So those of you following along at home know I got an amazing deal on a Canon T1i. I went out on Saturday & picked up a 50mm f1.8 to play with. I'm thinking of picking up a Tamron 18-270 superzoom as my 2nd lens for now, then buying better lenses as I discover what I end up taking pictures of and what I enjoy. Why the Tamron? Despite it's slightly hiccup-y autofocus, it got better reviews than the Canon 18-200, and I know I'll want to shoot some wildlife so the 18-135 seems like not quite enough at the moment. The tamron is $600 minus an $80 rebate. I haven't ordered it yet though, so if anyone wants to weigh in I'm more than open to opinions.

The 50mm is a lot of fun to play with, but the bokeh really sucks. Some of my pictures that I thought would be very cool ended up with the out-of-focus areas being just horribly distracting. A friend has offered a used 50mm f1.4 which is supposed to be much better from what I understand, so in a few weeks I should have something to compare it to.

Anyway, some shots I took on Saturday. These are the ones I like the best out of everything I shot. I'll probably add some more that were more technical exercise than anything, but I'm slow. Comments are more than welcome, but remember: I'm a virgin. Be gentle. The vast majority are shot w/ the 50mm at f1.8 in aperture priority mode. A few are with the kit lens. The only editing I've done is resizing all of them and auto-adjusting levels on a couple. Post-processing is just one of the very many things on my "must learn" list.

There are 13 in the set, so if you want to see the rest, clicky:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrybee/sets...57623444571601/

1.


2.


3.


4. Sunset at the crematorium. This might be my favorite.


5.

Really? That's weird/ a shame. I was looking forward to seeing some really nice wide open shots (aperture wise). Hmm strange.

Well anyhoo, I'd like to say that I'm very impressed with your pictures! It's not always too easy to just jump right into a new DSLR (or lens for that matter...perhaps more so?....), but you seem to be doing more than just fine. Can't wait to see more!

congrads on the great deal!

Yea...from dpreview

"Unfortunately though, the character of the background blur is not tremendously attractive. This is substantially due to the lens's diaphragm construction, which uses just five blades with totally straight edges (most modern designs use curved blades). This means that the moment the lens is stopped down, point highlights are rendered as pentagons, often resulting in a remarkably distracting rendition of backgrounds that resembles nothing more than a primary-school attempt at tessellation. And things aren't so much better at F1.8; while the apertures is at least round, highlights are rendered bright-edged and harsh. Overall it's a pity Canon didn't implement a slightly more complex diaphragm construction with seven or eight blades, as this behaviour somewhat spoils the performance of an otherwise extremely fine lens."

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/canon_...i_c16/page4.asp

Most of my shots are wide-open. I'll post some later that show the noisiness of the background.



Thank you

It's really not all that easy. On these pictures I credit the equipment mostly, plus a love of cemeteries & having seen plenty of pictures in that setting. I know a very few things, and these pictures + the 50mm were quite easy. It's not really hard to make cemeteries look cool. I went out again yesterday, and with slightly less photogenic subjects and less than ideal equipment (landscape + kit lens), the results were not nearly so impressive lols.

re: dpreview-
Yuck. You might consider Sigma's 50mm F/1.4? It's widely regarded as one of the best prime lenses on the market. Meaning- it holds its own better than the CaNikon equivalents. Here is a legitimate comprehensive lens test to back up what I just said:

http://lenstip.com/index.html?test=obiektywu&test_ob=177

It's legitimately a ridiculously pro quality lens. Taken from the 'conclusion' section:

"You could wish higher MTF values at maximum aperture but you can’t find a real fault here because the tested lens’s performance is still better than its competitors’. You could wish a better autofocus work but the result of a 8% margin of error doesn’t look bad either, especially compared with the results of other independent manufacturers on a Canon body."

Just some food for thought.
----------------------

Re: the rest-

Still, you certainly have the photographic eye. The one picture of the setting sun on the stone is gorgeous (my favorite from the set), and your idea was quite good...rather than taking a picture of the sunset itself, you chose an interesting subject (texturally) and used tone to convey the same idea but in a very original way. Those are the types of shots you want to shoot for

Those are great shots to be a new camera/lens. I'm impressed.

Got myself a tripod and a shutter remote!

Various levels of me screwing with them...noise reduction, shadows, contrast...







The astute observer will recognize the building on the hill in the third one. There's something photogenic about that building. I wasn't even sure that was what it was until I lightened up the shot. I'll have to go again in daylight and see what it looks like w/ some zoom.

Nice! That third shot sure is sexy.

looks good - maybe try bringing the white balance down some in post?

How does one bring white balance down?

lol, i dunno.

like this:

Too blue! OC's looks pretty accurate.

psh, i did it in 10 seconds

what's the proper term? bring the temp down?

I usually think of it as color temperature and say it needs to be warmer or cooler.

gotcha. i think hers needs to be a bit cooler. not that OC isn't cool, though.

edited mine above - came out pretty much like hers when you auto WB on that light just right of center

I played with it a bit. I kept coming back to very close to the original white balance. Street lights are yellow, so anything else just felt...wrong. But I'm certainly open to improvement ideas

Here's the original if you really want to play with it.

I think I would change the composition a bit, this is just what I would have done with your photo.





If your subject is the building in the background, I think moving it out of the center of your shot makes for a dramatic effect.

Love the third one, but I also enjoy the nice row of sparkles in the first one. Very pretty! Makes me miss my remote release though.

screw color

You've literally cornered the building on the hill - making it look awkward and even less prominent, and you've taken away much of the lights and reflections that make the shot.


OC's composition is much better.

you're all OC fanboys.

fanbois.

I despise when I type a reply and then it disappears.

Anyway, short version.

The composition is more luck than anything. I knew it was a cool building with a steeple, but I didn't realize it was the crematorium until I got it on the laptop. The building isn't the focal point, it's a bonus. The focus is more the river and the houses and the street etc, with interest added by the building. With the exception of the cropping necessary when I rotated the second image about 1/2 of a degree, I don't think I've cropped any of the images I've posted. I'm being pretty strict with myself and my composition. If I don't shoot it how I want it to look, I'm generally reshooting to learn to get it right rather than going "eh, close enough" and cropping to fix. Hooray for $0 film processing costs.

I do appreciate the input and opinions tho. Don't mean it to sound like I'm a noob in general seeking advise and then buying the mandarin anyway. I certainly hope I don't sound like that ><

dammit. it's gonna be dead in 6 months without pods.

Look a doggie.


And a train!


And for kim...a busted-up building. Unfortunately it's at a state park behind a fence

OC you should take a series of pictures of iconic new york landmarks all featuring your dogs face in the foreground like that one

you could do niagra falls, brooklyn bridge, statue of liberty, ground zero, etc etc

Haha not a bad idea. Except do you know how hard it is to get him to sit still? Fricking cattledogs.

Haven't left the house with the camera in like 2 weeks. Darn you school. Anyway, pretty clouds yesterday made me play with some HDR in a big range of realistic --> artistic





I reshot this one right after I took it when I realized how crooked it was...but for some reason I really like how the crooked one turned out




The rest are not HDR...
Pissed off Mother Goose


I was disappointed when I got there to find they had flooded the canal. I was hoping to shoot these barges while still in the dry canal bed. Oh well. Next year I won't slack.


A few more... http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrybee/sets...57623910000864/

Great pictures OC.

I also own a Canon T1I, and I also have the 50mm f1.8 lens, the kit lens, and my girlfriend just got me the 100mm macro lens for my birthday (today is my birthday).

Great camera, and the 50mm really is a lot of fun.

When it rains, it pours. I was given a D90, and played with it...

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


9.

I want to make sweet dirty unmentionable love to your photos

street festival this weekend. The full set is on flickr, but after I uploaded I noticed I was way off on the color on some of them and haven't gotten around to editing yet. He's a sampling.

1. I turned up the ISO to 1600 on this one, wanted to play with some noise. But then I forgot to shrink the aperture accordingly. whoops. Turned down the exposure in post and this is what happened. idk. I kinda think it's a neat effect. /shrug



2.


3. 5 in the afternoon is a challenging time to photograph a harshly backlit concert imo.


4. I call him Officer McFriendly


5. He wasn't this orange irl, i swears.


6.


7. Sidewalk art competition


8. The bokeh on this lens makes me a happy girl


9.


10.


11. I enjoy the ability to get stalkerish candid shots that the 300mm focal range gives me.


12.


I really enjoyed shooting the concert. I think the 70-200 2.8 has just moved to the top of my wish list. Any advice anyone has on dealing with that harsh back light or anything else is much appreciated.

You're really pushing the latitude of most any DSLR with that kind of backlight. Not a mistake by any means, just a limit of the technology. (Any old schoolers remember slides, 1 to maybe 1.5 stops before blowouts!!)


I'd try closing down your aperture and going RIGHT at the limit with shutter, i.e. shoot it at f8 and 1/250 or 1/270 - IDK if you can go in 1/2 or 1/3 stop increments...Im also assuming youre shooting a 300mm bottle? You can clean up the blur in PS and you'll get some more stuff to dodge and burn. For some reason, closing up the lens a little will ease off exceptionally contrasty light sources. Compositionally, people can deal with a little blur, but blown out highlights are not so easily forgiven...IDK why.

Of course, you could do like me and just use a big ass flash for your subject and expose for the backlight...

I like your stuff - especially the barges. Cool angles. Would be fun with a TS lens no?

Holy lingo batman!
I'm shooting with a D90, so 1/3 stop
lens is a 70-300mm
Some of these are shot at f8 and some wide open.
I've never had the chance to use a TS lens but it's on my vast long list of stuff I'd like to play with.
Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated

New lens!











I call this one "Future Tomato"

What lens?

Are you using the built-in flash?

Tamron Adaptall SP 90mm F/2.8 1:1 Macro

It's an older manual lens

I didn't use the flash with any of these. It honestly took me a while to figure out how to get the flash to fire lol. Two of the cat pictures have flash, and that's just the built-in flash. My next camera purchases will probably be a flash or two...once I have a better idea of wtf I'm doing and wtf I want.

I really know nothing of photography, but I do know a good picture and there are sooooo many here, and so many subjects, I really enjoyed the thread. So much so that I think a new camera, with some bells and whistles is in order.

Thanks for the inspiration.

The reason I asked is because a few of those macro shots look like you used a flash.

I have the 580 EX II, and I love it. Takes a lot of getting used to, but it sure is a great flash.

Nice macros, OC!
Especially like this one:

ya that was my favorite too

hp: I've switched to Nikon

Traitor.

Frustrated at the track this week. A couple incredible dancers from New Orleans are up for the summer performing at the track. I got just a couple shots...in the shade...with my camera still at a fast shutter speed from taking pictures of the race. Sigh. Add to that, tons of people around and not being able to get a small enough dof...I came out with only 3 shots I felt I could do anything with. Here are two of them. I don't know PS nearly well enough, so I aged them and added some vignetting in lightroom. I think right now I'm too close to them to objectively judge. I'd love to hear thoughts and suggestions for improvement.


--
This is my first edit of this one...after I exported it, I accidentally reverted it. Yea. I think this set of pics just wasn't meant to be.



A very quick re-edit



Second one...ugh.



And finally, one that I'm actually happy with. I love this guy. He's so photogenic.

OK Yea I thought those ones kinda sucked too.

These are better!

nice - imma go see them

The guy on the bongo was a random street band before the show. I listened to them on my way to school this morning