First upload

james_rp_stone · Nov 13, 2006

Basiclly i am very interested in sunsets and landscapes, but am new to this so just looking for general critique.

I was trying to take a photo of the bird,with sun shimmering on the sea, now the shot is ok to me, but the bird looks blured slightly, although focus was on the bird.

W.Smith · Nov 13, 2006

Maybe the autofocus was thrown off by the shimmering of the sea. See if next time you can improve that with manual focus.

RMThompson · Nov 13, 2006

The sky is digitized too much, perhaps the resolution wasn't high enough?

Maybe you should've tried to darken the pic, and make the bird more silhouetted, sharpening the colors and adding more contrast.

Also the angle isn't very appealing. Maybe lower down on the bird and more centered would've been more interesting.

What equipment you using?

bitteraspects · Nov 13, 2006

looks like a fugi finepix s9500.
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i dont know how low it allows you to go, but try a f/4 instead of f/8. also change your iso from 200 to 100. should reduce some of the noise, and silhouette the bird a little better.[/FONT]

james_rp_stone · Nov 13, 2006

did you really know that or just read my public profile.

Thanks for the advise i guess i need alot more practice cause i dont understand what the hell was said,

Apart from the iso bit, need to do a couse of some description i suppose,

Any one know of a good one in the uk.

W.Smith · Nov 13, 2006

james_rp_stone said:
did you really know that

That kind of info is in the EXIF of your pic, james. Which you can read in PS or other editor or with an 'EXIF viewer'.
Get one here: http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode=basic&action=search&str=EXIF&plt%5B%5D=windows&x=16&y=8.

xfloggingkylex · Nov 13, 2006

james_rp_stone said:
did you really know that or just read my public profile.

Thanks for the advise i guess i need alot more practice cause i dont understand what the hell was said,

Apart from the iso bit, need to do a couse of some description i suppose,

Any one know of a good one in the uk.

heres the crash course. there are 3 (main) things that help determine your exposure level, your shutter speed, your aperture, and your ISO.

Shutter is the most obvious factor. It allows light in for determined lengths of time, creating the image. Faster stops action while slower will lead to blur, usually seen in water/waterfalls. 1/100 lets in less light than 1/50.

Aperture is another important factor. Aperture determines how much your lens opens up to let light in. a small F number ( f/1.8) is wide and lets in a lot of light. For this reason a 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 are good lenses to have for handheld shots in low light. Also aperture effects depth of field (DOF). without getting into too much detail, this determines how much of the picture is in focus before and after the point you are focused on. Wider apertures give you shallow DOF, making everything before and after the subject blurry. This works great for shots of flowers and such. Since the wide aperture opens up the lense, more light is allowed in which means less light is needed for a correct exposure.

Last is ISO. ISO is sensitivity. on digital it is the gain applied to the input signal from the sensor. Think of it like a guitar, the more gain you add the louder (brighter) it becomes, but it also starts to become distorted. We digital users see distortion in the form of noise in the picture. A higher ISO is more sensitive and requires less light to get a well exposed picture.

I'm sure I missed some things but that should be enough to get you started.

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Exposure/Exposure_01.htm

play with this to understand how the three factors I mentioned are related.

also do a google search for Opanda EXIF viwer. This is a plug in that will allow you to view exif data about pictures you see on here. for example I can see that your picture was taken at
Shutter: 1/680"
Aperture: F8
ISO: 200

Also you were using aperture priority mode.

This will help teach you the settings you need to use to replicate pictures you see online. Ok enough rambling for me. good luck and ask questions as needed, no matter how dumb they may seem.

EDIT: Also, there is a sunset sunrise theme in the photo themes forum here.