Jesse from Montana

Jesse17 · Feb 8, 2016

Hello all,

Name's Jesse, and I'm a total noob. I've had a Nikon N55 for years but figured by the time I fill a whole roll of film up and wait to get it developed, I'd never remember what I did or learn what I should do. So I never got off the auto setting.

Now I'm an aspiring knifemaker and wanted to start taking some good macro knife pictures so I broke down and got something better than my camera phone. I bought a used D7000 and watched the Digital Photography course on the Alison.com website. Ironically, now that I watched that 15 hour course my cell phone seems to take decent pictures after all. LOL.

Anyway, my D7000 just arrived today and I'm all fired up about getting into a lot more than just the knife macros. I look forward to lurking around here, and already have a host of questions. But I'll do my best to find the answers on my own before asking stuff that I'm sure EVERY noob has already asked on here.

Thanks for having me,
Jesse

Designer · Feb 9, 2016

Welcome!

JoeW · Feb 9, 2016

Hi Jesse,

Welcome. Okay, it's february and you're in Montana. So let me make a couple of short-cut suggestions.

1. Read up on white balance...especially about how you can get snow that looks white. You've got some bodacious landscapes where you are right now, just breathtaking sights (that the natives probably go "ho hum, just another mind-blowing set of snow covered peaks and amazing vista that I wake up to every day and it's just part of the scenery." For this (good landscape) you will benefit from 3 things:
--a good wide angle lens. Fortunately, Nikon makes a very inexpensive, light weight, reliable wide angle. It's an f1.8 35 mm. You can probably buy one used for probably $100. You will probably also find that it's a good lens for some of your macro photography b/c it's a prime and will be razor sharp (but also a narrow aperture so some good macro shots with it).
--a circular polarizer. Don't put a UV filter on the end of your lens to protect it--the lens hood it comes with will be good enough. But for shooting landscapes (like changing leaves on aspens--damn, I love me some aspens in fall) or a shockingly blue sky or the colors in a sunset or sunrise which you'll get this time of year and with a big-ass vista in big sky country.
--learn to use your WB (yes, I said that earlier, it's critical for shooting snow so it doesn't look grey and it's critical for shooting vibrant colors).
--find a way to stabilize your camera for shooting long exposures (the blue hour--just before sunrise and just after sunset...when the colors are the best but it may be a 2-5 second exposure so hand-held won't do it). Do NOT buy a cheap tripod...you might as well flush your money down the toilet. Lots of good tripod threads on this site. If you can't afford to spend $200 on a solid tripod, save your money and look for an alternative (a 6 inch folding triangle, a bungee cord, a clamp...stuff like that). No ideal. But it will allow you to shoot a couple of good low light scenes.

2. For Macro photography, if you can't afford a dedicated macro lens, the f1.8 35mm I mentioned will do well for you. You'll also find a tripod to be invaluable. For shooting macro and food (similar concept), you need a tripod to be rock solid, totally stable. You also need it to be precise (so you can move 1/4th of an inch closer and keep it there). Serious macro shooters will buy a track that goes on top of the tripod and attaches to the camera so you can crank your camera forward 1/16th of an inch and hold it here without movement or jiggle. It also helps if the tripod will allow you to set up just inches off the ground (meaning that the meds basically spread out so the tripod center and camera might only be 6 inches off the ground). It also helps if you have a center column that is bendable (so you can set the tripod over an object and then tilt the center column or have it go underneath the tripod). Like I said...ideal for serious macro and also food photography. I could go in to more details about scrims, speed lights, and cycs but that's all for now.

Also, some people will belittle the D7000 b/c it's now an older camera. Screw 'em. I've got two D7000 bodies. Very happy with it. For a crop-body it's excellent and I'm sure it has far more capability than you'll ever need.

Jesse17 · Feb 10, 2016

Thanks for the welcomes, and all the tips, Joe. I was about to post that we don't have any snow left around here, I'm on the east side of Montana, not in the mountains, and we've had a very mild winter. But, I went out to take some photos of an old bridge down river and found we the remains of a ice jam.

I tweaked it a little in Lightroom to bring back the colors, I probably should have used PS layers to bring out more detail in the bridge itself, but since I'm totally new at EVERYTHING, I wanted to restrict my learning to just Lightroom for now.

What do you think? What could I have done better?