I took a few pics that came out really great In Mississippi or thanksgiving Spoiler In Anchorage Alaska First 3 with a camera phone Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler At a convention saw this little girl drawing in front of me and took a few shots Spoiler Spoiler
Another random sampling for perusal or ridicule.... Faces of Donkeys Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Old Goat Spoiler Muledeer Spoiler Pronghorns Spoiler
i like taking pictures, but im not even going to pretend i know anything about photography. some of yall are on a different level - impressive work here! i have an 8 year old sony cybershot - there is nothing to it - i focus on trying to frame the scene well and just click. this is my favorite picture ive ever taken. lake atitlan, guatemala - was there last summer - got up early one morning and took a walk out along the shore of this lake by myself and saw this fisherman down there. it was such a peaceful scene. i wish is wasnt so overcast that day, but cant really do anything about that. looks much better blown up - not so dark... Spoiler [/URL]
Thanks for all the feedback guys, very much appreciated. As for getting better at focusing, what can I do to make my shots more in focus? I tend to shoot in aperture-priority mode (haven't gotten the hang of pure manual mode yet...still a newbie) and focus on my subject using the focus points.
For the picture you posted which was outside you can stop down your aperture to get a much deeper depth of field. That will make focusing much less critical and both the action and the guy would have been in focus. Alternatively if you wanted the blanket to be slightly out of focus and the guy in in focus, you could manually focus on the guy and then leave it at the same focus and wait for the action. I didn't have much of a problem with the focus, I just assumed you wanted to draw the eye to the action and not the person. But in general if you are shooting outside during the day with good light just shoot at a smaller aperture and focus will be less of an issue until you get better at using focus points and strategies.
I dont think aperture was the issue there. The kid in the foreground is in focus which means his camera/lens might have a front focus issue...unless he completely misplaced the focus point. slandballa, Which camera are you using? Have you had it checked for focus issues?
Yeah the issue is he is putting his camera in auto focus and focus points are hitting on objects in front of what he actually wants in focus. It is obvious the shots are in bright daylight so if he stops down his aperture both kids would have been in focus from the larger depth of field. It would also improve overall image sharpness. Edit to add: s land balla - you have an awesome lens, but at 105mm and f/4 you will have a very shallow depth of field (especially up close like the pic of the kids) so you need to make sure the right focus point is lighting up. Your lens also has full time manual focus so might also want to play with that.
So in that type of direct sunlight, and at 105mm, what aperture should I have been shooting at? f/11? Also, when you're shooting close up portraits like this one, where on the face do you usually focus the focus point on? I guess this is where full time manual focus will help. I just finished reading about full time manual focus, can't wait to try it out! :grin:
Going to f/7.1 will get you twice the depth of field and in those conditions the shutter speed and ISO would still be perfectly acceptable. Eventually you will learn to focus better and then you can use a wide open aperture to draw the viewers eye to where you want it because the rest of the poto will be blurry. For portraits you might try turning off all of the focus points except the center and always get the eyes to be in perfect focus. LOL, yeah that's why you drop coin on a nice lens like you did.
always focus on the eyes when shooting portraits. once you have lighting established (meaning no change in brightness), you should switch to manual mode and meter for the skin tone. you don't want to meter for the eyes, otherwise the face is overly bright.
As macalu said, always focus on the eyes. Choose the center focus option if you want to make sure it's always focusing on what you want and not choosing one of the other outer points. Also, the cameras focus easier when there is some sort of contrast. So focusing on the edge of two contrast colors help. If you try to focus on a blank white wall it will search forever.
