Tip Camera Tips - Post your "taking a photo advice/tricks" here

[Mark]

A CPL you reckon hey - getting one

 

[Steve]

Would love to see some pics from you guys. I love looking at all types of pics regardless of subject.

 

[Mark]

I got this shot yesterday of a wild duck sitting on my neighbors overturned tank - you can just see the outline of the fence I shot it through. I thought it looked kind of arty

 

[Steve]

Good shot Mark.
You've done a good job to shoot through a fence, i can hardly see the wire. Nice work.
And you are right that the photo has a nice feel to it. Arty indeed.

If we want to continue the photography tips then you have hit two right on the head.
Narrow depth of field: Stevo have mentioned this in his posts. It's where there is a point in focus but either the foreground or background is out of focus. Also called Bokeh too (pronounced Bock-e, i think). You have nailed a nice shallow depth of field. Whether you meant to or not is irrelevant. It gives a nice effect and draws your attention to the subject. in this case the cool looking duck. You narrow the depth of field by having a large aperture or sometimes called an 'F-stop', but lets not get too technical. A larger aperture is a smaller number on your camera settings as its a fraction. i.e. an aperture of 2.8 is actually 1/2.8 and would be classed as a large setting, whereas 22 or 1/22 is a small aperture and less bokeh. A smaller aperture will also cut out more light so you normally need to slow the shutter speed to compensate.

Rule of thirds: this is where you try to compose the picture along the thirds of a frame. That is, imagine the frame is divided up like a naughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) board so the picture has 'thirds' lines drawn on it. If you can place the subject or a major aspect on one of the third lines or even an intersection of 2 third lines the picture will normally be more appealing to the eye. In your pic you have the water tank on a third line which draws your eye to the subject being the duck. Awesome. You also have added interest with the tree which also is in a third (close enough) which is not distracting but a nice addition. Awesome again.
Rule of thirds is not an exact science as it is all subjective as we are all individuals and different tastes but it is a good general rule to think about when taking photos. Basically i just think to myself, don't put the subject in the centre, and it normally work out ok. My pics I put up are probably not very good examples of this concept except my first Tahiti pic of the sailboat in the sunset. When working with a horizon try not to have it in the centre of the frame, unless there is something else that really steals the show in the frame (eg the 3rd Tahiti photo of mine of the other sailboat). Google it and you will get heaps of info and is probably the most important thing when composing a picture. (well that's my opinion anyways)

Nice work Mark, you were putting all these photography theories into play which made the shot a winner.
Keep them coming.

 

[Mark]

Thank's Steve!

I understand everything you are saying (so this means your explanation is perfect because photo tech is confusing for me).

Rule of thirds and Boheh - I can remember these two for sure. Yeah I guess it's one thing to fluke a good shot but to understand what actually makes it a good shot can only improve my photography. Appreciate you analysing my pic. Cheese!

 

[stevo]

Seriously though, my best tip for all beginners is to go do a short course and learn hands-on.
I did a 1 day course in Brisbane when I first bought my DSLR and went from a 100% only use 'Auto' mode to now only using the 'Manual' mode or one of its close brothers (aperture or shutter priority). I think this was the mob I did my course with and would highly recommend them.
https://www.learnphotography.com.au

I did that course too! We probably have the same photos There was only four people there when I did it. I've done a couple of other courses since that one, one was pretty basic but I still learnt a few things, and did another portrait one with a model and we walked around back alley ways and did arty farty model pics, that was awesome. With a course you get some great photos that you normally would never get the opertunity to get.

Great photos there Steve!

 

[Steve]

Thanks Stevo.

That's awesome Stevo that you did the same course. It really is a small world.
I wouldn't mind doing a portrait course or one that teaches photography with a flash. I think i am hopeless with a flash. I haven't got an off-camera flash yet (far too expensive i think) so pretty restricted to the inbuilt one.
I've also thought about doing the 'Learnphotography' advanced course just to keep the learning going. Just haven't got around to it yet. One day.

Stevo, you will have to start sharing some of your shots on here. I don't care what the subject is, i'm just interested in all photography.

 

[stevo]

Instead of adding it to the other threads i thought i'd stick it in here since we're talking about it....

Tip: Avoid taking photos between 10am and 2pm? (middle of the day). The Aussie sun is too intense and will blow your photos out. Some objects will be blown out and the shadow areas will be darker. Your camera can't cope with the light, and colours will be washed out. (limited light spectrum?)

...early morning or late afternoon sun light is best, it also highlights the side of your object, which makes for a better photo, and the colours are awesome

 

[stevo]

I wouldn't mind doing a portrait course or one that teaches photography with a flash.

I've also thought about doing the 'Learnphotography' advanced course just to keep the learning going.

You probably know they do a flash course aswell? I thought about their advanced course, but they say they wonder around the city taking photos, i felt a bit wierd on their standard course when we wondered around South Bank taking photos of people.

The above post info was from a general easy basic course i did, it was all easy stuff which i knew from the Learnphotogaphy course, but he was a pretty knowledgable fella and went right in to the light spectrum stuff which was wierd. I'll have to dig out my notes.

 

[stevo]

I'm always trying to get better/clearer photos and I had some doubts about one of my lenses so I did some googling and found you can tune your lenses to your camera. I'm not sure which cameras will have this function but mine does. Mine's a Nikon D7000

Basicly you take a photo of something like a ruler while focusing on a point and then check the photo to see if that point is in focus or if another point is in focus further away or closer, then you can adjust the camera to suit. It seems my zoom lense was a little out so I adjusted it. You can adjust different lenses and the camera remembers the setting and knows which lense you have on.

This may not help my photos at all but I thought i'd mention it out of interest.

pic for example:

Here's a page that has more info: https://photographylife.com/how-to-calibrate-lenses

 

[Mark]

I never thought about lens calibration just like a good rifle sight...

 

[Steve]

Nice one Stevo. Never heard of that before. Cheers.

 

[stevo]

yeah it's handy to know and try, though there's a bit of debate about the need for it and some don't like the method. They say most lenses don't need it and some people don't like the method. Apparently you can get fancy expensive computer software and you plug your camera in and it does checks and adjusts it for you.

 

[stevo]

Tip: Calibrate your computer monitor

Just a general thing you should do if you're in to checking and editing photos!

1. Go to your Control Panel (in bizzaro Windows 8 I just do a search for "Control Panel")
2. In the search of the Control Panel - type in "Calibrate" and the option should appear
3. click the option and go through the process.

It gives you tasks to complete, checking colours, gamma, brightness, text clarity and checks your resolution etc.

I just did this and it fixed a few things on my new monitor, very happy with the results now.

 

[Mark]

Tip: Calibrate your computer monitor

Just a general thing you should do if you're in to checking and editing photos!

1. Go to your Control Panel (in bizzaro Windows 8 I just do a search for "Control Panel")
2. In the search of the Control Panel - type in "Calibrate" and the option should appear
3. click the option and go through the process.

It gives you tasks to complete, checking colours, gamma, brightness, text clarity and checks your resolution etc.

I just did this and it fixed a few things on my new monitor, very happy with the results now.

Nice tip - gonna try this myself!

 

[Steve]

Yeah good tip Stevo.
Or there is an alternative...buy a Mac and everything is rosey from then on. Lol.

 

[stevo]

Tip - Focus Lock

If you have a button called "AF-L" or some kind of focus lock button around your right thumb area give it a go.

This might benefit you in any situation. When you half press the shoot button you take a focus. Then you press the focus lock button and then take your photos. This works great for holding the focus at the original distance you chose. If you're shooting continuous the camera can end up searching for focus and while your camera is wondering all over the place searching for focus it changes focus and possibly is focusing on something else.

I found this good for action shots, or anything that isn't changing distance from the camera. For example, you focus on a car going past, hit the focus lock and start shooting while panning. You've already got the focus from the first shot, now you're just following the subject. If you're in continuous mode, it would be always be trying to focus on each shot, and while you're moving you risk it focusing on weird things like trees in the background etc.

 

[Mark]

Oh, so THAT's what it's for... I've learnt something new on my camera today

Mine also has a little key image next to the AF-L - I suppose that's the lock description. I had no idea

 

[stevo]

Info - Crop Factor .....I don't think we've mentioned this yet? From my limited knowledge.......

You may have heard of Full Frame cameras? They are more expensive. Lower end cameras have a smaller sensor size. The lower end Nikon cameras have a crop factor of 1.5 and Cannon is 1.6

This all came about because the old 35mm film cameras had a 35mm "sensor/exposure" size. Then when the digital cameras came along the sensors were very expensive so to make them affordable they made them smaller. This creates some weird issues, for example, if you have a 300mm lens, for Nikons 1.5 crop factor the lens ends up as 450mm because the smaller sensor makes the image larger. So, no matter what zoom range you're at, if you don't have a full frame camera and want to work out your zoom distance you have to take in to account the crop factor. It's a bit weird to work out but that's how it is. But... really... if you don't care, it doesn't matter.

The full frame sensors/cameras are getting cheaper so we'll see some more affordable full frame cameras coming along.

 

[stevo]

Mark, you might have some buttons that you can change and allocate functions to. These can be handy to put your favourite functions in