overexposed. the second shot here I went down to ISO100, 1/2 second, and I believe f29, that was as far as I could go.