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Hello!

Here is a photo I took today at Brighton Beach, using the 70-300mm lens. It was VERY windy, and found it quite hard to control, and didn't have my tripod with me! I quite like the composition, but am still learning about the camera! Adjusted the colour, sharpness and brightness! Please be nice....I'm only a newbie!

Hi stormygirl - a nice effort but I will give some, hopefully useful, critque.

As the background is out of focus it would have been better to lower the angle so that the couple were shown full length and/or use portrait mode. The tractor(?) and flag are distracting - to isolate the main subject of the pic it is better IMO to have as little distraction as possible - in effect minimilise

Keep em coming stormygirl

I would have to agree with all that Chris has said. The subject needs to be more dominant and less mid image distractions. Look foward to seeing more.

Hi sirhc55,

Thankyou for your comments! They are very valid points! The couple just happened to be walking along a very busy beach, so couldn't really do much about the background! I have more, but limited with time ATM, so will post some more tomorrow!!

Hi stormygirl....

i'll agree with Chris on all that has been said.... the shot needs to focus on 'something'... whether the intention is the couple, the surfski, or the quad....

if you can get the couple full in the frame it will work....

cheers

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your constructive comments, it helps a lot! Here are some more I took yesterday of the bathing boxes at Brighton. I have not done any cropping with them (not sure how to, I don't have photo shop, just picture project!), but I think they need it! Any suggestions would be helpful!

One other thing, yesterday when I took them it was very bright (full sunlight on white sand) and when I got home and loaded them onto pc they were all darkish and in need of brightning. Is this a white balance problem? I shot them mainly on auto (shock horror!), or aperture priority, not fully manual!



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Shooting anything with significant amounts of white always has the potential to fool your camera's meter.

The meter tries to average the exposure for the scene, and thinking that it needs to reduce the amount of white, gives you a reading that may lead to underexposure.

If you are shooting in aperture-priority to control depth of field, then you may wish to dial in some exposure compensation to make sure that the meter doesn't underexpose. I would suggest a setting like -0.7 EV for these pix, being prepared to fine-tune as you see fit.

Stormygirl - these are so much better than the first pic - I like.

Would suggest you invest in Photoshop or something similar to give you greater control over the final product

Thanks Chris!

I'll keep trying!

stormygirl, don't worry, there are many people here who don't use fully manual exposure. You can still be a good person and a worthwhile member of society notwithstanding that you use aperture or shutter priority exposure (or heck, even program or automatic, but you aren't supposed to admit it) and auto focus.

You can even get away with having a tripod which is worth less than a medium sized car, although once again, discretion is recommended.

I like your bathing box shots.

cheers

Stormygirl,

I enjoyed looking at the bathing box series you posted. The rusting hinges, latches make the shots for me. Pleasing to know that not everything is gold and ivory in Brighton...... - only kidding!

Yes, use the Ap. Priority Mode to assist with making up the shot - I use it a lot - it keeps me sane and assists my learning curves without me losing my confidence to try new things. Perhaps you may wish to try using the histogram function to "read" your image post shooting? There are several tech -lessons online for this and I'd expect if you searched our D70 site there might be a couple of threads relating to the explanation of histogram reading.

Cheers,

Matty B

Stormygirl,

Really like the bathing box shots, especially the one with the feet poking out.

All show good composition and colour (don't go much for your first effort though; for all the reasons that sirhc55 stated - sorry I know you asked us to be gentle)

cheers
Peter

Thankyou to everyone for all your comments! Learning heaps, and will continue to learn heaps with the D70. There is still so much about it I don't know yet!

I just know that I love photography, and will keep experimenting when time permits! (small children take up most of my time ATM!!)

stormygirl wrote:(small children take up most of my time ATM!!)

Sell them!

Like everyone else, I agree that the bathing box shots are great stuff. Good colour and contrast, and strong lines.

Well done.

NO!! I couldn't do that! They are too beautiful!

Stay tuned for photos of them....

Like others have said. The metering gets quite confused with lots of areas of the shot taken up by bright sky and tends to meter according to the sky which results in the subject area being the beach underexposed.

If in fully Manual Mode you could switch from Matrix Metering to Spot Metering and look at the sand and if in Manual mode dial in the settings that you want. However with Auto/Aperture Priority you could probably swap to Spot Metering. Aim at the Sky and then aim at the sand and work out how many stops to use as compensation.

Now regardless of whether you do this, the chances are that the sky will be overexposed and the subject just right. If you had a linear graduated ND filter you could probably eliminate this. Or the other option is to use Photoshop and take two photos, one exposed for the sky, one exposed for the subject and merge the two together to have a photo that has both
the sky and subject exposed correctly. PS. love the bathing box shots, the one with the feet hanging out is a corker.