DSLR - Beginner

[elmarko]

So,

I've recently purchased a Canon EOS 600D DSLR Camera - with the standard 18-55 stock lens along with a fixed ef50mm f/1.8 II lens (£90-ish one).

Camera

Fixed Lens

Drawing & painting are my main areas I work in, but if I want to commercialise my work I thought I'd need to start taking my own reference photos to draw or paint.

So far I'm a little underwhelmed by it's performace (but I'm frankly unsure if it's my beginner noobyness or the gears fault - I'm guessing the first one).

The main problem I'm having is focus really - the autofocus leaves much to be desired & the manual focus seems last luster (on both lenses), the only thing is when I put the flash on (I tend to get very high quality/in focus images - but then the flash ruins the lighting of the image)

Anybody else have experience with this camera with general use? (not trying anything amazing yet as I've still got loads to learn)

Examples of pics done over the last couple of days - two indoors (The cats), two at Fort Nelson.

Example of increased detail with flash.

 

[elmarko]

Well, for those I had my iso settings up at 1600 (which I was told, seemingly wrongly was fine for this camera) but after some reading it seems high iso isn't the best friend on this one :O.

Shutter speed is usually between 1/20 or 1/200 - lens aperture at 1.8 usually for the fixed.

On first cat pic.

F4.5
1/13
3200 ISO

Second cat

F4.5
1/15
6400 ISO

Armour Plate

F2.0
1/60
400 ISO

First gun

F2.0
1/1600
6400 ISO

Final cat pic.

F3.5
1/60
400 ISO

 

[elmarko]

Thanks for all the tips guys, I'll give them all a try tomorrow during the day & report back with more.

Photography hasn't really ever been my thing - as it's just a means to get good reference pictures to then draw/paint - but obviously, I'll need good pictures to make good reference images... arg, another thing to learn from scratch!.