Photos from a fair - C&C welcome

maineiac · Oct 25, 2009

Here are some photos I took the other week with a D40 I borrowed from my office. I was having fun, but didn't know what I was doing so was on auto the whole time. However, yesterday I bought a D90 and have started learning how to really take advantage of some of the manual controls. I don't have anything to post yet from my new camera, but for now here are some shots with a D40 from the Common Ground Country Fair, held every year in Unity, Maine.

1. Guitar

2. Violin

3. Corn

marmots · Oct 25, 2009

1. my eyes are immediatly drawn to the face but i don,t know what you could do about that
2. thye face is blown out and out af focus, the colors seem a little flat, just not very interesting
3. i would try a bigger depth of feild (higher f stop), maybe a different angle

maineiac · Oct 25, 2009

Thanks for the comments, marmots. This was one of my first times with a DSLR, so I realize I have a lot to work on.
I like No.1 - but I see what you mean about your eye being drawn to the blurry face instead of the guitar neck...
No. 2 - yeah, I agree, not too interesting. I guess I liked what I think is her expression of quiet determination.
No. 3 - I was going for a narrow depth of field shot, so using a higher f-stop would have brought more of the corn cobs into focus, which was what I was trying to avoid. However, as I said, I didn't know what I was doing and this was using auto. Now I would have used aperture priority and played around with this shot some more.
Thanks!

inTempus · Oct 26, 2009

1. I agree that the focus is on an uninteresting subject (the guitar neck). The same angle with the focus on the guitarist and with the neck blurred would have been more interesting most likely.

2. A perfect example of where a flash would have improved the shot a whole bunch. I can't see the EXIF data on the image, but I would have also thrown the background more out of focus as the structure is distracting (too many lines).

3. I don't see anything wrong with the aperture setting of this shot. The layout of the corn is kind of boring is all. The depth of field is fine. If you would have used a smaller aperture setting (larger f/stop number) it would have been even less interesting as too much of the subject would have been in focus thereby making the shot too busy IMHO. So, I would say the decision to use a shallow depth of field was a good one.

Keep shooting and posting, it will all start to come together.

maineiac · Oct 26, 2009

inTempus said:
Keep shooting and posting, it will all start to come together.

Yeah...I'm soaking it all in. I already look at some of my photos that I thought were great, and now notice all the things wrong with them, or at least how they could have been better.

TiCoyote · Oct 27, 2009

Looking at #1, I don't mind that the face is OOF. It would be better if the face were in focus, but I think it would also be an interesting shot if the hand were in focus.