Quicklabs
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2005
It was a nice day and I had a choice between cleaning my house and going out and taking pictures. Wish all choices were that easy.
My goal was to find out if I really needed a wide angle lens at this point and to spend some quality time with my 18-200 and my 50 1.8. I wanted to give myself some lighting challenges to see what the lenses were capable of within my very limited range of skills.
1st lesson I learned:
I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses. I need to always bring my reading glasses! That little LCD camera is waaaaaaaaaaaay too small for me to see anything.
2nd lesson I learned:
Check the settings on the camera before shooting. Especially white balance! I was messing around with the WB on incandescent the night before and forgot to change it. DOH!!! Because I couldn't see what I was shooting (see lesson 1), about 30 or 40 shots were taken on the wrong WB. Blue is my favorite color, but I don't want it in my pictures.
3rd lesson: Sometimes, if the subject is right, some creative photoshopping comes in handy, but don't count on it.
Lesson 4 is, Buy a program that will handle raw and start to shoot in raw. Whatever it is will have to be user friendly (Nikon Capture NX?)
Lesson 5: The VR on my 18-200 is a godsend. I can handhold occasionally at 1/13". There weren't a lot of those, but this shot is right out of the camera. Not perfect, by any means, but usable.
Lesson 6: A portable little tripod will (like the Joby Gorillapod) will probably get some good use. I don't have any tripod right now, but I found lots of situations in which the Gorillapod could have easily done the trick for me (See lesson 5)
Lesson 7: My 50mm on my crop camera just is too darn close sometimes. So instead of buying the Tokina 11-16 that I thought I might need, I'm going to look into a 30 mm prime. I've been reviewing the Sigma 30 1.4.
Greetings from one of the Forbes' list 10 fastest dying cities in America!
Thanks for reading! Have a great Sunday!
My goal was to find out if I really needed a wide angle lens at this point and to spend some quality time with my 18-200 and my 50 1.8. I wanted to give myself some lighting challenges to see what the lenses were capable of within my very limited range of skills.
1st lesson I learned:
I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses. I need to always bring my reading glasses! That little LCD camera is waaaaaaaaaaaay too small for me to see anything.
2nd lesson I learned:
Check the settings on the camera before shooting. Especially white balance! I was messing around with the WB on incandescent the night before and forgot to change it. DOH!!! Because I couldn't see what I was shooting (see lesson 1), about 30 or 40 shots were taken on the wrong WB. Blue is my favorite color, but I don't want it in my pictures.
3rd lesson: Sometimes, if the subject is right, some creative photoshopping comes in handy, but don't count on it.
Lesson 4 is, Buy a program that will handle raw and start to shoot in raw. Whatever it is will have to be user friendly (Nikon Capture NX?)
Lesson 5: The VR on my 18-200 is a godsend. I can handhold occasionally at 1/13". There weren't a lot of those, but this shot is right out of the camera. Not perfect, by any means, but usable.
Lesson 6: A portable little tripod will (like the Joby Gorillapod) will probably get some good use. I don't have any tripod right now, but I found lots of situations in which the Gorillapod could have easily done the trick for me (See lesson 5)
Lesson 7: My 50mm on my crop camera just is too darn close sometimes. So instead of buying the Tokina 11-16 that I thought I might need, I'm going to look into a 30 mm prime. I've been reviewing the Sigma 30 1.4.
Greetings from one of the Forbes' list 10 fastest dying cities in America!
Thanks for reading! Have a great Sunday!
btw i like the spinning wheel in sepia
Love the last shot!
Say it isn't so!!
I guess too much polarization is not a good thing.
