HILARIOUS!

[tirediron]

Can you give specifics as to what we are missing?

I need to learn to stfu.

Not going to argue with you, but that's a personal issue; what is it the rest of us are missing?

 

[cgipson1]

Can you give specifics as to what we are missing?

I need to learn to stfu.

Been there, done that! Got the kick in the pants!

 

[MTVision]

and....if you want to know what I really think about myself I will tell you. I have never thought I was even remotely attractive, I have always thought I was dumb, and honestly I have a hard time feeling good about anything I do except for teaching.

Psychologically speaking, I know why I became defensive when you personally attacked me and it stems from truely not being confident. Again, I want CC. I don't mind you telling me my photos are horrid. Just please, don't reprimand me because you think I'm not taking your advice. I am, I just may not be posting it. I actually make it on to TPF maybe twice a week maybe three times. Therefore, you are not seeing all of m efforts and I am not reporting them all to you. Sometimes I will simply post a photo that may have been done against popular opinion, but that I found were my best that week.

I really would love to keep it all about photography and have only ventured out into drama land on the heels of being accused if things that couldn't be more wrong.

I will gladly admit that I am trying to learn too fast and I know this is a long process. I'm just very into this and am sometimes hasty about improving.

If you can only get on a few times a week then just reading through the forums or doing searches for certain things would probably more productive. I know you know how to check to see if you nailed your focus and if you still aren't there are tons of exercises you can do to practice. Search for focus and you will probably find tons of threads with the same issues. I know on the other forum there is a new thread everyday about focus issues. There are also some year old threads that are amazingly helpful but you have to search for them. One of the posters on this thread - Dominately (?) - has a couple threads from a year ago (or more) that explain exposure, light meter, etc. very well. Sit back and lurk and you will probably learn more then you have in your threads.

Www.cambridgeincolour.com has great tutorials that covers pretty much everything you need to know on digital photography. Once you understand it thoroughly it might be easier to put it together with camera in hand.

 

[unpopular]

20-some page thread ftw!

 

[AMOMENT]

Thanks everyone! ABABYSEAN...I am taking your challenge tomorrow and doing my homework! I like hearing the settings too because if I then have questions pertaining as to why you used those settings I can ask. Sometimes I think we all learn better by example so seeing actual tangible work with settings that I could POTENTIALLY use, is extremely helpful. I know that depending upon SO many things, settings need to be changed and yet, I find this so helpful.

When you told me that you really wanted the eyelashes in focus and that is why you used 2.2 it showed me that you can fill your frame in a way that softens the rest of the image, without being blurry, and yet still have your main focus, sharp.

I also checked my settings in my camera and i think I know why I was struggling with so much blur and noise despite taking your advice. You see, what happened was I tried bumping my ISO to 800 one day so I could keep my shutter no slower than 1/200 but I had such grainy and blurry pics. I even opened up my aperture to 5.6 and stood pretty far back from my subject. (about 10 feet away) You see my sharpness settings in my camera were set really low and my default ISO, EXTREMELY HIGH. Once I changed these, I began to see that I could raise my ISO with out unimaginable noise (you had to see these pics...terrible!) So I had taken the advice but was so ashamed with the photos and couldn't believe this could be right. One night I really delved into my camera and explored and that is when I found those settings to be off.

I'm psyched to try all these suggestions out tomorrow! I literally have them written down. < taking notes like a huge dork!>

 

[SCraig]

I don't mind posting the settings. I think they are relevant. and should be posted with every.single.photo that a poster is asking for. Because then you could get the person to LOOK AT THEIR CHOICES and do a bit of self CC first!

This photo was taken with my D90. I used an 85mm 1.4 lens. ISO800 1/200 F2.2
--Snip--

I tend to agree with that. I look at EXIF data frequently, when it's available and from someone who's photography I admire, because I can learn from it.

I know someone on another forum who shoots a lot of motorsports events. He can pan with a subject as well as anyone I've ever seen and can get tack sharp photographs of race cars and motorcycles running wide open at around 1/80 of a second. I'm always amazed at how well he can do that because my best is about twice his speed.

I know another who is amazing at shooting birds. I know he shoots at 200mm from the EXIF data and it's something that I aspire to do as well.

Similar concepts with landscapes, night shots, macro, and everything else. Looking at EXIF data lets me at least know that something is possible at specific settings and from there I try to teach myself to emulate it. Certainly the actual physics of taking the shot can't be gleaned from the EXIF data but just knowing that something can be done is an incentive to me.

 

[AMOMENT]

Thanks, Megan! You have always been so helpful! A lot of people on here have been increidble! Thank you! Thereyago, I will try that.

BTW, I actually did post those atrocious photos done with your suggestions on another forum and they even said that with those settings, they were confused as to why I had gotten those results. This is what led me to really investigate my camera. I feel like I had done so already and so many times and yet, I learned and noticed something different.

 

[MTVision]

Thanks everyone! ABABYSEAN...I am taking your challenge tomorrow and doing my homework! I like hearing the settings too because if I then have questions pertaining as to why you used those settings I can ask. Sometimes I think we all learn better by example so seeing actual tangible work with settings that I could POTENTIALLY use, is extremely helpful. I know that depending upon SO many things, settings need to be changed and yet, I find this so helpful.

When you told me that you really wanted the eyelashes in focus and that is why you used 2.2 it showed me that you can fill your frame in a way that softens the rest of the image, without being blurry, and yet still have your main focus, sharp.

I also checked my settings in my camera and i think I know why I was struggling with so much blur and noise despite taking your advice. You see, what happened was I tried bumping my ISO to 800 one day so I could keep my shutter no slower than 1/200 but I had such grainy and blurry pics. I even opened up my aperture to 5.6 and stood pretty far back from my subject. (about 10 feet away) You see my sharpness settings in my camera were set really low and my default ISO, EXTREMELY HIGH. Once I changed these, I began to see that I could raise my ISO with out unimaginable noise (you had to see these pics...terrible!) So I had taken the advice but was so ashamed with the photos and couldn't believe this could be right. One night I really delved into my camera and explored and that is when I found those settings to be off.

I'm psyched to try all these suggestions out tomorrow! I literally have them written down. < taking notes like a huge dork!>

Sharpness setting in the camera only affects the Jpeg (as far as I know) so that being low isn't going to affect your raw file. You will still have noisy photos at high ISO's if you Underexpose them even a little. If you set your ISO at 800 and took the picture at ISO 800 your default ISO wouldn't matter. Your ISO isn't on auto is it???

 

[AMOMENT]

SCraig, so funny you should say that becasue I have a photog. friend who can shoot moving children completely manual! She nails the focus and the photos are incredible! LOL. I can't "touch" that! I'm horrid with manual.

 

[thereyougo!]

Thanks everyone! ABABYSEAN...I am taking your challenge tomorrow and doing my homework! I like hearing the settings too because if I then have questions pertaining as to why you used those settings I can ask. Sometimes I think we all learn better by example so seeing actual tangible work with settings that I could POTENTIALLY use, is extremely helpful. I know that depending upon SO many things, settings need to be changed and yet, I find this so helpful.

When you told me that you really wanted the eyelashes in focus and that is why you used 2.2 it showed me that you can fill your frame in a way that softens the rest of the image, without being blurry, and yet still have your main focus, sharp.

I also checked my settings in my camera and i think I know why I was struggling with so much blur and noise despite taking your advice. You see, what happened was I tried bumping my ISO to 800 one day so I could keep my shutter no slower than 1/200 but I had such grainy and blurry pics. I even opened up my aperture to 5.6 and stood pretty far back from my subject. (about 10 feet away) You see my sharpness settings in my camera were set really low and my default ISO, EXTREMELY HIGH. Once I changed these, I began to see that I could raise my ISO with out unimaginable noise (you had to see these pics...terrible!) So I had taken the advice but was so ashamed with the photos and couldn't believe this could be right. One night I really delved into my camera and explored and that is when I found those settings to be off.

I'm psyched to try all these suggestions out tomorrow! I literally have them written down. < taking notes like a huge dork!>

What size do you look at your photos? If you look at 100% then you will never be satisfied. You need to look at them at the largest size that you would print. Very rarely is this 100% of what the camera took. Zoom in to 100% to check sharpness, but don't measure noise this way, as you're unlikely to look at any print at 100%

 

[AMOMENT]

I actually always look at them at 100% so this is helpful to hear!!

 

[MTVision]

What size do you look at your photos? If you look at 100% then you will never be satisfied. You need to look at them at the largest size that you would print. Very rarely is this 100% of what the camera took. Zoom in to 100% to check sharpness, but don't measure noise this way, as you're unlikely to look at any print at 100%

Agree 100%. My favorite picture of my daughter was shot at ISO 3200 (ISO was from me forgetting to change it). I printed it at 8x10 and you can't see the noise. If I zoom in 100% on the computer then you can see the noise.

 

[tirediron]

I tend to agree with that. I look at EXIF data frequently, when it's available and from someone who's photography I admire, because I can learn from it...

Just to clarify my earlier post. I totally agree that you can learn a lot from another photographer's EXIF data, BUT, in order to learn, you have to understand what you're looking at. Meaning no disrespect to the OP, I don't yet think she's at that point, and I suspect hopes, albeit, perhaps subconciously, that she could duplicate a given image using the same settings as the original photographer used.

 

[ababysean]

Do you mean she shoots them in manual focus or manual settings?

 

[AMOMENT]

actually, scratch that because it depends on the program I'm using. I usually view the entire image at once and it is fit to screen perfectly. I can see the entire picture without having to scroll no matter which program I'm using but for some the "zoom percentage" is slated as higher or in different ranking. On my VIEW NX which came with my camera, my view is set to the default.