New to the forum and new to photography!! Please help!

jacendye · Jun 15, 2008

I recently owned a canon rebel xti and took around 100 pictures a day for the month that I owned it

Now I just bought a rebel XSi with the 28-135 mm lense

do I have a decent camera?

I know its a stupid question

But I fell in love with photography and couldnt stop

I have a picture that I would like for somone to tell me if its anygood or not but I dont know how to upload it:[

Senor Hound · Jun 15, 2008

Get a Flickr account! They're free, and they let you upload up to 100mbs a month! Photobucket I hear is good too, but having no personal experience with them, I won't comment. They may very well be better than Flickr, I just don't know.

If you really wanted to, you could start from right now, to having a Flickr account, uploaded photos and linked to this thread within an hour. I'm not telling you to, but I'm just trying to convey how easy it is to do. Whenever you have some spare time, you should look in to it.

Btw, your camera is VERY good. I'll take it if you don't think it is

But you need to have faith in your equipment, and yourself in order to fully blossom as an artist. I'm sure you'll have no problem taking great photos someday, if you aren't already.

jacendye · Jun 15, 2008

ok thank you

If you wanna stay online for about 5 more min

ill get a photobucket!

id like to ask a professional if its anygood please?

jacendye · Jun 15, 2008

here ya go
<a href="http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn43/jacen777dye/?action=view&current=n511868921_343469_2033.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn43/jacen777dye/n511868921_343469_2033.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

jacendye · Jun 15, 2008

LaFoto · Jun 15, 2008

Hmmm. Weeeelll.

First of all: Welcome to ThePhotoForum and welcome to the hobby!

I wonder how someone new to the hobby can own a decent camera (much more than what the ordinary beginner would start with, I think) for only one month to then upgrade to an even newer version, when I've been into photography for the past 35 years of my life and the 350D is the best I have ever had (and have had for 2 1/2 years now and will have for several more years to come, I think). But maybe I am only just envious, for I'd so love to able to upgrade but can't.

As to your example photo...
A barn.
No bottom, ground part is cropped.
The sky is correctly exposed, which leads to the fact that none of the rest is. The barn as such, the field, the background trees are all underexposed.

The photo is poorly composed. Barn and treeline go right through the centre of the photo, it seems divided into two halves, top half the sky, bottom half the barn and surroundings.

If the barn is your subject, your subject should a) be the part that is properly exposed and b) the part that should be inside your frame entirely (at first ... one, two, three steps into photography you can start to think differently, but I'm not sure you're there yet).

So, when you go back to this spot, try to get the whole barn into the frame. Metre your light from off the barn, not the sky. And try again.

Don't let any of this faze you.
You're on to a wonderful hobby. But it requires a lot of learning.

jacendye · Jun 15, 2008

thank you

I also have a Canon AE-1 Program thats a silver 35mm

its older and I just play with it

thank you for the comment though

Do you think photoshop could do anything to it?

LaFoto · Jun 15, 2008

A little. But you'd get a lot of noise on the barn if you seperately light it, and it might get a halo around it which makes apparent that you tried to recover something that wasn't there to begin with. But well, yes, if it were this very photo that you would want to rescue at all costs, you could rescue some. The fact that you cropped off the bottom of the barn in the moment of composing your frame cannot be remedied, of course.

Mav · Jun 15, 2008

What you really need is a 2-stop grad ND (neutral density) filter, or a different time of day. The grad ND is shaded on the top half and clear on the bottom half. What it does is brings the relative brightness of the sky and foreground more in line with each other and allows you to get a better exposure on the foreground. I use one for a lot of my sunrise and sunset type photos. Photo-editing programs would probably do a half decent job of bringing up shadow details on this.

abraxas · Jun 15, 2008

I'm a little surprised this is still in the Beginners Place forum.

Looks a little underexposed, but that's about where I like my photos to be before post processing. There's some fine details and textures in the chicken coop that's easily brought out in photoshop.

See LaFoto's notes above on composition.

LaFoto · Jun 15, 2008

You're right, Walter, this needs to be moved to ... hm ... where?
Oh well, General Gallery so I can stay "general" ...

Jacendye, The Beginners' Place actually is a Q&A forum, ok? The Galleries are for showing one's photos. No matter how new anyone is to either the hobby as such or the forums here. OK?

Rachelsne · Jun 15, 2008

You wil find the longer you have your camera the better you get, both cameras you list are great, as you take more pictures you will start thinking of different ways to capture your pictures and you will find you take better shots
keep [racticing and posting and read lots of stuff on hear and you will become even more adicted to photography's