First pics with new Camera

[JoshD]

I have been so busy at work I haven't had a chance to shoot anything other than around my apartment. Here is the sunset yesterday looking over the Bay, and the full moon tonight. Nothing great, but I think once I get the settings dialed in, and learn this machine it will be awesome!

Canon Digital Rebel XSi. First pic (sunset) stock 18-55 lens, second is with the 75-300 zoom lens (tonight). No editing afterwards, just cropping

[brmill26]

Josh, congrats on your first shots. These are really quite good considering. If I may offer a couple suggestions:

1) The sunset photo is excellent. Your framing, left to right, is perfect, and you nailed the exposure. However, the frame is split dead center and the bottom half is nothing but dead black space. Next time, aim the camera higher up to eliminate an empty foreground - leave just a little of the black edge to define the shoreline, then you'll have the reflection and more of that beautiful sky.

2) The moon shot is very well exposed, which is not easy to do off the bat, so well done there. But as you can see, it is very soft. Your EXIF shows F/5.6 and 1/1000. I think F/5.6 is wide open on the long end of that lens, and the wide open aperture is always the softest for any lens. You had plenty of room to work with in terms of shutter speed, so next time try stopping down to F/8 or F/10 and you should get a noticeably sharper result.

These are great results for your first shots though. The XSi is a great camera; I certainly look forward to seeing more of your work!

[JoshD]

Brad,

Thank you! Feedback is great. I agree on the sunset picture, I noticed that too after the fact. I think I am used to my point and shoot where in that situation if I aim higher, the picture turns "brighter".
For the moon picture, I think in the beginning I had a higher ISO (1600) figuring I needed it, but when I took the picture it blinked black to white in the viewfinder. So I changed it to 800 and got rid of that. I will try your suggestion tonight (should be a full moon again I take it?).

Thanks again

[JETA]

Congrats on your new rig Josh.

I could never duplicate Brad's great advice. I swear I learn each and every time he posts.

Thanks Brad!

[retroactiv]

Congrats on the new camera, I won't add anymore of a critique because I feel that it has been nailed. It takes time to learn new equipment, I know that I'm still struggling with certain things with a camera I've had about 6 months, keep them coming I'm always excited to see what others have to offer

[JoshD]

Ok so I got a question...

I switched to Manual mode and changed my settings to 1/1000 and F/10 and took 4 or 5 shots that looked like this, zoomed all the way out to 300mm. Granted there was a thin layer of clouds tonight as opposed to last night...but not much. It should be brighter than this.

Last nights pic was taken under the "Tv" mode with 1/1000 and F/5.6 zoomed all the way out to 300mm.

Any suggestions or ideas? Thanks

On the "bright" side, I can tell if this picture was brighter it would be sharper!!

edit: Could it have anything to do with the fact that I had it on Auto-Focus and not Manual-Focus? I just realized that.

[retroactiv]

doesn't your camera have a light meter built in? use what it is telling you f/5.6 1/1000 is going to make this dark, try using something like 1/100 and see what happens. I really don't know a whole lot about canon as you can tell I'm sure someone else will chime in and give you better info than I did.

[SmartWombat]

Josh, when Brad said to go to f/10 I think he assumed you'd change the shutter speed to keep the exposure the same.
By working in manual mode, you're having to do everything yourself.

Check out this thread The 4 Basics it's a great guide.

So going from f/5.6 to f/10 you are decreasing the light getting through the lens, so you have to use a longer exposure to get the same exposure.
I would expect around 1/250 with the bright full moon we have now.
As the moon moves further away in its orbit (it's a 15 year cycle I think) then you'll need to use an even slower shutter speed.

[JoshD]

Thank you Paul..

Clearly this is new to me, coming from a SD800 point and shoot. Going to take a while to figure out all these new tools I have where in the past they were automatically there (in a lesser form)

Good post you linked me too, thanks.

Is there a good guide you or anyone can recommend? Or just practice practice?

Thanks again

[Speed]

I have been so busy at work I haven't had a chance to shoot anything other than around my apartment. Here is the sunset yesterday looking over the Bay, and the full moon tonight. Nothing great, but I think once I get the settings dialed in, and learn this machine it will be awesome!

Canon Digital Rebel XSi. First pic (sunset) stock 18-55 lens, second is with the 75-300 zoom lens (tonight). No editing afterwards, just cropping

I lvoe the bay bridge sunset shot. Sweet picture.

Congratulations on your new camera!

[brmill26]

JETA - aww shucks Thanks, that's very kind.

Josh - You probably want to try sticking with the Av and Tv modes for a little while longer. That way, you only have 2 variables to change while the camera will handle the third. Most photographers, for general use, use Av mode because the aperture controls the look of the picture. A small aperture (larger number, like F/16) gives you greater depth of field (DoF), whereas a wider/open aperture like F/2.8 will give you a shallow DoF that you'd want to use for portraits.

So take the moon shot. Say you put the camera in Av mode, select F/10, and aim at the moon to compose. Press the shutter button half way and have a look at what shutter speed it gives you. The general rule is that you need at least the minimum of the lens length to avoid blur. So if you're shooting at 300mm, you'd need at least 1/300 or faster. If you don't get that, you have two options for making the shutter speed faster. 1) Open the aperture further, to maybe F/8. or 2) you can increase your ISO to make the camera more sensitive to light. Or of course in this situation, you can put the camera on a tripod and not worry about the shutter speed.

In manual mode, there's a meter on the bottom of the viewfinder and on the LCD screen. For just starting out, you want the indicator pointing at the middle, 0. That's the exposure that the camera thinks is perfect. If it's at the high end, +2, then the camera thinks the picture will be too bright, and at -2 the inverse is true. If it's flashing at one end or the other, that means you're more than 2 stops beyond the proper exposure.

I'd suggest just going out and playing with it if you want to learn how to use manual mode. You can read books if you like, but they won't show you how the moon looks at -1 under exposed, "properly" exposed by the meter, or +1 over exposed. That's the only way to teach yourself how the meter reads a scene vs. how you want it to be exposed (not always the same thing!).

The best way to experiment is to find some consistent conditions (ie, mid day, or inside). Chose an ISO and then leave it alone. Then just play with the aperture and shutter and see the relationship b/t the two - as you increase the shutter speed, you'll need a wider aperture to let in the same amount of light. And so on.

[JoshD]

Awesome, thank you Brad. I think that was one of my problems, I was trying to change the aperture AND the shutter speed manually under AV and TV mode, and realized I couldn't, it's one or the other. That is when I switched to manual mode and realized I can change both there. I didn't realize that changing the aperture automatically changes the shutter speed as well.

Thank you for the great advice, I appreciate it!