my first DSLR!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Hi everyone i just purchased my first ever DSLR and its a canon 400d! damm this camera is amazing and is stocked with lots of features to playa round with.

the lens could be better but maybe its because dont know how to use it properly yet btu overal i am highly impressed with this camera.

does anybody have any tips?

[Nick F]

I've started reading this site - Digital Photography School — Digital Photography Tips for You

Very good daily tips, tricks and inspiration to be found. I guess you have to just start snapping. Got any pictures to show us yet?

[Anastie]

I can also recommend this site. Some great tips and pics to boot!
Talk Photography™

[j.o.s.h.1408]

hi guys i took this pic yesterday. what you guys think? its a canon 400d using the stock lens

[IBM]

Good early effort I'd say. Good depth of field, reasonable bokkeh, pretty good composition and exposure. Looks a little soft, but that could just be the lens. You cropped the flowers in the top left, which I'd have tried to do, but it's a pretty good shot.

I will advise that you take as many pictures as you possibly can. Fill that CF card every time you take the camera out. Take pictures of everything, try to find a decent angle, and shoot away. Tens of thousands of pictures later I still think I'm only a little better than average, so go nuts every chance you get. Another vote for Talk Photography, especially for critical feedback....

[colmo]

By coincidence, I was shooting near-identical pictures of cherry blossoms today. Anyway, congratulations of your new dSLR - the quality, choice and price of dSLRs has never been better than it is now, it's hard to buy a bad one.

I post-processed your shot a bit in the GIMP and got this:


-Adjusted black and mid-point in Levels
-Applied a slight swan-neck adjustment in Curves
-Boosted Saturation a smidgeon
-Applied Unsharp Mask

If the lighting is gray or the subject is in shadow, you can pop-up your flash to lift the shadows a bit - play with flash exposure compensation or aperture to balance the effect with ambient light.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

cool thanks. im about to go to a martial arts show inside a building and was wondering whats the best settings for it? Tv Mode?

[r_j_k_p]

i would stay in "program mode" and set my iso to 1600 or 800, depending on the lighting conditions,
and let the camera do all the work

[colmo]

Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

cool thanks. im about to go to a martial arts show inside a building and was wondering whats the best settings for it? Tv Mode?

Presuming flash is disallowed and you only have the kit lenses, I'd advise not to expect too much in the way of results, unless the indoor lighting is very good. At the long end, your typical kit zoom has max aperture of f5.6, which usually isn't adequate for indoor shooting of anything moving. Of course, you could strive for slow-mo blurred-movement action shots - all you need to do then is make sure the camera is steady, so the only things blurring in the shots are the martial artists, not the background.

If you can get close to the action, you'll likely eventually want to graduate to a (perhaps cheap, used) 50mm f1.8 lens or similar, which is about 3.5 stops faster than the kit - as it also serves as a useful portrait lens, it's often one of the first lenses to get added to the budding photographer's bag.

Back to the event - for most indoor sports, you'll be trying to maintain as fast a shutter speed as possible, which means wide apertures and high ISO - you could just set both to maximum (stick it in A mode, set aperture to wide open, set ISO to 800 or 1600 as mentioned), and try to get as high a shutter speed as you can. If the lighting is consistent, you could just put it in M mode and tweak shutter, aperture and ISO manually until you find the right combination, and leave it there (do this before the action starts, of course). Shooting in RAW might be a good idea, because you can rescue shots with poor exposure or white balance afterwards much better than you can from JPEGs straight out of the camera.

Apologies for the jargon, if you don't know some of it - it's something you can't really avoid when discussing the technical aspects of photography.

Finally...good luck!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Thanks for the advice, i got some pics! here it goes :

[IBM]

You should have been sitting where the KungFu Tog was sitting in the first shot, or directly opposite from where you were sitting. Good efforts, but I think your position would make any shot difficult, as at exhibitions like that, most of the action is directed towards the judges, leaving you with a lot of partial profiles.

Shot 1 you should have got level, or got completely at an angle, either one would have suited the shot (probably the latter more than the former), but with the blown out windows behind the underexposed subject, it's spoiled.

Shot 2 is a pretty good effort, nice capture, but once again the bright windows, underexposed subjects (not helped by cropping one at the knees) spoil it.

Shot 3 is getting better, but there's something funny going on with the arms, looks like he's got two arms coming from his right shoulder. I think this would have been better from a lower angle, at perfect profile, in portrait with a lot more reflection on the floor and a lot less background (cropped really tight).

Tough lighting conditions are the best practise, simply because you get to realise what is sucky lighting and what's sufficient lighting after blowing an opportunity. You're lucky to get any decent shots out of a shoot like that....I've had whole afternoons wasted simply because what looked okay on the viewfinder, is actually pure excrement when you get it onto a decent monitor.

thanks for sharing

[colmo]

Those big windows were both a blessing and a curse - they gave lots of light, but they threw off your exposure meter.

I'd advocate manually metering on an object indoors which isn't backlit, then locking the camera at that exposure (M mode) so it can't get fooled again.

For checking exposure, the histogram is your friend -
* Understanding Histograms
* Expose to the right.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

cool, thanks for all the suggestion guys. i had no choice but to sit at the side that i was in because the other side are for the black belt martial arts members (even though i am one, but diddnt participate that day) so i tried to do the best i could by playing around with the white balances and tried the Tv and Av mode and ironicly the Av mode came out best for me has the Tv mode was too dark

im still getting use to the technological jargon that goes with profesional photography and am still learning the basics cheers for the input guys

[Bobster]

ok

AV = aperture priority, you set your aperture and the camera works out the shutter
TV = shutter priority, you set the shutter and the camera sets the aperture

you were using Evaluative metering which looks at the whole picture, so it exposed for the whole scene, what you actually need is spot (which the 400D doesn't have) or Partial which the 400 does have to help meter the contestant..

you need to invest in some fast glass if you're going to make a habbit of taking indoor action shots, 2.8 Tamron 28-75, 2.8 Sigma 24-70, 2.8 Canon 24-70 should be enough to give you 1/250-300 @ 2.8 ISO1600

[j.o.s.h.1408]

umm what about somthing like these? Amazon.co.uk: Canon EF - Zoom lens - 28 mm - 135 mm - f/3.5-5.6 IS USM - Canon EF: CANON: Electronics & Photo

[colmo]

I'd advise not going crazy on lenses until you're comfortable with the camera and have reached the point were the lenses you have are the limiting factor. I regret some of the early purchases I made before I really knew my stuff.

In the case of the lens you linked, it does have IS, but isn't particularly fast (max aperture) or (I'd need a Canon expert to confirm) particularly sharp. It's also a bit long in the tooth (pre-digital design IIRC), and because of the 1.6x digital crop factor of the 400D, not very wide either - in 35mm terms, the wide end would approximate the field of view of a 45mm lens, which is considered 'standard' (neither wide nor tele). If you must splash cash now, I'd go along with Bobster's suggestion of F2.8 max aperture lenses, rather than a slow stabilised lens.

My suggestion of getting a 50mm f1.8 lens stands though; it will compliment rather than replace your current lenses, and won't cost a fortune.