I'm not sure what I am doing wrong :(

[tlcmommyx4]

By and large, you really don't need to be shooting in "M" unless you have some very specific need. If you want a specific aperture, use Aperture Priority mode... and Shutter Priority if you want a specific shutter speed.

One of your photos in the most recent shot is there twice in a row, did you mean to post a different one for the second shot?

FWIW it looks like you're doing fine for now! The white balance in the bowling alley looks spot-on.

The last shot looks the way it does because of excessive flare caused by shooting into the sun. Usually flare is something you don't want but it sometimes can give a shot a nice "look" as in your photo. A lens hood would cut down on the flare but there's only so much it can do when shooting almost straight into the sun.

Thanks so much for your help. I was using a lens from my friend, and she has no hood. I am still trying to decide on a longer lens. Hers was a 75-300mm no IS, I did like the zoom on it, but I would like a little more width. I am going to post the bird shot that I skipped, when I posted 2 cow shots.

nice work, you're definitely getting there! I REALLY like the first (second) one of the cattle and the one of the calves in the road - yes, you were shooting into the sun, and yes, a hood would serve you well, but you'd be surprised at how much you can correct these in PP. Especially the first one of the cattle. Beautiful sunrise, too - I was watching out of my office window and wishing I'd packed my gear. The colors were amazing this morning.
We're getting our rain now, and the temp is dropping - instead of going out shooting on this gorgeous day, I gave my car a thorough and much deserved wash. It's nearing car show season... I guess I'll hold out till our next nice day to run to the botanical gardens or the zoo. Keep up your good work - show us your snow tomorrow and I'll show you how much we get in T-Town.

I was very happy with most of my shots from yesterday. I can't wait to learn PP, but I keep telling myself one thing at a time. One day we will have to meet up and go shooting together since you are not to far away. I would love to learn first hand from you.

What I want to know is... how'd you get the cow to look right at you???

How funny is that, I was seriously about 20 feet away, they were grazing right on the side of the road. Speaking of funny when we were driving up the mountain we had pulled off in one of those turn outs for picture opts, which is what I was doing, when all of the sudden this bird came flying up from below me on the side of the mt. Scared me to death, I was so excited though because I thought it was a hawk, but turns out it was a vulture. So much for my bird awareness, but it did take me by supprise.

 

[mom2rtk]

How funny is that, I was seriously about 20 feet away, they were grazing right on the side of the road. Speaking of funny when we were driving up the mountain we had pulled off in one of those turn outs for picture opts, which is what I was doing, when all of the sudden this bird came flying up from below me on the side of the mt. Scared me to death, I was so excited though because I thought it was a hawk, but turns out it was a vulture. So much for my bird awareness, but it did take me by supprise.

Ah, so you were holding out on us!!! LOVELY shot! And great job with focusing on the vulture!

I'm glad he didn't scare you enough to fall over the edge or something!

 

[tlcmommyx4]

Ah, so you were holding out on us!!! LOVELY shot! And great job with focusing on the vulture!

I'm glad he didn't scare you enough to fall over the edge or something!

If you only knew how scared of heights I am, and my husband was laughing so hard in the car, he said I jumped back like someone had hit me with something..

 

[VVFF]

I've got a secret for you...don't tell anyone here that I told you this but....not ALL the pictures we take end up in a national art gallery. I know...it's hard to believe. But 95% of the time our best images can be improved by some processing afterwards. Now, this is where having the RAW file can help. Initially I never did any PP until I started realizing what it could do to my images. Now, I process each of my images, some more than others.

Like I said, don't tell anyone...it'll be our little secret!

Hope you don't mind(if you do just tell me and I'll take it down) but I took the liberty of throwing your best image(in my opinion) through a little bit of post processing to show you what it can do to an already good shot. Again, it helps to start from the original RAW or full resolution JPG file...but this illustrates the point well enough:

Original:

After minor adjustments:

Ignore the increase in noise, the JPG compression of photobucket doesn't lend itself well to any sort of sharpening. The result would be better from the original file.

So I guarantee most of the images you see from the more experienced members here didn't necessarily come that way straight out of the camera....shhhhhhhh

 

[tlcmommyx4]

That does really look better. I really would like to do some post processing, but I think that scares me more than my new camera did LOL. I really do know that my photos are not all going to be in a National art gallery, but I just want to shoot up to the standards of the wonderful photographers on the borards here . Thanks again for showing me what can be done with PP and post processing.

 

[Ashmanarion]

I always use unsharp mask and change the color levels slightly if they need it for my pictures after I have shot them. I've started shooting in RAW but I really don't do anything to them except sometimes adjust the exposure compensation. Can someone tell me what I should be doing with the raw before sending it to GIMP for sharpening and other options?

 

[DznyFan]

I was very happy with most of my shots from yesterday. I can't wait to learn PP, but I keep telling myself one thing at a time. One day we will have to meet up and go shooting together since you are not to far away. I would love to learn first hand from you.

That would be awesome! (not sure how much I can teach you) but it would be fun to get together at a zoo or something some time.
Love the Turkey Vulture shot (as much as I dislike Turkey Vultures)

 

[VVFF]

I always use unsharp mask and change the color levels slightly if they need it for my pictures after I have shot them. I've started shooting in RAW but I really don't do anything to them except sometimes adjust the exposure compensation. Can someone tell me what I should be doing with the raw before sending it to GIMP for sharpening and other options?

You can sharpen in RAW. You don't need to do it later. The only time I would do it later is if my image benefited from selective sharpening of only highlights, midtones or something else.

In RAW I would do anything that they offer before sending to gimp. So I'd set color balance, exposure, brightness, highlight recovery, fill light, black level setting, curves adjustment, sharpness, (I personally use color NR in RAW because I find it works no worse than any other options but don't use Luminance NR), and obviously saturation/vibrance and any selective color adjustments.

Most of my images only need slight exposure changes, sometimes some curves adjustment and vibrance/saturation changes. I have my defaults in LR set up to change depending on my ISO. If I shoot at higher ISO I use less sharpening and less saturation increase to avoid emphasizing noise.

 

[tlcmommyx4]

That would be awesome! (not sure how much I can teach you) but it would be fun to get together at a zoo or something some time.
Love the Turkey Vulture shot (as much as I dislike Turkey Vultures)

Sounds good you tell me when would be good for you. Do you ever come up for the Arts festival here in the city, or do they have one in T-town as well?. How much snow have you gotten today?

 

[DznyFan]

I rarely get to the city! I didn't know you all had a big arts fest there - we have a big one here every May.
There are rocket plane races coming up in April at the air and space museum here, I'm thinking about going - I think that'll prove to be a shooting challenge.
We've gotten probably 6 o 7 inches of snow here - the roads were bad earlier but most of the roads are fine now since the ground is so warm. But, it's not over yet... how much there?

 

[tlcmommyx4]

We have only gotten about 5 here, but our roads are horrible here tonight. I would love to see what the rocket plane races are, sounds like fun! Hey do you have a EXIT reader program that you use? I can't seem to find the post where everyone was suggesting what one to download? I hope that it stops snowing up there, although you are supposted to get more than us.

 

[VVFF]

We have only gotten about 5 here, but our roads are horrible here tonight. I would love to see what the rocket plane races are, sounds like fun! Hey do you have a EXIT reader program that you use? I can't seem to find the post where everyone was suggesting what one to download? I hope that it stops snowing up there, although you are supposted to get more than us.

If you just want to read EXIF data you can always right click on a JPG and go to properties in windows. This will display the EXIF info in the "details" tab.

 

[tlcmommyx4]

If you just want to read EXIF data you can always right click on a JPG and go to properties in windows. This will display the EXIF info in the "details" tab.

When I go and do that it dosen't give me all the info like was the ISO was and things like that. I know their is some free download out there that would do the same thing with the info I was to see.

 

[Groucho]

When I go and do that it dosen't give me all the info like was the ISO was and things like that. I know their is some free download out there that would do the same thing with the info I was to see.

If you are viewing photos online, I like the Fxif plug-in for Firefox. If you don't use Firefox (boo! ) then Opanda Exif Viewer will apparently work for both IE and Firebox, but I haven't used it.

If you're viewing photos on your PC, my favorite viewer by far is Irfanview. Press "E" to see exif data.

If you're still not seeing anything, then the exif data has been stripped out at some point. Many (most) web galleries strip the exif data in order to make the photo smaller and save bandwidth. Some desktop programs will, too. If your own photos are missing, check the software that you use to edit them and look for a setting about saving the exif data.

 

[tlcmommyx4]

If you are viewing photos online, I like the Fxif plug-in for Firefox. If you don't use Firefox (boo! ) then Opanda Exif Viewer will apparently work for both IE and Firebox, but I haven't used it.

If you're viewing photos on your PC, my favorite viewer by far is Irfanview. Press "E" to see exif data.

If you're still not seeing anything, then the exif data has been stripped out at some point. Many (most) web galleries strip the exif data in order to make the photo smaller and save bandwidth. Some desktop programs will, too. If your own photos are missing, check the software that you use to edit them and look for a setting about saving the exif data.

Thank you so much, this is just what I was looking for.
Hope you have a great day