New Hobby - Photography!

[trevorjk]

did you go back by the bear pit? right off that point theres that river and then theres another low lying gravel island, well there was one last year biggame 2 river might of only been low, but if you could get that while the sun was going down that would be a sweet shot

[Scooter/Cootie]

Originally posted by trevorjk
did you go back by the bear pit? right off that point theres that river and then theres another low lying gravel island, well there was one last year biggame 2 river might of only been low, but if you could get that while the sun was going down that would be a sweet shot

No, I didn't have a chance to get back to Bear pit. Gotta save some for the future.

But that does sound like an intresting shot. I'll have to take a walk back there next time I can and check it out. Thanks!

[MarkM]

I quite liked this one I took, resized severely

[Hexis]

For this image:


If you use a smaller (ie larger number) apature, it will help reduce flare around the sun. Go as small as you can.



For this one, and the other similar ones:


Go back there with a tripod and set your exposure to a longer time, 1 or 2 seconds. You can use ND filters to allow for a longer exposure time without overexposing it. It will give you a silky water effect. Here's an example:





Keep up the good work.

[Scooter/Cootie]

Originally posted by Hexis
Go back there with a tripod and set your exposure to a longer time, 1 or 2 seconds. You can use ND filters to allow for a longer exposure time without overexposing it. It will give you a silky water effect.

Excellent, thank you for the info. That is very helpful.

Just one clarification question. Since I'm still new to photography, I'm not yet current on the lingo.

What are ND filters? Specifically, what does the ND mean?

[Hexis]

Neutral Density (ND) filters reduce the ammount of light without effecting the color balance. They come in different incriments that reduce the light by different ammounts. The standard incriment for photography is a "stop", that's 2x or 0.5x the light, depending on which way you are going. Since they reduce the ammount of light, you can use a longer exposure time (or wider apature) without overexposing the image.

You can go up a stop by doubling the exposure time, or by opening up to a larger apature (1.0 to 1.4, or 2.0 to 2.8). Pretty much all cameras have 1/2 or 1/3 or smaller stop incriments on the apature. So you can do 1.4, 1.8 and 2.0. 1.8 is a 1/2 stop up from 1.4. 2.0 is another 1/2 stop up from 1.8, or a full stop up from 1.4.

A word about apatures. That number is the ratio of the apature's opening to the focal length of the lense. So on a f-stop of 2.0 the opening is 1/2 the focal length of the lense. For example on a 100mm lense, a f-stop of 4 would make the opening literally 25mm. That's why the number gets larger as the opening gets smaller. That's also why going up 1.4x the number is one stop, and going up by 2x is 2 stops. 1.4x is the square root of 2, 2 is the square root of 4. Since the area of the opening is important, you have to factor in the radius squared.

Ok enough on the math of photography. Fire away with any questions. I'll do my best to answer them.




*edit*

That camera takes 28mm threaded filters. Those are small, and should be nice and cheap. Since they are small/cheap, buy good ones. No sense missing a good shot due to shoddy filters.

[Muzikman]

Scooter, be warned photography is addictive, especially in today's digital world. I have been shooting an old Canon AE1P for about 15 years and finally about 3 or 4 months ago ran out and bought a Canon 10D. I am not hooked again and shooting more than I have in probably the past 7 years. You did the good thing though, you went with a higher quality P&S. The fact that the 4500 has controls only seen in DSLR cams makes it very nice. You have all the creative control (Aperture, Shutter, WB, manual focus, etc...) which set it apart from most other P&S cameras. I would take Hexis's advice and get the ND filter, I would also pick up a circular polarize. Those are the two filters that you can not recreate during post processing (which is the part I am really lacking).

Take a look at a few of my pics. www.pbase.com/jbeam or www.jbeamphotos.com

Also, if you would like a basic "free" membership to www.photosig.com, drop me a PM.

[Hexis]

Ah yes, a circular polarizer would also be a good filter to have. I would say more important than ND even.

[Downfall]

Hey I've been thinking of getting into photography also, I have my first child on the way and I want to make sure I get really nice pictures of him/her growing up. I was actually looking for reviews of cameras and stuff when I came across this thread. Those are all awesome pics, good job guys! is there a website you guys can recommend going to for camera reviews/tutorials on photography, or maybe just galleries? Thanks.

-Hexis, where in MN do you play? do you play for a team? I live near the cities.

[DJBacon06]

yeah, so i jsut got a sony DSC P-10......has anybody ever used one of these?? maybe you would wanna share some info with me on some of the cool features im not aware of yet?

[Scooter/Cootie]

Originally posted by Hexis
Ok enough on the math of photography. Fire away with any questions. I'll do my best to answer them.

Ok, my head really hurts now. Thanks for the tips though!

I'll definately try to put them to good use.

[Muzikman]

Downfall: If you want to go digitial. You could go the route that Scooter did. The CoolPix are nice Point & Shoot camera with the felxability of some of the nicer DSLR type cameras. I am a Canon fan and really like the DigitalElph series cams. Canon also has out a digital rebel which is a low end DSLR, but with amazing features for a decent price ($1000 w/ lens kit). Check out www.dpreview.com they have some really good writeups.

[Muzikman]

For any other digital photographer reading this thread. Why don't you post your current workflow. I am always looking for better ways to be productive with the photos after they are actually taken and I am sure others would be interested. I will post my before the end of the day.

[Muzikman]

Scooter,

I found a page that might interest you. I was looking for some lens information when some how I ran into a CoolPix 4500 user guide. I read through some of it and it seems to be an excellent read.

http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/

[DJBacon06]

i snapped this off my deck last night...i thought it was pretty good...