First post/C&C + Advice for Newb

[clou]

Hey guys! I'm new to the forum and new photography. I got my D90 in late May but didn't have much time to learn how to use it because of term papers and final exams. Now that classes are over and I have some time to myself I've started to take photography a little more seriously and I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject. I'm mostly interested in photographing people and cars. I know I need a polarizer filter to deal with the glare from the cars, but is there any other equipment I should be looking into? My only lens is a AF-S 35mm 1.8.

Here are my first couple attempts from the last week.

My little sister

My car

C&C would be appreciated as well as any general advice.

Thanks!

 

[Raian-san]

#1, you're so far away from the subject and she's underexposed. With the sunlight hitting her leg, if you have her exposed, the sunlight area will be blown out. 2nd picture is the same. Try to shoot either fully shaded, or sunlight. Not half of her is sunny and half is shaded. If you want to do that, you will need an off camera flash that will fill up the part of her that's dark to balance the sunlight.

Those cars picture are underexposed. I suggest shooting the car during sunset like in the picture, leaving it on a tripod with longer Shutter speed so the sky and cloud will create a nice background. Or park around area with street lights and etc and do the same.

If you do photography of people, definitely pick up a flash. SB-600 is a good way to start unless you can afford the more expensive Sb-700, SB-800 and etc.

 

[clou]

With the car pics, they were taken midday around 3pm, not at sunset so lighting wasn't an issue. People on a car forum told me to shoot at a high aperture to isolate the car, so I think I had it at f2.2? ISO was at the lowest setting also at 200 and my shutter speed was really high to compensate. (BTW, I'm not trying to make excuses, this information is just leading into my question). During these conditions, there was a lot of glare from the clouds which made certain parts on the car much brighter than the rest. To compensate, I used a very high shutter speed so that these areas wouldn't be blown out. My question is, should I have used a smaller aperture? If not, what could I have done to reduce the glare in these spots? TIA

 

[Raian-san]

Try not to shoot it against the sun and if you don't want glare, you need a circular polarizer filter. I think most of the nicer picture I've seen, they shoot it at smaller aperture to create sharper,and it'll include more details of the car as well as background. Now if the background is really boring then yeah you want to blur it out. But if you have a beautiful sky as backdrop, you would want to include the nice sky in it and leaving the shutter speed long will make the photo more richer colors. By shooting it at f2.2, it's not the sharpest aperture, I think you need to go around at least f/4 and above for sharper photos. Your photos are underexposed and the car is a dark color so some spots are dark. Try not to shoot it with the tree behind the car like in the 1st picture. Move it out of the way and shoot the car, and just the sky as the background. It'll make it look better. Try several angle of the car being park sideway, 45', 90' and etc. Mess around with it but make sure the photos are correctly exposed. Also, your lowest ISO setting is 100.

 

[clou]

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to try again soon, hopefully tomorrow if it doesn't rain.

Yeah, I'm going to buy a filter tomorrow.

Lowest "natural" iso on the d90 is 200 though. It has lower settings, but supposedly they are artificial? I'm not sure what that means, but there is no 100 setting, the 2 lower settings are something like L.07 and L.02...I know the natural range on this camera begins at 200.

 

[NateS]

That 35mm f1.8 is plenty sharp at f2.2....plenty. Your problem here is underexposure on all counts which can make images appear less sharp (a loss in contrast can do the same). For the car shots, you should have just exposed them more, for the shots of the girl, I'd reccomend some fill flash. Don't be afraid to use the pop up flash as a fill when outdoors. Set your exposure without flash for the background (I'd find out the settings you need by throwing it in shutter priority with 1//200th s/s) Note the aperture...now click it over to manual mode and use the same settings 1/200th shutter speed and whatever aperture you got before and open the onboard flash in ttl mode. I think you'll be surprised at how much nicer your results are.

 

[clou]

I always thought it was blasphemy to use the pop-up flash Shows how much I know/need to learn.

Thank you for the tips, I'll try to apply them in my next attempts!

Also, I'm finding it hard to check my shots in the camera display when outdoors because of glare. Are there special screens I can get to help me see them better?