New Lense - Some C & C Please

OREGATO

Hey guys, well, I bit the bullet and got my first lense. I think the limitations of the kit lens was the zoom so I opted for the Canon 75 - 300mm Zoom lens.

Overall, after reading the reviews about it online, it appears that it gets more bad reviews than good, but for the price, I thought I'd try it out.

As for the lense, it doesn't have image stabilisation, I didn't think it was going to be that big a deal but I have to admit that it does seem to be affecting my photos, I thought that if I bought this lense without IS, it may help me steady my shot a little better, so again, I'm still learning and trying my best to take better shots and work on my technique, elbows close to chest, breathe in before the shot, hold breath for the shot and breate out after.

I decided to head out to Glendalough on Friday with the GF and take some snaps while we were there.

I'm still learning, being a beginner, I haven't had much of a chance to practice much due to work and stuff like that but I do try to whenever I get a chance.

All these shots were taken in Manual mode, C&C would be great on them as I know I still have a hell of a lot to learn and a long way to go. I've love any tips/advice/criticisim regarding the shots I've taken, I've a few questions as well which I'll put down the bottom.

1. One of the first shots with the zoom lens, picture is clear enough but when you zoom in, you can see that it gets a bit blurry, is this me or the lens?


2. Another landscape shot, again using the zoom. Sky is over exposed? What should I have done in this case?


3. Quack quack. Friendly duck, took a good few of him but found that his movement made a lot of images blurry. This is probably the best one I got of him.


4. Bit of a fluke, I wanted to get the starry effect from the sun coming over the mountain, this was one of the better attempts, what sort of settings should I be going for to achieve the maximum effect from this sort of scenery


5. Oh deer, spotted three deer roaming around a field, a good distance away but the zoom helped, again, a lot of images came out blurry, this was one of my better attempts. Any tips on how to make the image a bit brighter? These were taken when the sun was in, a lot of my pics ended up quite dull


6. Taken with the kit lense, tried again for the starry effect, there were cars lower down so I know that the positioning of the sun isn't the best


7. Framing, what do you think of this effort?


8. Focus and apperture, got the effect I wanted, what do you think? What improvements could have been made?


9. Flowers, again, trying to focus in on the colour and blur the rest, I know the leaf on the bottom is in focus, would have rather that wasn't. What do you think?


10. Car lights - Waiting for a pizza, taken while sitting in the car, rested the camera on the dashboard and set a timer, waited for a car to pass, one of serveral attempts to get the streaky light effect.. What do you think? How could I have improved it?


That's all of them for now, the rest of the album is here if you want to take a look: http://pix.ie/oregato/album/378123

And finally, some questions:

1. I found that a lot of my shots came out dark, granted there wasn't much sunlight, but was there any way of taking better shots in the lower light? Any tips? Preferred settings?

2. Using the focus, on some shots, especially the 8 and 9, I set the focus dot to the left (to focus in on the flower and the tombstone, is this the correct way to do it? Am I missing something, is there some other alternative?

3. ISO, some shots, I felt, I had to set the ISO to 1600 or 3200, from reading different books etc, people say to use as low an ISO as possible, to reduce noise etc. But what if that's the only way I could find to actually get a good shot? Is there other ways to gain more light without upping the ISO? I take it I could have set the shutter speed to slower, but it didn't seem to give me good results neither.

4. Colour - or should I say lack of it, the scenery in real life was a lot more colourful, in some of my shots, probably 1, 2 and 3, it seemed that I killed a bit of the colour while taking them, I'd like them to be more vibrant, any tips on how to achieve this??

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post. Like I said, I'm still learning and am using manual, I'd prefer to stick with manual, I know that if I persist with it, I'll get better, so I don't want to go into TV or AV modes. Any comments or (constructive) criticism is welcome

Looking forward to your response and thanks for reading

Will

alexlyons

OREGATO wrote: »

And finally, some questions:

1. I found that a lot of my shots came out dark, granted there wasn't much sunlight, but was there any way of taking better shots in the lower light? Any tips? Preferred settings?

2. Using the focus, on some shots, especially the 8 and 9, I set the focus dot to the left (to focus in on the flower and the tombstone, is this the correct way to do it? Am I missing something, is there some other alternative?

3. ISO, some shots, I felt, I had to set the ISO to 1600 or 3200, from reading different books etc, people say to use as low an ISO as possible, to reduce noise etc. But what if that's the only way I could find to actually get a good shot? Is there other ways to gain more light without upping the ISO? I take it I could have set the shutter speed to slower, but it didn't seem to give me good results neither.

4. Colour - or should I say lack of it, the scenery in real life was a lot more colourful, in some of my shots, probably 1, 2 and 3, it seemed that I killed a bit of the colour while taking them, I'd like them to be more vibrant, any tips on how to achieve this??

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post. Like I said, I'm still learning and am using manual, I'd prefer to stick with manual, I know that if I persist with it, I'll get better, so I don't want to go into TV or AV modes. Any comments or (constructive) criticism is welcome

Looking forward to your response and thanks for reading

Will

Don't have time to go through all the photo's individually but there a few in there that are better than others and some that if I'm honest aren't the best. Take the deer for example, you got him looking at you, but the light was all wrong. Dull days make for dull photo's, within reason.

Photography is all about composition and lighting. Get yourself the book "Understanding Exposure" I can't remember who wrote it but it's very good and will help you hugely in regards to choosing settings etc.I have looked at at but I'm self taught as I find it better than books even if it takes longer, but most people prefer books.

As for your questions

1. Buy the book, you need to understand what all the settings on your camera do, and once you know that, you'll be flying. Not necessarily for when to use the, but for when not to use them also.

2. You need to focus on your subject, which you did in this case, but to increase the affect you should open the aperture. The lower the number, the wider the aperture is, the more light that gets in and the shallower the depth of field is.

3. Open the aperture to let in more light if you don't want to increase the iso to much. Be mindful of depth of field though. Lower the shutter speed also and try to increase the light if possible.

4.Strong sunshine will give you heaps of colour. the reason some of your shots are dull is like I said, it was a dull day and that generally makes for dull photos. Try taking similar shots on a really sunny day, but not necessarily in the middle of the day, morning and afternoon give good light for photographs, not to harsh and very warm, which is what woks for most photographs.

You'll notice I keep generalising my statements, and that's because photography is not set in stone. Find what works for you, keep asking questions and getting tips and work from there. I was like you not all that long ago, and my photos, (I would hope!) have improved somewhat. I kept trying stuff, make loads of mistakes, missed opportunities but now I don't miss as much and can pull shutter speeds and other settings right out of the air and get them near perfect 90% of them time. If you keep at it you'll get there, and the more you do, the quicker you learn. It doesn't take all that long before you start noticing major improvements. Learn from your mistakes. Keep posting for C&C here. Oh and go on the photowalks, I think there's one in Dublin on wednesday, check the expeditions section here

Promac

Just some general tips from me. I'm still learning myself so feel free to ignore whatever you like from the following. I bought the same lens while on holiday a while ago and thought it was a bargain - till I sobered up and realised it didn't have IS on it. The lack of image stabilisation is what makes your zoom shots a bit blurry when you don't have a tripod. Even with IS you'd still want a tripod for really long zooms. If you have a little cash spare then get yourself a 50mm 1.8 from Canon - the nifty fifty as you'll hear it called. It's about 120 euro in town and is a cracking little lens. Use your aperture settings and take portraits with it and you'll be impressed.

As you're just starting out, make use of the camera's features and get to know them in stages. Basically what you want to be doing is learning all your functions over time, not trying to learn everything at once. You'll just mess yourself up. You'll have photos go wrong and right and you won't know why.

It's up to you to follow this one but I'd reset the camera back to default settings and start all over, I've done this several times after mucking around in the settings and ending up with dull, noisy photos without knowing why.

Take it off the point and shoot modes but put it in P mode by default. The camera is pretty smart and will generally choose the right combination of shutter speed and aperture. Leave the ISO in auto, same with white balance. Don't change the metering mode or the auto-focus - you can get some really bad shots if you use the wrong ones there.

Go for walks in your neighbourhood or somewhere nice if you have a car/transport. Leave the camera in P mode and just shoot everything you see that you can frame a shot around. Remember your rule of thirds and try to have a subject in every shot - think about why you're taking the photograph and what exactly you think others would want to see when they look at it. When you've got a load of shots like that then go through them all and look at your EXIF data to see how you took each one, which settings the camera used. Do this for good ones and bad ones so you can learn the right and wrongs for yourself.

When you feel like you're bored with that, then move to the aperture and shutter speed modes (AV and TV). Get a tripod so you can play with long exposures/small apertures. If you have the cash then get a remote release too, but the timer on the camera is fine.

I still haven't gone to full manual mode with my 450D. I reckon it'll be a long time before I even need to as I can do everything I want to with the other modes. Later on, when you get very specific about what you want to do, then you might want to go manual again but leave it alone for now. I really think it's important to learn all of this stuff in smaller chunks over time - at the very least it'll spread out your experience of the whole process and you'll have less opportunity to become bored or frustrated.

Rainbowsend

Promac has made a lot of sense and some good advice, dont kill yourself trying to get perfect shots in manual mode straight off, let the camera do some of the work and like Promac says check your EXIF it has a mine of information and you will quickly learn what settings are "right" and "wrong".

You dont mention any post processing, I would say all shots need some pp and if you are shooting in raw then definitely pp is essential, you will have a far better chance of rescuing shots if you use raw. Exposure, White Balance, Contrast, Colour, can all be fine tuned.

magicbastarder

i thought i'd seen no.7 before, but it was just someone who had been to the same spot:
http://www.creativeireland.com/forums/showpost.php?p=301279&postcount=8554

OREGATO

Thanks guys for the helpful posts.

@alexlyons, I've got the book already, have read it through (and must read it again) it's a very good book and thought me a lot but I know that there is still a lot more to be learned.

Thanks for the answers to the questions, I understand the concept of apperture and depth of field and know what it does, putting it into practice is my next step and I think question 1 was really about anything else I could do to make the shots better.

Like I said, work has me with barely any time off at the moment so getting out and taking photos is difficult but I'm trying to make more time

@promac, again thanks for the advice. As for the camera settings, I haven't started to experiment with white balance or any of those settings, I've left it on M and changed the apperture and shutter speed.

To be honest, I would rather learn from taking bad photos rather than have the camera do it for me, I do know that if there were important shots or social shots that I really wanted to get right, I can rely on AV/TV (or even full auto as a matter of fact) to get a good picture. But for me, I think I'm learning a good bit more by using manual.

I don't get frustrated when I take a bad photo, more that I want to know why it came out wrong/bad/crap and hence why putting it up here I think that it's a good challenge for me, I started off not evening know what the light meter was or what it ment but I'm slowly but surely gaining a grasp on all the different concepts.

If I do start getting frustrated then I'll know I've taken it a step too far and move back down to AV/TV modes.

Thanks for the tip about going over my photos and checking out the settings I had when I took them, I must do that with the current batch I have.

Thanks for the replies lads, keep em coming.

Will

OREGATO

Rainbowsend wrote: »

Promac has made a lot of sense and some good advice, dont kill yourself trying to get perfect shots in manual mode straight off, let the camera do some of the work and like Promac says check your EXIF it has a mine of information and you will quickly learn what settings are "right" and "wrong".

You dont mention any post processing, I would say all shots need some pp and if you are shooting in raw then definitely pp is essential, you will have a far better chance of rescuing shots if you use raw. Exposure, White Balance, Contrast, Colour, can all be fine tuned.

I don't do any post processing and I'm still shooting in Jpeg. I'm going to start shooting in RAW + JPEG.

I'd prefer not to do any post processing if possible, I'd rather be able to take a good shot off the bat, without any (but obviously this cannot be done 100% of the time)

I know you said not to stop killing myself using M mode, but I'm not, I really enjoy it and TBH, I get more satisfaction when I do take a good picture in manual mode than if I was to take on in say, TV/AV.. Don't get me wrong, I do want a good photo, but for me, it's about me doing it using my own (limited, not so good) skill, taking an excellent picture in TV/AV mode would seem to me like I was cheating (to a certain extent) where as taking a half decent one in manual, I can try for myself to work out how to make it better next time. I hope this makes sense..

Ghost Train

OREGATO wrote: »

And finally, some questions:

1. I found that a lot of my shots came out dark, granted there wasn't much sunlight, but was there any way of taking better shots in the lower light? Any tips? Preferred settings?

If there a bit dark, you're underexposing. You can always brighten the images a certain amount when processing the photos. Shotting raw can help because you capture more dynamic range and theres more room to adjust than a jpeg.

2. Using the focus, on some shots, especially the 8 and 9, I set the focus dot to the left (to focus in on the flower and the tombstone, is this the correct way to do it? Am I missing something, is there some other alternative?

Quick way would be to focus on an object by pressing the shutter half way then recompose the shot and press the shutter fully down

3. ISO, some shots, I felt, I had to set the ISO to 1600 or 3200, from reading different books etc, people say to use as low an ISO as possible, to reduce noise etc. But what if that's the only way I could find to actually get a good shot? Is there other ways to gain more light without upping the ISO? I take it I could have set the shutter speed to slower, but it didn't seem to give me good results neither.

Nothing wrong with using high iso if you need to, just take a few test spots and know what level of noise you can expect. You basically have 3 things to set to get the exposure you want iso, shutter speed and apature. In low light normally you set the apature as low as it goes, shutter speed to a level that you can hold the camera steady enough and then iso to a level that gives you correct exposure. If you have a tripod, iso can be set low and shutter speed used to get the correct exposure

4. Colour - or should I say lack of it, the scenery in real life was a lot more colourful, in some of my shots, probably 1, 2 and 3, it seemed that I killed a bit of the colour while taking them, I'd like them to be more vibrant, any tips on how to achieve this??

Looks like white balance setting is off on some shots. Setting the correct white balance will help a great deal. After that saturation can be adjusted to the level you want in camera setting or when processing

Shots 7 and 1 look fine, the deer is a good shot but could do with a bit of colour (wb) correction and maybe contrast/saturation adjustment

DutchGuy

OREGATO wrote: »

I'd prefer not to do any post processing if possible, I'd rather be able to take a good shot off the bat, without any (but obviously this cannot be done 100% of the time)

A lot has already been covered here, but just thought I'd give you some advice one this. It is fine trying to get as good a shot as possible out of the camera, but if you are shooting RAW you will definitely need to do a bit of PP. You should be able to batch process quite quickly in most RAW converters. Just to highlight, having to do some PP does not make you a worse photographer. In the past when using film, photographers would choose different films depending on what effect they wanted, i.e. to get more saturated colours in landscape shots they might use Velvia film. This is not possible however with a digital camera so you need to do such things in PP.

If you really want to resist all PP, then dive into your menu and seek a picture style option (if there is one, I have one on my 40d anyway) and change it from neutral to landscape or something - this should boost the contrast and saturation a bit.

In relation to the overexposed sky in photo 2 - I think the entire photo seems a bit overexposed tbh so just increase the aperture a bit. Are you using the histogram and clipping warnings on your camera? If you turn these on you will easily see if you're overexposed in some areas. Some scenes will just be impossible to capture though as the dynamic range is too high. Here you have several options: Shooting it as a silhouette, post processing, or using a neutral density filter.

Finally - don't be too disappointed if your pictures are a bit soft, I have that lens as well and it is very soft generally.

Hope that helps somewhat.

DaireQuinlan

OREGATO wrote: »

I know you said not to stop killing myself using M mode, but I'm not, I really enjoy it and TBH, I get more satisfaction when I do take a good picture in manual mode than if I was to take on in say, TV/AV.. Don't get me wrong, I do want a good photo, but for me, it's about me doing it using my own (limited, not so good) skill, taking an excellent picture in TV/AV mode would seem to me like I was cheating (to a certain extent) where as taking a half decent one in manual, I can try for myself to work out how to make it better next time. I hope this makes sense..

How are you metering the scene ? If you're using the camera's meter and then just lining up the appropriate shutter speed and aperture until the camera's meter reads it as being exposed correctly then you're just doing exactly what the camera itself does in AV or TV, only slower. Manual is useful when you know that the camera is going to screw up, or you just can't use the camera's meter for whatever reason, or won't (long exposures for example), it's of little use in 99% of cases. I'd say I'd use AV in the vast majority of my shots, with exposure compensation if neccessary. Learning how to do that I think is more useful than learning how to use manual mode. I'd kick into manual in very rare cases, if I'm using flash for example, or I know the meter is going to mess it up, or I want to keep consistent EV across a bunch of exposures. Otherwise it's all automatic. That's assuming I'm using a camera WITH automatic modes of course

FoxT

Fair play to you for posting! When I got my telephoto zoom about 2 years ago it took me a while to learn how to use it.... my current MO is as follows:

Exposure
1 - If handheld, set your shutter speed to about double the focal length, ie if you are at 75mm, set it to 1/125, if 300mm, 1/500. (for 1.6x crop sensors)

2- Next, select your aperture. ( In Irish weather that will generally be wide open, unfortunately...)

3 - select your ISO speed for correct exposure.

Important to so it in that order! A higher ISO will reduce image quality, but not as much as a slow shutter speed will!

I would strongly recommend a tripod or monopod, because it allows you to shoot at a reduced shutter speed/reduced ISO & will result in better image quality.

Focus is also very important. Using different AF points is a great idea. I do not use the shutter button to activate AF, my camera allows me to use a different button to do this. I find this enormously helpful - I point the camera at the bit I want to have in focus, press the AF button, then release the AF button, Then I compose the shot & shoot with the shutter button. This takes a bit of getting used to, but works brilliantly when you get the hang of it.

And finally, for landscapes like these I often use a polarising filter. I find that in dull light it does help to boost the colours of foliage, eliminate reflections in water, and can help a bit with the sky as well.

Best of luck,

FoxT

charybdis

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

How are you metering the scene ? If you're using the camera's meter and then just lining up the appropriate shutter speed and aperture until the camera's meter reads it as being exposed correctly then you're just doing exactly what the camera itself does in AV or TV, only slower. Manual is useful when you know that the camera is going to screw up, or you just can't use the camera's meter for whatever reason, or won't (long exposures for example), it's of little use in 99% of cases. I'd say I'd use AV in the vast majority of my shots, with exposure compensation if neccessary. Learning how to do that I think is more useful than learning how to use manual mode. I'd kick into manual in very rare cases, if I'm using flash for example, or I know the meter is going to mess it up, or I want to keep consistent EV across a bunch of exposures. Otherwise it's all automatic. That's assuming I'm using a camera WITH automatic modes of course

This.

Learn metering. Learn exposure.

It sounds like a part of your aspirations in photography is to be able to exercise effective control over the images you make, in order to do this you have to be able to effectively control your camera. Learning how to understand what your meter is telling you and being able to translate that into sensible exposure parameters is the way to do this.

Blindly following the exposure indicator with your camera's control wheels won't teach you much; you need to understand what's going on inside your meter and why it's making those decisions. You're probably not going to be able to learn how to effectively use manual and automatic exposure modes independently, a corollary of fully understanding one is fully understanding the other. Once you know this, you can use the auto-exposure modes, different metering modes, exposure compensation, and exposure lock effectively and you can kick your camera into manual when the need arises.

Up until recently, I was using aperture priority and centre weighted average metering over 90% of the time, but now I'm consistently using the camera in full manual with spot metering (partially as a learning experience, partially because I think the added concentration it demands makes my images better). It usually requires reading several values in every new lighting scenario and you have to understand your camera's or film's dynamic range and how metered values will be represented in the final image.

Also, the EXIF data attached to many of the images you've posted says that several of them were taken at around 1/30; this shutter speed is way too slow for handheld shots with a telephoto lens, you need to use a faster shutter speed or your images will show motion blur from the imperceptible movements you make while taking the photograph. A good rule-of-thumb is to use a shutter speed that is at least the reciprocal of your focal length, e.g.: if you're using a 200mm lens, you should use a shutter speed of at least 1/200; although typically faster shutter speeds are better and you'll learn with experience what kind of focal lengths you can reliably hold steady at what shutter speeds.

To get started: find out what a stop is and how to express and balance stops in aperture value, shutter speed, and ISO; understand the relationship between aperture and depth-of-field, between shutter speed and motion blur, and between ISO and noise; find out what your camera's light meter is actually doing and what middle grey is; understand that everything isn't exactly 18% grey and you don't need to treat it as such; find out what dynamic range is and what a histogram will tell you. If you can begin to get your head around these things, you're well on your way to developing and being able to articulate your photographic vision.

And for the love of god, don't just read Understanding Exposure and assume having read it means you actually understand exposure.

OREGATO

Ghost train and Dutchguy! Thank you so much for the information, I've set my camera to shoot in RAW + JPEG now so hopefully that will allow me to do some PP and understand the likes of white balance and saturation better.

DaireQuinlan, thanks for the information on the cameras meter. I didn't know that, but obviously now will consider getting an understanding of what the meter actually does and finding other ways of metering a scene.

FoxT, thanks for the tips, I normally set the ISO first, followed by the aperture and then adjust the shutter speed as needed, obviously, it gets a bit tedious, so I'll give your way a go and see how I get on. I'll look into poloarising filters as well.

Charybdis, thanks very much for your post, sounds like you've plotted out my next learning steps and what to start looking at next.

kelly1

OREGATO wrote: »

Hey guys, well, I bit the bullet and got my first lense. I think the limitations of the kit lens was the zoom so I opted for the Canon 75 - 300mm Zoom lens.

Hello Oregato, I'm a relative new-comer to this business myself but I'll try to offer some helpful advice.

As a general rule, you can't get top quality lenses with a wide zoom range and 75-300 would be considered fairly wide. Generally good zooms have a constant aperture of f/2.8 (or sometimes f/4) and will give you good contrast and colour. It just gives your pictures more impact. But of course good lenses don't come cheap. So to get your pictures right, it means spending a bit more time at PP (increasing saturation, increasing the black level, sharpening etc.)

As for the lense, it doesn't have image stabilisation, I didn't think it was going to be that big a deal but I have to admit that it does seem to be affecting my photos, I thought that if I bought this lense without IS, it may help me steady my shot a little better, so again, I'm still learning and trying my best to take better shots and work on my technique, elbows close to chest, breathe in before the shot, hold breath for the shot and breate out after.

OREGATO wrote: »

All these shots were taken in Manual mode

Just curious, why manual mode? I can be useful in situations where the light is constant and the subject is contrasty and you want to get a lot of shots with consistent exposure but I would generally use Av mode.

OREGATO wrote: »

1. One of the first shots with the zoom lens, picture is clear enough but when you zoom in, you can see that it gets a bit blurry, is this me or the lens?

The exif data shows the problem. You used a shutter speed of 1/20 @123mm and you can see some shake in the image. BTW, did you focus on the tower and recompose and did you use the centre focus point?

OREGATO wrote: »

2. Another landscape shot, again using the zoom. Sky is over exposed? What should I have done in this case?

A totally clouded sky like that is always problematic. If you expose for the sky, the land will be underexposed and if you expose for the land, the sky will be blown out. The best solution is to use a graduated neutral-density filter but that's more ching-ching. Or use HDR but I'm not a big fan of it especially on landscapes!

OREGATO wrote: »

3. Quack quack. Friendly duck, took a good few of him but found that his movement made a lot of images blurry. This is probably the best one I got of him.

There might be a little bit of shake and focus might be a bit off, hard to tell. If you were able to shoot at f/4 or f/2.8, this would bring the shutter speed way up and sharpen it up a bit but it's not bad though.

OREGATO wrote: »

5. Oh deer, spotted three deer roaming around a field, a good distance away but the zoom helped, again, a lot of images came out blurry, this was one of my better attempts. Any tips on how to make the image a bit brighter?

For this one, I would have opened up the aperture to increase the shutter speed to near 1/500. Rule of thumb - 300mm x 1.6 (crop factor) = 480mm so use shutter speed of 1/500 or use a tripod. I think the image could benefit from some PP. I'd increase the saturation a bit and use the white-balance to warm it up a bit. Might also help to increase the black level and exposure.

OREGATO wrote: »

8. Focus and apperture, got the effect I wanted, what do you think? What improvements could have been made?

For me, I think you're a bit too close to that first cross. On the positive side, you've used your max aperture to get the background crosses out of focus.

OREGATO wrote: »

1. I found that a lot of my shots came out dark, granted there wasn't much sunlight, but was there any way of taking better shots in the lower light? Any tips? Preferred settings?

You might have been metering on a bright area of the image which will tend to under-expose. It's best to meter on a mid-tone area, not too bright or dark.

OREGATO wrote: »

2. Using the focus, on some shots, especially the 8 and 9, I set the focus dot to the left (to focus in on the flower and the tombstone, is this the correct way to do it? Am I missing something, is there some other alternative?

I normally leave the focus point in the centre and then focus and recompose holding the shutter button down half way. Alternatively you could use back button focus which I've switched to and find it very good.
See http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2286

OREGATO wrote: »

3. ISO, some shots, I felt, I had to set the ISO to 1600 or 3200, from reading different books etc, people say to use as low an ISO as possible, to reduce noise etc. But what if that's the only way I could find to actually get a good shot? Is there other ways to gain more light without upping the ISO? I take it I could have set the shutter speed to slower, but it didn't seem to give me good results neither.

In a lot of cases a "faster" lens is the only answer or use a tripod.

OREGATO wrote: »

4. Colour - or should I say lack of it, the scenery in real life was a lot more colourful, in some of my shots, probably 1, 2 and 3, it seemed that I killed a bit of the colour while taking them, I'd like them to be more vibrant, any tips on how to achieve this??

Get a better lens or increase saturation in PP.

OREGATO wrote: »

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post. Like I said, I'm still learning and am using manual, I'd prefer to stick with manual, I know that if I persist with it, I'll get better, so I don't want to go into TV or AV modes. Any comments or (constructive) criticism is welcome

What's your reason for preferring manual? It makes getting good exposure harder. I'd stick with Av for most of the time.

Good luck!

P.S. just wondering, do you prefer this or the original?

kelly1

charybdis wrote: »

Up until recently, I was using aperture priority and centre weighted average metering over 90% of the time, but now I'm consistently using the camera in full manual with spot metering

Hello, I'm puzzled by this. If you're using manual exposure, metering is effectively disabled isn't it? Am I missing something?

DaireQuinlan

kelly1 wrote: »

Hello, I'm puzzled by this. If you're using manual exposure, metering is effectively disabled isn't it? Am I missing something?

Metering isn't disabled (well, assuming the charybdis isn't using some 70's rangefinder or something) in manual mode, the camera will still give you a meter reading, but you have to set the shutter speed and aperture yourself. This is useful if you know how to actually interpret what your camera (or external meter) is telling you and how to relate that to whatever you're shooting with. Charybdis' example of the spot metering is a good one, with several readings you can get an idea of the entire range of values represented in a scene, and decide what to set your camera too depending on how you want things exposed. This idea was first formalised (not invented, but he was probably the first person to actually set it down on paper as a system) by Ansel Adams with his Zone system, so if you want to get exhaustive it's all there.

kelly1

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Metering isn't disabled (well, assuming the charybdis isn't using some 70's rangefinder or something) in manual mode, the camera will still give you a meter reading, but you have to set the shutter speed and aperture yourself. This is useful if you know how to actually interpret what your camera (or external meter) is telling you and how to relate that to whatever you're shooting with. Charybdis' example of the spot metering is a good one, with several readings you can get an idea of the entire range of values represented in a scene, and decide what to set your camera too depending on how you want things exposed. This idea was first formalised (not invented, but he was probably the first person to actually set it down on paper as a system) by Ansel Adams with his Zone system, so if you want to get exhaustive it's all there.

OK, the camera will still meter but the manual setting over-ride it. Seems like a very time-consuming method. Why not let the camera decide exposure and then check the histogram? You can pick an area to expose for by pressing the shutter button half way. Maybe I just don't get it but I think there's rarely a need for manual.

Ballyman

kelly1 wrote: »

Maybe I just don't get it but I think there's rarely a need for manual.

There is always a need for manual. For example, you're at a football match and one team is wearing white and the other team is wearing black and it's sunny. I'd like to see what results you get using Av, Tv or any other kind of automatic mode.
Try it as well with black and white horses with an overcast sky in the mix as well!
Or a wedding with a white birdes dress and black monkey suit.
Taking landscape shots with sky included. Again the camera won't expose this correctly in Av or Tv.

There are a million and one examples of where Manual is better to use than semi automatic modes. Obviously if you need to take quick shots in different lights like street photography then the automatic modes are better as you won't have time to adjust exposure settings but for landscapes and sport it's much more beneficial to use M as you can set up the exposure correctly and stick with it. The easiest way to get your exposure correct quickly is to take a meter reading off the ground/grass and then micro adjust the exposure afterwards using the histogram. If you have a sky in the mix in a landscape shot then you need to use an ND filter also to expose it correctly.

kelly1

OK, points taken, thanks.

DaireQuinlan

kelly1 wrote: »

OK, points taken, thanks.

Plus, some of us shoot cameras that have no histograms. Or meters for that matter.

charybdis

kelly1 wrote: »

OK, the camera will still meter but the manual setting over-ride it. Seems like a very time-consuming method. Why not let the camera decide exposure and then check the histogram? You can pick an area to expose for by pressing the shutter button half way. Maybe I just don't get it but I think there's rarely a need for manual.

Yes, if you have exposure lock mapped to the shutter release half-press, but this isn't the default behaviour for most cameras (as far as I know). Arguably, trying to find an appropriate mid-tone to point the camera at for the range you're trying to capture is very time consuming, it can be a lot quicker just to dial in the exposure parameters you know you want.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Metering isn't disabled (well, assuming the charybdis isn't using some 70's rangefinder or something) in manual mode, the camera will still give you a meter reading, but you have to set the shutter speed and aperture yourself. This is useful if you know how to actually interpret what your camera (or external meter) is telling you and how to relate that to whatever you're shooting with. Charybdis' example of the spot metering is a good one, with several readings you can get an idea of the entire range of values represented in a scene, and decide what to set your camera too depending on how you want things exposed. This idea was first formalised (not invented, but he was probably the first person to actually set it down on paper as a system) by Ansel Adams with his Zone system, so if you want to get exhaustive it's all there.

I think it's probably worthwhile for anyone who has an interest in controlling exposure to at least be casually familiar with the Zone System as a simplified way of thinking about exposure. Although it was designed for individually developed (so you can use development times to control the highlights on a case-by-case basis) black & white (because varying the development times of colour films can produce undesirable colour shifts) negative sheet film or roll film in separate backs/bodies, part of it can still be applied to other film/digital photography.

Even if you just understand that the average caucasian face is probably a bit brighter than 18% grey, so if you meter off a person's face and overexpose by a stop you'll probably end up in the ballpark of correct exposure. Your meter reports values as 18%* grey (Zone V), so if you were to expose without correction for the metered value for the person's skin, their skin would look very dark. By choosing to overexpose by a stop (effectively placing the person's skin tone on Zone VI) their skin will appear brighter and "truer" to its apparent luminance. You just have to become familiar with the tonal range your camera can represent and begin seeing light in terms of it.

* Or 12%, or 14%, whatever. Middle grey.

magicbastarder

in digital, i generally shoot in aperture priority and adjust with exposure compensation; wouldn't use manual mode very often, but one case where i do is when taking multiple shots for a stitch, so the exposure is consistent across the shots.

i'm stuck in manual for most film shots, only one of the film cameras i use has a choice to go into aperture priority.

OREGATO

Thanks very much guys for all the information and tips.

@Kelly, your processing made the photo look a bit better, more colour and doesn't look dull like my original.

A few of you have asked why I try to shoot in manual (and fail at that.... badly) the reasoning is because I want to learn as much as I can, try and learn from these mistakes and make progress. My fear is going into a semi auto mode and then getting so comfortable with it that I'd rather just sit there than try and do it all myself.. (A bit like driving, automatics are nice and easy going, but they get boring, manual is a lot more fun, rev matching on down shifts, shifting up just before the red line etc etc)

That's why I don't use AV or TV, if I stay on one of them modes, I'll probably be there forever.. which some might argue wouldn't be a bad thing, but I guess it's also the satisfaction of getting a good shot in manual and knowing that there was no aid from the camera itself.

I guess next on my list is to revise the understanding exposure book then, I'm going to look at histograms and I'm gona start shooting in RAW.