DSLR camaras

novocaine said

while your deciding i'm going to railroad this thread. mwah ha ha ha ha. etc

this is the shots from nodnol that those three are from
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=88745&l=7e72f&id=731220548
then some of my more bizzare shots
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4564&l=c7fd8&id=731220548
a few gig shots for the fans
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67929&l=efcf8&id=731220548


that should have made a bit of a tangent hehe.

i can't shout loud enough for my opinion to matter to much but i'd still take the canon.

The shot of Buckingham place reflected in the water is top draw some very good shot there Dave. that's the thing with this digi camera lark you can just take photos of anything review instantly and adjust to suit, not like in my day having to wait for development and cost a bomb for 90% shot that you are not happy with.

what ever camera anyone selects it is only as good as the person who takes the shot looking for that something special and using imagination that one of the reasons i hate wedding pics all to predictable I love the off the wall stuff funny angles and those once in a moment shots like the one of the robin I took, for it to land just where the fence dipped which draws you into the subject the light everything is spot on and lasted no more than 10 seconds just Magic and i love it

k33ts said

canon 400d

same as

I use a Canon 350D.  Does the job fine.

I would have thought as long as you stick with one of the big SLR brands (Canon or Nikon), you can't really go wrong.

The limit for picture quality likely will be with the lenses and photographer, not the camera body.

I'd say to get the older Nikon D50 over the D60.

The D60 is harder to get lenses for, and is more compact than the D50, losing a few of the buttons the D50 has, looks a bit better, but it's a wee bit more fiddly to sort the settings cause its more menu based, rather than just a single button.

Hi Guys

Just a little update on this thread, i ended up getting the Canon 1000d and to be honest with you i am well happy with it and glad i chose the canon. I would of gone for the 450d if i could of afforded it. I got it with the standard lense and i also got a Tamron 70-300mm lense with this aswell which is amazing.

I just re-read through this thread and somewhere i asked will i need to change the lense if i bought one of these. I now think and know that the lense is everything with these camaras.

I am still a novice with it though and still only just getting to realise what it can do.

Any of you guys got any good tips at taking shots indoors with crap lighting and using the 70-300mm lense zoomed in and no flash on. The majority of my photos come out quite blurred in this enviroment

Cheers Kenno

it's all about lighting mate.
you'll get blur because of the low shutter speed. if it's a picture of something that doesn't move then stick it on a tripod and use 2 second shutter release (self timer) so you don't get movement from you pushing the shutter.
if it's of people then use additional lighting and set your white balance to suit using a plain colour like a peice of grey card.
you'll also get blur if your using the lense at it's full extent as any movement will be magnified. again stick it on a tripod. (even a cheap one from asda will do)

a flash is a good investment but at 90 to 120 quid it can be a big outlay for what seems like a pointless accessory. if you do use a flash then use a diffuser and bounce the flash off something.

a good investment is a reflector (big peice of white/silver/gold) can really help for indoor photography and are fairly cheap these days from the likes of 7 day shop. can really help lift a portrait and put the light where you want it.

I use a Canon 350D, I like the camera, it will do a lot more than I will ever need and I get some nice results.



Still I must have taken 30+ shots of this red before I managed to get it in focus, as it would not stand still!

Saltburn pier (north yorks) camera on a tripod and 15 sec shutter speed.

prefer the second one mate.
the red's eyes arn't quite in focus. it's all about the eyes with wild life shots.
good shot though.

love doing long night exposures. also like doing the whole playing with light bit too. still got to get down to the motorway bridge and get the whole car's wizzing by thing done.

novocaine said

prefer the second one mate.
the red's eyes arn't quite in focus. it's all about the eyes with wild life shots.
good shot though.

love doing long night exposures. also like doing the whole playing with light bit too. still got to get down to the motorway bridge and get the whole car's wizzing by thing done.

Long exposure with you mug on it! must be a very strong lens mate, taking a risk there        

yer it was dark. guessed i'd be alright.

Kenno said

Hi Guys

Just a little update on this thread, i ended up getting the Canon 1000d and to be honest with you i am well happy with it and glad i chose the canon. I would of gone for the 450d if i could of afforded it. I got it with the standard lense and i also got a Tamron 70-300mm lense with this aswell which is amazing.

I just re-read through this thread and somewhere i asked will i need to change the lense if i bought one of these. I now think and know that the lense is everything with these camaras.

I am still a novice with it though and still only just getting to realise what it can do.

Any of you guys got any good tips at taking shots indoors with crap lighting and using the 70-300mm lense zoomed in and no flash on. The majority of my photos come out quite blurred in this enviroment

Cheers Kenno

Get yourself a tripod! The tiniest of movements will blur, especially when you're using a zoom/macro lense, even if you up the shutter speed. Flashes work well to light a situation, but they only go a certain distance (eg, at a gig, they're next to useless unless you're right up the front, and even then, they wash out the colour of the performers' skin, clothes etc.). Allowing the natural light in with the stability of a tripod will do wonders.

other option if you don't want to use shutter delay is to get a remote shutter release.
i made my own as it's only a 2.5mm jack on the 400 (i think it's the same on the 1000d) but you can pick them up on the bay for peanuts.

you can also use mirror lockup as at 300mm even on a tripod you may get some movement from the mirror snapping up that can cause blur.
hint. it's in the custom functions.

Cheers for the replies, the majority of the pictures i take are at dog shows where we show our bulldogs. Most of these in the winter time are indoor held at places like village halls or sports halls with them orange lights. Also most of them you are not allowed flash photography and even when i do get the odd few with the flash they aint that great either.

The tripod is not a bad idea and i think i will maybe invest in one of them. When i get more time i would like to mess around with it a bit more and try messing with the shutter speed.
I am still very much a novice but will learn eventually.

What does increasing and decreasing the shutter speeds do to the actual pictures you take.

Here is one i took outside, still not great but still learning




And one from inside

 

and that was with the flash on

Cheers Kenno

increasing the shutter speed means that the amount of time the sensor is open to light is shortened. the quicker the shutter the less light you get and hence a darker picture.

you can't really get away with a long shutter when photographing people or animals as they move.
anything slower than 125 of a second and you will get motion blur and even at that you may still get some blur.

to take the picture inside first find an object that is a constant colour.
i'd maybe have used your better halfs top as a temporary fix but your always going to better with something like a peice of grey or white card.
take a picture of the solid colour with it dead centre of the frame.
now go to white balance and using custom white balance set that image as the default (it will tell you how to do this in your manual)

this will remove a lot of the orange cast your getting at the moment which is the auto white balance trying to find the best match and failing.

put your camera in AV which means aperture priority.
this will allow you to set the aperture which is the size of hole that the lense allows light to pass though and the camera will set the shutter speed for you to get an exposure as close to 0 as possible. (you can adjust the exposure compensation if you want it brighter again read the manual to find out how)
the basic is to use the largest aperture giving the biggest hole and hence a shorter shutter speed. (i think the kit lense is an f4.5 which is your aperture number)

the draw back with this is the large the aperture is the short the depth of field. which means that objects to the back of the shot will become blured whilst the subject stays in focus (assuming auto focus is set on the subject and not on a forground object) the higher the f number the more of the image which will stay in focus.


the other thing to remember when photographing animals or people is that the eyes are the most important part. if they are not in focus the pictures appeal is hampered. you can see in your shot that your better half is the focus point which detracts from the over all composition.

the first shot has the snout in focus so same thing again.
a good trick is to use the flash to get catch light (a spot of light reflected in the eye) which draws a viewer to the eye and makes the photo bounce a bit more.

oh and try shooting in raw not jpeg. it uses more memory and you need the software to view them but it will give you more control over what you have shot afterwards. if your a bit wary try shoting in both jpeg and raw for a few days and see what you can do with the raw shots.

do you have adobe photoshop? it is very useful for veiwing and making minor composition tweaks that you might not have seen on the day.

does anyone have an FTP server i can put a photography manual on for a few weeks so people who want it can download it. it's to big to email at 13mb.