... that I need a mentor or two :cry:

This evening, made a dash to the highest spot nearby as it looked like we were in for a fantastic sunset. We were :D

The spot (The Barrel near Abney, Derbyshire) has a panoramic view. The sky was exceptional!

But... I realise I haven't a clue what I'm doing when it comes to taking pics.

I have a fuji S5000 which has great potential in the right hands. But I REALLY don't know what to do with all those dials (P, S, A, M - Special I can about deal with) and then the deeper settings (white balance, metering... etc etc) that it has. I'm fed up with pointing and clicking in Auto and discarding nearly everything I take.

So, in this evening's pics below, the skyline at dusk had very few remarkable features unfortunately, which made 'composition' a bit difficult. Even worse was understanding how to control the colours/focus/brightness to get a decent pic even in Auto (move the centre point just a tad and the mechanism started whirring to do it's own thing!)

So, before I give up, hows about you pros/semi pros/ excellent amateurs helping out the likes of me and alongside the photocomp, maybe set a monthly task where everyone can chip in with hints/tips/guidance on both the techy side and the compositional side of taking an incredible picture?

These are 3 of the many I took this evening (the rest are binned :().


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/MissyC/photocomp/DSCF1845c.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/MissyC/photocomp/DSCF1842c.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/MissyC/photocomp/DSCF1843c.jpg

It really was a fantastic sky, but it needs something else in the picture to make a decent photo IMHO.

Pity I bust that tyre on the way up or we would have had more time to find a better location, although it was a nice view, if a little COLD! :D

I will have a look at mine in the morning but I doubt there are any better.

They are very nice, no need for anything else.

MissyC, firstly, the colours in those shots are pretty good and a little bit of Photoshop magic will improve them in terms of saturation, that's guaranteed and it won't take much other than a tweak of curves to sort them out. Composition...that's another thing. Sometimes (most times) I am with my "tribe" and when a good sunset goes down all I can do is shoot from my balcony so composition goes out the window and I concentrate on the colours...man with family is not a free man to roam...and woman with same has it even harder!

However...apart from that small issue (cough!)...there are other ways to get the image you want and it's called "creative vision" and this applies to every single view or scene that you have in your mind's eye before you even raise the camera to your eye. All you have to do is visualize the scene you want to portray and then use the camera to expose it. This is what makes photography personal - YOUR vision of the scene you are looking at. Point #1, get the camera out of automatic mode. Think about what you are shooting and HOW you want to shoot it. Are you looking at a field of tulips? Is there a bit of a breeze? So...how do you want to shoot this? As a straight shot showing all the tulips (i.e. Aperture mode at f/8) or is it a bit windy and could you see this totally differently...(shutter priority, 2 seconds at f/22 if light permits (or use an ND filter or two to cut the light) to blur the movement in the field and give the image a whole different dimension. The key to this situation is shutter priority (I won't deal with manual for now).

Alternatively, think about isolaton. One sunflower in a field of wheat...you may want to emphasize this "stranger in a strange land" so how could you do it? The solution is to use a very large aperture (f/4, f/2.8 etc) so that everything in the background goes out of focus and the main subject stands out.

Something you will hear us talk a lot about is exposure compensation. The exposure meter in your camera is calibarated to 18% grey (or thereabouts) which means that it "sees" everything as a middle grey tone. Try shooting a white wall with your camera on whatever mode you like (without compensation) and you'll find that the image turns out...grey. It's the nature of the beast. So, to produce an image which is close to the way you see it will require some compensation...that white wall will need +2/2.5 stops tp render it white. Point your camera at something black and the inverse is true but if you leave your camera on Auto, I can guarantee you that you won't get a true result. So, when you are shooting something like a sunset or sunrise, meter the hot spot in manual mode...the meter will give you a reading which it thinks the white (for example) of the sun is mid-toned but what you need to do is to tell the camera that you don't believe it and give it an extra stop or 1.5 stops (i.e. meter says 1/500th at f/11 so you set it to f/8 or f/6.3) to compensate. If you have a +/- compesation dial, use this instead.

Thanks Frenchie :)

While my batteries are on charge I've also bumped Hoppy's post back up, so plenty of reading! I think I need to concentrate on just one or two technical features to start with?

I've located the Exposure compensation button. It has 13 positions from -2 to +2. As it's still very frosty white up here in the Peaks I'll play around with exposure compensation and Aperture priority for starters.

There's also a 'photometry' setting in one of the menus. This is set at Spot. I guess I should try out 'multi' and 'average'. But what's the difference between these two?

I don't know your camera missyc but I'd hazard a guess and say that the photometry is the setting for how the camera meters the scene. If it's set to spot then it's going to be taking a reading for the exposure from a very limited area (i.e. 1 or 2 degrees) from the centre of the scene you are pointing it at. Multi will be the same as Nikon's matrix or Canon's multi-pattern where the camera reads the whole scene and applies some "intelligence" and tries to match what it sees against a database of scenes stored in the camera to produce the correct values for exposure. Average will be the same as centre-weighted where the camera reads much more of the scene (again from the centre) and baises the exposure setting based on what it sees there -- a bit like spot metering but reading a much larger centre area. Best thing to do is to check the manual.

Those 13 exposure compensation values from -2 to +2 are in 1/3 increments so that's :thumb:

OK... found the relevant bit in my manual (ie teeny booklet), which describes multi and average settings:

Average: A average value for the entire image is used - particularly effective for shots of people wearing b/w clothes and scenery shots

Multi: the camera uses automatic scene recognition to analyse the subject/scene and selects the optimum exposure - for a wide range of shooting conditions and everyday photography (default for auto, special and movie)

Spot: Exposure is optimized for the (approx 6.25%) centre of the image - useful for subjects with strongly contrasting light and dark areas & to achieve correct exposure for a particular feature

"Practise, practise practise..."

... that I need a mentor or two :cry:


But... I realise I haven't a clue what I'm doing when it comes to taking pics.




You're not alone!!!!

I had the same problem with my sunset photos last night
:( :(

They looked great on the camera but when I got them onto the computer I was gutted when I saw how crap they where!

Oh well trial and error is the only way to learn.

I don't understand all the techy bit either!

:cuckoo:
cath

I think this is a cracking idea too MissyC

:cool: