My first day out C+C Please

Jeff92 · Apr 15, 2012

Well, I actually got out today and went to my Gfs brother's flag football game. It was really sunny all day with some clouds over. I am an obvious noob so I am looking for some feedback. I am going to post a few of the shots that I thought were OK. I think I did ok at the game, but some were overexposed and some were underexposed. I wasn't sure what to do really, so I put the shutter priority on 2500 and shot away. I went to the beach later and had direct sunlight overhead and was having a hell of a time trying to get a decent picture. It wasn't easy and I wasn't really sure what apeture to set it at so I kinda kept it on the higher end, around 12-32. I would really like some feedback for these bright light situations. Here are a few shots I took today. I will post some bad ones too because I had a lot of trouble with the sunset. None of these pictures have been processed. Thanks! Jeff
1.

IMG_0560 by Jeff592, on Flickr

2.

IMG_0420 by Jeff592, on Flickr

3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/77265466@N07/7082657799/

IMG_0692 by Jeff592, on Flickr

IMG_0634 by Jeff592, on Flickr

4 I think this is enough. This is how a lot of my attempts were going at a sunset shot. I have no clue what Apeture should do at this kind of focal range, so I was trying to keep it high to keep focus.

IMG_0683 by Jeff592, on Flickr

As you can tell, I am very new. C+C is greatly appreciated. I think I have thick skin, feel free to rip away, but tell me what I did right too lol, if anything.

Austin Greene · Apr 16, 2012

Welcome to the forums.

A couple suggestions. First, try not to make empty posts, its kind of frowned upon. It may have been an accident, but your two extra posts here could be considered a form of bumping, which isn't appreciated. If people aren't commenting, there is a reason for it. Second, I would suggest reading the manual to your camera, it should give you some good insights as to how to properly use your setup.

Edit: Extra posts got deleted, I'm a happy camper

Jeff92 · Apr 16, 2012

Those second two posts aren't mine. I'm not sure what that was about

Bitter Jeweler · Apr 16, 2012

Those two posts are a persistent annoying spammer. Quote the post to see the link.

Jeff92 · Apr 16, 2012

Well I assume that person is banned now. Can anyone offer any critique. Im sure these are poor shots by your standards, so any way to improve them would help my learning process. Thanks

KmH · Apr 16, 2012

Have you explored the exposure triad of shutter speed, lens aperture, and ISO settings do you understand how they inter-relate?

Do you know of/how to use the auto-bracket, metering, and focus mode features your T2i provides?

How much research have you done regarding visual image composition, white balance, depth-of-field, hyperfocus, and diffraction?

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...-forum/267492-info-those-new-photography.html

Photography is a lot easier to do if you have a good grounding in the technical and artistic fundamentals.

As far as bright light situations, often the best approach is to put the camera away, and wait until the quality of the light improves.

Jeff92 · Apr 16, 2012

I think I have a grasp of the triangle. A very basic grasp though. I guess I should read through the manual again and learn about this auto bracketing and metering you speak of. I guess there is a lot more to this camera than I thought there was. I guess I just need to reread the manual and then practice, then see what my problems were and learn why they happened. Thanks for giving me a reason to open up that manual again, I know there is never an easy answer to this photography stuff so I guess it is best to just take the criticism and learn the concepts in depth and then go apply them, then come back with some shots I can be proud of

KmH · Apr 16, 2012

Because user's manuals are so dry, it usually takes several readings to start putting all the information together and relate it to how to best use the camera to your advantage.

Jeff92 · Apr 16, 2012

Yeah after about 50 pages, I just want to sleep lol. I will give it another go. I learned about bracketing today. WooHoo

Jeff92 · Apr 17, 2012

So I have been reading up and watching a lot of videos on grey cards. Are they really necessary. I get the idea for the reason for them but on shots like a landscape, they don't seem like they would do much. Would it be better to use the grey card for a custom white balance and then use spot metering on a cloud to try and get proper exposure. I don't see how a grey card would help once you telephoto out on a landscape, or am I missing something. Also should the grey card be facing the sun, like I would have my back faced to the sun, it seems like it would reflect a shadow if it were facing the sun. I didn't want to start a new thread. I just wanted to throw out that question about the grey card because I can't find exactly how specific you need to be with it, especially over a long focal distance such as a landscape or sunset. Any help would be great. I am about to buy one

mikeduk · Apr 17, 2012

I personally wouldn't worry about white balance too much on location, I might be in the minority here but I just leave it to automatic which gets it more or less right and then I adjust to fit the particular mood I'm looking for in Lightroom. The only exception to that is if I'm doing an event where I know I'll up to a thousand photos to go through and adjusting the white balance on each one can become very tedious! Even then I wouldn't go to the trouble of using a grey card. A couple of years ago I went through a spat of setting white balance for each situation using the card but eventually just got bored of it, I find the camera does a pretty good job on its own unless you are in some pretty funky lighting conditions.

Your photos look good though, one of the main comments I'd make is to try and remove any clutter from the photos. The first one of the seagulls for example might be stronger by removing the two half-gulls (yes I've just invented a species!) and moving in tighter on the remaining two.

Also pay attention to horizon lines, generally speaking you should try to get them as level as possible, not so easy on location without a tripod but a doddle to fix in Lightroom or Photoshop using the crop/rotate functions.

mikeduk · Apr 17, 2012

^^ the above advice on white balance assumes you are shooting in RAW of course (which you should be!) as all original colour info is still available..

Jeff92 · Apr 17, 2012

Thanks for the response. I do shoot raw and am still figuring out how to edit them. Is there a faster way to adjust white balance on a set rather than opening each raw one by one in photoshop. It seems slow, unless I am doing it wrong lol, or should I just use another program. I have cs5 that I have had for years so I just use that

KmH · Apr 17, 2012

Yes. You can open an entire series of photos you have shot in the same light in Camera Raw (ACR), and use the batch edit feature.
They will all be on the left side of the work space.
You adjust just one of the photos and then click onSelect All, then Synchronize at the top of the column on the left. ACR then updates all of those images.
Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5

You don't have to Select All. You can select non-consecutive photos on the left too.