NEW TO PHOTOGRAPHY

[Trever1t]

No, I usually head to the coast I'd I'm working outdoors or use a park here in sj.

 

[soufiej]

Now that I know you are an adult Kiki, I am wondering if some of your photos were taken at Laguna Niguel Regional Park? If so, my wife and I shoot there often and I have referred several people there to TPF.

I meant to mention,that I looked through your link to your photography..Amazing photography. You are what I strive to be!! I LOVE all the photos of the birds,just amazing!

Thank you for the compliment. I want to go further, but I got where I am by doing what you are doing.
Personally, I think photography (wildlife/bird) is similar to golf. In a short amount of time and a good amount of practice, you can be about as good or bad as most.

Keep posting, asking for critique, reading, watching videos; repeat and you should see significant growth in your photography in a relatively short amount of time.

I enjoy reading Photography Tips and Tutorials for Beginners

I hope to grasp ALL of it one day soon! If you wouldn't mind,can I ask you a few more questions? What kind of a camera do you work with,and lense? What mode do you usually shoot in. I'm assuming when shooting wild life you basically have to set your camera to 1 aperture,shutter and ISO,you have to be ready at a moments notice to snap that pic! So my question is,what do you set you camera at? If i wanted to catch goo dclear action shots,say of a bird in flight and im using my sigma DG 70-300mm lense,what should i set my camera to,to be able to catch crisp clear photos,without having to change anything? Does any of that make any sense?

Kiki, you had asked, "For instance, when I zoom in closer, do I have to change the aperture? These are the things I am working on."


You do not need to change the aperture setting if you are working in Av mode. The camera will attempt to maintain the setting until it no longer can given the lighting conditions. Since the lens has a rather powerful zoom, it will not maintain a constant aperture at different focal lengths unless you force it to do so. And even then, what you want may not be within the capacity of the lens. Check the lens yourself; in bright daylight focus on a subject in the near distance with the camera in Tv or P mode. Focus and check the f stop. Zoom in and check the f stop. Zoom in again to full telephoto zoom and check the f stop again. Most likely the final setting will not be the same as the first. Do the same in Av mode and you should see the aperture setting become more consistent. Read the reviews which will tell you the basics about your equipment. Then simply experiment. If you have a question, devise a test for that question. The forum will be happy to assist but it is still best for you to know your equipment inside and out. It's not terribly important unless you are wanting the blurred backgrounds of a portrait setting, but there will be a focal length with your specific lens where the f-stop changes in any mode other than Av. It would be a good idea, IMO, to know where that focal distance is on your lens since changing the f-stop also means changing the shutter speed and/or the ISO and altering the basic look of the shot. Just sit and work with your camera, taking note of where f-stops change and where the sharpest image is captured.

Each camera and each lens will be slightly different in this respect so there are no real absolutes to fall back on. But at some set focal length, your lens will kick the f-stop up or down in all situations.

Given the rather soft focus of your lens at full zoom, you might want to eventually consider a teleconverter as a less expensive way to get closer in order to fill the frame; What is a Teleconverter and can I use it with my camera and lens Nikon Knowledgebase

What I would be paying the most attention to are the minimum and the maximum aperture settings, which you can find in the lens' specifications (which should have come with the lens). As Jacaranda said, each situation will be unique though many cameras now have customized modes which can easily take you back to a familiar group of settings, even zooming the lens to a predetermined focal length for you, at the single touch of a control. However, if you're not fully comfortable with the basic settings yet, you might want to put off making those adjustments for now.

Nowdays, search engines are your best resource. If you want to know something about your gear, you can normally find it if you can come up with a good search title.

Here's another site which discusses birding; My General Approach To Photography - tonybritton

Everyone will work a little differently than another, every camera and every lens will be slightly different and every situation will be somewhat unique. Getting to know your camera's capabilities and its liabilities is, IMO, the place where you begin. If your camera can't duplicate the settings on another camera, what someone else does is relatively unimportant to you at this time. By reading about various photographer's techniques - particularly their approach to getting in close to wildlife if that's your interest - though you'll eventually find your own system for your equipment.


Are there any specific questions or issues you would like the group to address?

Many, many threads have been devoted to learning photography. Reading the archives will offer a new idea in almost every thread.

 

[vintagesnaps]

You might want to work on thinking about your framing. I use prime lenses so am not zooming (but don't do birds in flight, keep talking to JacaRanda about that! I stick to things like hockey players in motion lol). There's one of a bird that's nice, probably would have been better framed with less space (water) to the left so the bird wasn't cut off.

I like the one of the horses, that's an interesting perspective and composition (just would be better without the ear cropped off). It looks maybe a little grayscale, there's nice white on the horse's nose, but the sky is so light, maybe it was the exposure... I might make copies and play with the adjustment some, but I like nice contrast in my B&W photos and usually am thinking about B&W and tone and contrast in a scene before I'm even taking the pictures.

Seems like you're on the right track (you haven't really been at it all that long yet), keep practicing and having fun.

 

[mcap1972]

I would go closer or wider on the first shot.

 

[TTLui]

Very nice shots! Keep up your passion, you definitely have an eye for it. The horse, the bird in the water with bridge in the background, and the duck photos worked for me. It gave me a sense of ease and calm with those photos. With your existing lens (if its a zoom), see if you can zoom in all the way, make sure its on the largest aperture, and frame it how you want it. This will throw the background out of focus more.

I think if you are shooting action, it will help to have more negative space around the subject, say the bird photo that is just landing, instead of cropping the bird into a box centered, crop it so the bird is landing on the left of the frame, and have more negative space (water) to the right side, it shows the viewer where the bird is landing to, a nice body of water.