Advice for a noob photographer

coming from the age of cannon A1's and AE1's yeah no, You don't learn one lens, you learn your lenses by having multiple and seeing what happens when you shoot the same shot with different lenses. Lenses are part of your framing and composition choices and if you only learn your one lense you are not learning the hard skill of paying attention to distortion/image warp in regards to artistic choice.

You would be both correct
With a single lens you learn how that particular lens works
With multiple lenses, you learn the differences in distortion and how the background behaves with different f stops and different focal lenghts

See https://imgur.com/XBqQEGq by using a zoom and varying focal length while at the same time moving the camera shows how tele lenses differ from wide angle lenses. Especially note the background, massive difference when going from wide angle to telephoto lens.

My best advice is to look at photos made by others that know what they are doing, and copy that.

This guy knows what he's doing! Even though his images are soft focus or downright blurry, they have a hauntingly beautiful quality like a female ghost. Because his camera is huge, old, slow and he can only take 20 shots all day, he takes more time to setup, frame and decide what shots he want to take. Meanwhile his colleagues are firing off 12 digital frames per second.

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This guy brings a whole new level of thinking ahead of your shot!

I just wanted to update everybody and say that yes, I have been reading these posts and I've found them all informative. I've had another busy weekend and I'm amassing a collection of photos since I've been shooting every couple of days. I'm starting to get better at knowing which settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) are best in different situations. (indoors, outdoors, day and night)

I'm still having slight issues with some of my photos coming out grainy. If I understand correctly, the solution to this is to reduce the ISO setting, correct?

I've also found a small channel on YouTube that's got some AWESOME resources for open source photo editing and I wanted to share this with the rest of you. The channel name is Riley Brandt and the guy presents his content in a very well thought out method.

I'm starting to solidify my ideas for this month's photography challenge. I'm starting to get the feeling I'm not going to have the opportunity to get to the spot I want to be in to take the shot, but here's hoping!

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dont go overboard with the DoF

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instasubbed

That looks great, thanks. :+1:

Well, yeah.... but there is more to that. I have a guess but to be able to really tell what the problem is, could you post an example?

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Yeah, definitely.

I've got no modifications on this jpeg, just direct rendered it. It's a bit overexposed, just need to speed up the shutter for the most part to solve that.

If you zoom in on the hood, you can sort of see this discoloration and whatnot. A bunch of Darktable's denoise features were able to take it out, but at significant cost to sharpness.

Hmm, no EXIF data. It looks a lot like a phone image and phones simply are limited in dynamic range. It comes down to light. Here you have lots of light but bad light, harsh, hard, crazy contrast light. The shadows have been pushed pretty heavily in the raw processing. By pushing "the signal" you are also pushing the noise. That is why you see artefacts and noise in the dark areas.

Taken by T3i. I wonder if I can upload the CR2 to imgur...

Not imgur, but google drive: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2iualonts-gYTgzdlA1Ny1vXzQ

OK, I see. The main problem here is simply your settings.

1/4000s at ISO 1600 for a very not at all moving car seems excessive. :stuck_out_tongue:
Canons older sensors need to be exposed correctly and at the lowest possible ISO. (That is always good practice, even today, but the older canons really need that.) So, the base ISO is 100 on this camera, that brings us to 1/250s.

I am not into canon so I don't know that 35-80mm III lens but from a quick google search it seems to be pretty terrible. And it shows. The purple fringing around high contrast edges, the fugly bokeh and so on... I guess that is what made me think that it must be from a phone.

The framing doesn't help either in this shot. It is tilted just enough to be annoying and the background is way to busy. Especially the other car that, to make it worse, is kind of the same colour is super distracting. Try to always put your subject in a clean spot of the background. It will make it stand out and guide the eye of the viewer.

Given the raw file is what it is I would try to push as much sun and summer feeling into the colours as possible. Here is a quick edit:

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Yeah, I'm still pretty terrible with getting the settings correct.

Yeah, I'm not really happy with it. It's my friends camera, so I'm just using what I have access to.

That would definitely do it.

Definitely. These photos were more to learn the camera, but I definitely need to get a better spot.

Alright, so if I'm understanding this, as far as camera settings go, longer shutter speed, base ISO because of the outdoor lighting. Then I need a better background, so remove a bunch of the stuff in the background: building, car, etc... that distracts, then fix the angle of the shot. If I can get a better lens, that would help as well.

Damn, that make it look way better. Thanks for all the advice!

If you just want something to take to parties that is better than a cell phone, don't get an SLR, they are big and you need to have some commitment to actually take it out with you. Something like an RX 100 is something that is really worth a look for that sort of usage. I have the Mk1 version to throw in my pocket and it is still pretty good. only lacking in video.

If you are serious, want to get into the off camera lighting and start a long journey with photography, then I would recommend that as you have Canon Eos lenses to use, get yourself a low end Canon SLR and start with that. The image quality is still high, it may not have the bells and whistles of the flagship but you will learn more with your first cam than you will with all the others. You may love it and the low end body will be great to learn with. You may hate it and you have not invested too much money because you already have the lenses.

If your lenses are zooms. invest another $100 and get the canon 50/1.8 to supplement them and give you something that you can use in low light.

Remember, the bodies are basically disposable in a couple of years. The investment in glass is the thing that stays around

The Sony Cameras are good kit, however, decent lenses for the Sony's are expensive and they are not really paying much attention on the crop sensor size bodies.

I shoot Nikon Full frame SLR and Fuji X-T1 and the Fuji is my favorite all time camera but probably not the best choice for a beginner. That is the camera that you upgrade to from the first canon slr if it suits your style but by then, you should be able to answer that question yourself.

here are some of mine


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