I'm a newbie, too!

[vdumeng]

Just wanted to say hi to everyone. I received a Kodak Z740 a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I've taken almost 3000 photos! Tons of point and shoots, photos of my girl's basketball games and soccer games (all blurry, dark, out of focus...you name it. 300 pictures alone on shots of my hotwheels collection (nothing compared to people own 30-40000)!
Anyhow, I am hoping to improve my skills and learn what I did wrong. This place seems to be just the spot. I am going to posted a couple of pics of my dog (an 8 month old Maltese by the name of Cloud Dee) that I thought came out okay. Let me know what you think.

Gotta go, the kids are fightin'!

Take care!
Victor

[Buddy4344]

Victor, Looking forward to your shots.
Buddy

[SlipNslide]

Hi Victor Im pretty much new to this site but I would like to comment on your photos to maybe help out a bit. Where you shooting in a dark room? Flash photogrphy can be realy difficult expecially with a popup flash. Light is really harsh. Another thing is your shooting at Apertur 2.8 which will give you a really shallow depth of field which means you may get a good crisp sharp focus on "Clouds" face but a few inches behind that will start to blur. Try shooting with your Kodok in Apertur mode, and set your Fstop to F8 and some better lighting. Watch your shutter speed. Taking a picture of an animal that wont sit still you will want your shutter speed around 1/250 .

-SlipNslide

[vdumeng]

Thanks SLipNSlide! That is just the kind of info I am looking for. I am so glad that I found this site.

When I have the time, I will comb through this site. until then, can anyone recommend good magazines, books, articles, etc. that give tips like this?
Thanks again!

Victor

[Buddy4344]

Another comment. I have tried to shoot both white animals and black animals - they are very difficult to shoot. The problem is that the lack of color range leads to over or under exposure. For your white dog, consider shooting in low lighting without flash. Here is what I did with our white dog:
http://www.bytephoto.com/photopost/s...cat=500&page=6

[Marysa]

Hi Victor and welcome to Byte

I have found this web site very helpful - hope you might find it so too.

http://photoinf.com/

Cheers,
Mary

[SlipNslide]

Hi buddy4344, very nice picture but to critique, the top of his head is a little blown. Seems the light source was pretty harsh and you still have some shadows on his face. I think the slow shutter speed may have been the cause of the light looking so bad. If your shooting in AV mode the flash is automaticly set for fill flash on canons. You were shooting at iso 100 and F11 which made your shutter speed really really slow, F8 probably would have been fine and iso 200 to get your shutter speed a bit faster, maybe even iso 400 If you still get blown highlights, then lower your exposure compensation on your camera a bit. If if there still blown try a bit more exosure compensation. Still a cute picture, and a pretty good example. The image looks more natural than with full out flash. Maybe also to improve on the picture, if you have photo shop, to adjust the curves the "blue" curve a bit to get rid of the yellow haze.

Buddy, if you give me permission to edit your photo do a little post processing, I could show you an example of how the image could be improved.

-SlipNslide

[Buddy4344]

Sure go for it. I always like feedback and learning. BTW, Glad you noted the shot was at 10 sec! Actually that was intentional as I wanted to see how steady the dog would sit for the shot. Usually I push ISO a bit for this type thing.
Buddy

[SlipNslide]

Here you go Buddy, I adjusted a litle fillflash post processing, and adjusted the blue curve abit and I think it gives it a more of a natural look. You can now see both eyes of the dog. He is very cute.

I don't like a lot of post processing. I like to process my images to look as natural as possible. Here is my go at your image.

Before:



After:

[eketelon]

Welcome to the boards and good luck on getting the answers you need. This is an excellent source for information and guidance. Again, welcome.