New to Forum - Critique Please

[FreeTheWeasel]

Greetings,

I am new to the forum and I would appreciate your criticism. First, some background

I received my 35 mm camera in 1986 (Sears branded Chinon DP-5 with a Sears 50mm prime) which I used until it broke. I then went to a Canon G3 which I used until it broke and then I replaced it with a Canon G11. I recently purchased a Panasonic GH4, 12-35 f/2.8 for video, and I've been having a lot of fun shooting photos with it in my spare time.

With all this experience, you would think that I'd be better than I am, but, alas, I'm not, and I could use some feedback.

These are some photos I took on a walk with my daughter. We hit upon a nice tunnel of trees and she was gracious enough to pose for me. I have only the on-camera pop up flash which I set to manual and I cranked the power waaay back so as not to overexpose her face. I wasn't entirely successful. The photos look a bit blown out to me.

These photos saw some light editing in Photos. I have Gimp, but I need to spend more time learning the interface before I can use it effectively.

Please let me know what I can do to improve.

Thanks.

FreeTheWeasel
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[Designer]

Hey, welcome!

These shots show that you understand how to use your flash.

I think I understand why these were framed horizontally, even though a single subject standing is mostly vertical, and portrait orientation generally looks better, but using your BI flash made it work horizontally for the light. You can always crop to vertical later, however.

Nice shots!

 

[FreeTheWeasel]

Hey, welcome!

These shots show that you understand how to use your flash.

I think I understand why these were framed horizontally, even though a single subject standing is mostly vertical, and portrait orientation generally looks better, but using your BI flash made it work horizontally for the light. You can always crop to vertical later, however.

Nice shots!

Thank you for looking. The funny thing is that with previous systems, I rotated the camera quite often. Since I use this camera mainly for video, however, I have trained myself to keep it landscape and I actually forgot I could turn it!

The pictures were originally 16:9. I cropped the edges, but I naturally tend to frame things a bit tight vertically. I may need to back off to give myself a bit more room to edit in post, but I'm going to find it difficult to unlearn all my bad habits. I have shot a lot of photos over the years, most are terrible, but I almost never edited them and so I tried to frame them for printing right out of the camera.

At some point, I'd like to acquire a proper flash. I have a 420ex for my Canon camera, but any money for the for the Panasonic has been spent on continuous lights for talking head videos.

Thanks.

FreeTheWeasel

 

[Designer]

At some point, I'd like to acquire a proper flash.

And getting the flash off your camera will make a huge difference. Meanwhile, take photos of all kinds of stuff not needing flash. Any well-lighted object/scene and turn off the BI flash so you can get used to turning the camera once in a while.