Camera noob saying hello and after some general info....be gentle

[Entai]

Hi all,

Firstly a bit of background, (apologies in advance for slightly long post)

I have been wandering the OCUK forums in general for a couple of years and have looked with envy at loads of pictures in Photography & Video, thinking I wish I could do stuff like that, but never having the skills or equipment meant it stayed a pipedream.

Untill recently.

My brother rang up one day to say he was upgrading to a Canon 30D, and he was going to sell his 300D, knowing my dream of getting a nice good quality camera one day, he asked me if I was interested. I said I would quite like too but didn't really have the spare cash at the time, he was asking £200.

He said OK I will try elsewhere just thought I would ask first.

Anyway a month later was my birthday and lo and behold I open my present from my brother and siter-in-law and, yep, you guessed it, there in all it's glory was a fully boxed Canon 300D with an 18-55mm lens, a battery grip, spare battery and charger. To say I was gobsmacked was an understatement , my brother has always been a bit of a tightwad so to give away something like this was beyond anything.

So to the point of this post (at long last you say) I am now the proud owner of a 300D but have not really got a clue where to start.
On our recent holiday to Cornwall I have been messing with different styles of shot a few of which I have put below, these are straight from the camera no tweaking (would not even know where to start)

So please be gentle and point out where I can improve and also please can you recommend me what to start looking for with regard to building up a kit of equipment. I was thinking maybe a slightly larger lens or a zoom of some kind I am not really sure.

Again sorry for the long post I hope I have not bored you to death yet and many thanks in advance for any help.

I am slowly working my way through the stickies at the top but any help to point me in the direction of the more important points would be greatly appreciated.

One last thing all the pics were taken on fully auto, as I have no idea what bit does what yet.

I have taken enough of your time so here are some of my feeble attempts, again please be gentle with the noob

 

[rpstewart]

First lesson - don't take anything that anyone says personally. Photography is a very subjective field, just because someone doesn't like a particular shot doesn't make them right, if you like it keep it.

Onto the photos:

The seagull - certainly nice and sharp but the iron bar is obviously distracting. I'm guessing that the shot is just a resize of the original, in which case how about trying a portrait orientation crop of the gulls head? That way you could remove the bar from the shot.

The flowers - not bad, good depth of field and composition but possibly a bit flat colour wise. A wee tweak of contrast / saturation might be interesting.

Eden Project? - This is the weakest of the four in my opinion, I'm just a wee bit unsure what the focal point of the image is. I can't help thinking that moving a bit to the right and turning to the left would have opened the shot up a bit. However I think that would have brought one of the domes into play. As a holiday memory though it's fine and at times that's what you're looking for.

Bay - Yeah, not bad; the boats give a bit of interest to the foreground. How could it be improved? The shot looks to have been taken in the middle of the day, the light is therefore more from above and everything is evenly lit. If you watch the light in the couple of hours after dawn and before dusk - as the sun goes down or comes up the light is much warmer and shadows are longer. This could give you a better look to this one but obviously you have to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of this.

 

[Awesome]

A good place to start to learn about your new camera is here

http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/

I know that most of the information is for the 350d/rebelXT but nearly all of info is relevant for the 300d. Check out the "Digital rebel xt tutorials / lessons with Rick Sammon"

Good luck with your new camera !!

Kieran

 

[Awesome]

Sorry, Double post.


Kieran

 

[busterboy]

Great present too.

The first leeson that can be learnt is read the manual... Then read it again knowing how the camera works and what settings to apply for certain shots and lighting etc..

The shots you have posted are much better than the average and much better than I expected.. Well done. BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You must get out of using the green mode (auto)

Your camera has the potential to take awesome shots, Just get out there and experiment in AV mode and manual mode, It costs nothing now you have the hardware..

Another fact, We all come home with bin fodder everytime we go out, Don't be too disgruntled if you have a lot of shots that are out of focus or blurred, It happens to the best.. Its the keepers that count..

 

[themask70]

Well welcome to the photography forum!!

I found that the easiest way to learn how to use a camera is to read the manual then just play about with it un-till you get used to using all of the different functions i.e. appetre, flash ect. It can take you any amount of time un-till you can take 'good' pictures, as rpstewart said, different people have different opinons of what a good photo is. So just explore the camera

Picture 1: Very nice shot, but as had been said, the iron bar is just a little bit distracting.

Picture 2: Great composition, but i feel it is a stop underexposed, nice and sharp though.

Picture 3: Nice colours but a bit overexposed, i don't know if you're a photoshop user but it can easily be fixed in it....

Picture 4: Nice shot, nothing really wrong with it.


So just experiment and keep up the good work