Please critique

Merlin5 · 27 Jun 2020 at 00:44

So I'm new to 'proper' photography and got my first ever dslr camera yesterday. I've been spending hours playing around with it, downloaded the 260 page manual and have been thoroughly confused and overwhelmed by all the variables! But it's great fun learning. However, I'm more familiar with things today and have been snapping some random photos to try and see if I can get anything decent or not. I've just created a flickr account since that seems to be the thing to do, and uploaded half a dozen or so photos. I will probably delete them at some point as they're certainly not showcase pictures but just things that might help you tell me where I'm going wrong. They're with and without a tripod, Av, Tv, a bit of manual, just a very basic idea of what I'm doing in each mode. I stayed completely away from full auto though.

Getting good sharpness I'm finding the most difficult of anything! Raymond told me to keep my elbows in and take the picture on exhale, so I've been trying to do that. I messed around with different iso, aperture and shutter speeds. Some things look over exposed. I have no photography software yet so it's all just from the camera, apart from Flowers 1 where I brightened it and deepened the colours a bit in photoshop. Tell me what you think. Be gentle, lol.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/189053856@N05/shares/Q883K9

Merlin5 · 27 Jun 2020 at 15:24

Raymond, thanks. Not sure I understand that first point you made, and I don't know what cross points are. Also, how do I set those 10, 2, 4 and 8 o'clock focus points? When I go into AF point selection from the LCD screen, I can scroll between manual and automatic. Automatic seems to just set all 9 points, and in manual it scrolls round to each one in turn so I just set mine to the centre point.

Also, I had the camera set on a tripod pointed at the bird feeder. I set it to AI Servo and continuous shooting, still with one single centre focus. How can I set the focal points to follow the bird where it lands instead of me moving the camera on the tripod to get the focus point on the bird before the bird flies off ?

SDK^ said:
Nice images
I can see you have the 50mm F1.8 lens which is a great starter lens - allowing you to nicely blur the background. It's a perfect lens for portrait photos.

FYI : Photoshop is one of the best, most used photo software packages

Very true! I guess what I meant was photography software such as lightroom that have been recommended to me.

Merlin5 · 28 Jun 2020 at 12:43

Thanks Raymond, I'll have a play around with the focus points and get more familiar with changing them.

Merlin5 · 28 Jun 2020 at 13:21

Raymond Lin said:
Don't rush it, but it will be second nature

By the way, I tried Lightroom and it's amazing! Quite easy to use, easier for me than Photoshop, and I don't want any other similar software now. The problem is this. I really want it but in no way will pay monthly subs. Someone's selling Lightroom 5.7.1 on ebay for £169 and says
"Used, great condition, boxed, with disk and serial number". Is that a good price or too much, will 5.7.1 be lacking any features in the 'developer' section from the later versions, and is it safe to buy, ie, reusing the serial number?

Merlin5 · 28 Jun 2020 at 14:01

Thanks Raymond and GMac11. Here's the features I like that sold me to Lightroom, and are these in Luminar 4? :

The before and after buttons, two ways to do it. Either side by side or just switching between the two.

Lights out where you can turn off everything and see your image surrounded by blackness.

The radial filter thing where you put a circle round an object in the photo allowing manipulation of exposure, contrast, etc of everything outside the circle without affecting the object inside. Also, I clicked invert mask, made the circle very small around a pigeons eye and was able to change the colour of just the eye. I think that's so cool.

Clipping where you see red or blue areas.

Double clicking on a setting name to reset that feature.

Clicking on a particular part of the image, like a nose or eye, and it zooms exactly to that bit without having to move the image to find it.

Those are the ones I can think of that stand out. Maybe they're standard in other software?