Hey guys, my family recently picked up a Canon Rebel XS, with 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses. Im not new to taking pictures, but i am definatly new to taking good ones, or ones with an SLR camera. I know these pictures arent good, but they are all RAW, and were within the first 50 pictures ive taken with a DSLR. So im just looking for some tips, and also a good editing software for relatively cheap. Be rough, but not killer.



Taken using the stock 18-55mm lense. Also reccomendations on where to get a nice camera backpack would be nice, besides bestbuy.

 

What's stopping you from stealing photoshop?

 

+1 on stealing photoshop.

I've used Corel Paintshop Pro (latest edition) on my laptop for years now as CS4 takes too long to open and do filters/effects on it and love it. But, it's a learning curve none the less.

With most photos it just comes out to having good lighting, the right ISO setup on the camera, and also depending on what you're shooting the right shutter speed.

For moving objects, or things like pets that won't stay still there isn't really much you can do. The third picture you posted is about as "fancy" as you can get with things like that.

Still photos however, have a lot more room to play. Like with driving a car, it all comes down to seat time (or in this case photography time) and having the right equipment/knowledge on what you have.

Try going out and taking some picture of the scenery and landscape in general. Play with certain things, like the ISO, and angle of shot, and then go from there.

Are you just using it on auto-focus and auto-adjust right now?

And secondly I'd recommend getting a fixed lens (ie. 35mm fixed that has no zoom function to it), or a better short range lens, and playing with those as well. The reason I say this is because they generally have lower focal ratio numbers (ie. f/3.6) and can allow for more light and respond to ISO changes better. The stock kit lens is okay, but is not a high quality lens in the least bit. It can still take good photos, but doesn't give very much room to play.

 

Also, invest in a good tripod. One thats relatively heavy to keep itself stable, and that has full range of adjustments (tilt forward and backwards, as well as side to side).

As you get more into it, you'll learn to love low-light shots (still my favorite thing to shoot) but realize that sometimes the shutter speed is literally seconds long lol. Not easy to keep a camera 100% still with your hand.

 

Just get Photoshop or the whole Adobe masters collection. If you can only get CS3, then theres more than enough stuff on there. Since you are taking in RAW, it's much easier to edit. Open photoshop, open image you want and it automatically opens the edit window for RAW photos. Just practice with different settings and learn what each do. As far as a bag goes, anywhere that sells them. I got mine at Best Buy and it's just fine. Just find one that carries your camera and some extra stuff.

 

if you're not going to heavily manipulate the photo, i'd suggest Adobe Lightroom over Photoshop. it simulates the darkroom process of "developing" a digital picture.

one tip i can give you is if you're going to take a lot of pictures of your pets, get down on their eye level and take shots from a similar perspective. the picture looking down on your cat is a prime example of what NOT to do. #3 is actually pretty nice.

 

Thanks guys, that helps quite a bit. Wheres a good place to safely get photoshop without viruses? And yeah, these shots are all with autofocus, although idk what auto adjust is. Id love to pick up a lowpro backpack, or a different other brand thats nice. One to carry the camera, extra lenses, camcorder, buncha misc cords and chargers, and a tripod. I know that i need to work on all my shots, the one of my black cat is pretty sad, fuzzy and etc. Atm im not loving flash on the camera, because its so bright, it has a tendency to bleach everything out. So far above lights like ceiling fan and ceiling lights are doing just fine. Odds are im going to be doing a lot of scenery and landscaping shots this upcoming week as we are going to hawaii.

 

Yea, the flash on the body itself blows.....simply because it flashes directly at whatever your shooting and just bleaches it out. Never, ever, use it. Get a cheap speedlight flash, point it at the ceiling as your taking pictures and let it reflect/bounce off of there and it looks a lot better. But most situations can do pretty well without a flash, although the shutter speed will be longer and cause more blurry shots (like the first two you posted).

As far as a bag, I have one like this but Nikon of course. http://www.amazon.com/Canon-2400-SLR...9971516&sr=8-1

Won't hold a tripod, but I wouldn't want a big metal tripod near my camera and its lenses anyways.

As for auto-adjust, I meant on the camera are you leaving the settings on auto? To where you don't adjust anything you just pull the trigger and it does it all for you? Thats what I meant. Sorry.

 

Getting a tripod is the best thing you can do. That way you can use a longer exposure and get a more detailed pic. almost impossible to do even with camera resting on a solid surface while holding it. I try not use a flash at all. if you can get the lighting right you won't need it.

Your camera should have tons of options for exposures and focal lenghts and such.. Just play with it and find out what works and don't work. I took this pic with a Lumix 35 mm without a tripod BTW. Big *** woodpecker on my little birdfeeder.. LOL..

 

Newsgroups would be the best place to get photoshop. Thats where I got mine and have never come across a virus.

 

Ran to best buy last night and picked up a nice lowpro bag. Settings wise i do need to play with it quite a bit to see how they affect the shots. What does shutter speed do for pictures? Sometimes i accidentally mess with it. Still am very new to the camera and only have taken probably 30 bs pictures. And yeah depending on the shots, im usually just on no flash setting, and let it focus for me. Other settings like ISO and all that are taken care of by the camera at that stage. Still gotta figure those out real well.

 

Tripod for sure is a good investment. But as for progressing your skills, turn off the auto mode, put it in manual mode and learn how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO all work together and what effect each has on a photo. Next pay attention to the framing as well as what is in the background of your image. Nothing ruins a great shot, like some bum, or garbage or something such as that cluttering up your picture. And as everyone has mentioned, lighting is key to a good picture, but with an understanding of those functions listed above it should come as a given. Also pick up some UV filters (more protection for your lenses from scratches and such then any difference in photos) and pick up a circular polarizing filter, will make a world of difference in getting ride of reflections and adding depth to all the colors in your photos.

also flash is good when used properly but most of the time just blows a photo out and looks shitty. Get a flash diffuser, mounted, or hold a white index card up in front of your flash a few inches out, you can play with it, and it will make the flash effect much more useful.

oh and this is the camera bag I use, works great and is configurable on the inside:
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Deluxe-B...114839&sr=8-12

shutter speed will allow things to show motion in a photo or not.
ISO will control how quickly a photo exposes, essentially film speed.
Aperture: will control depth of field

now although each of those serves a different function you can control the amount of light with each. Slower shutter speed(1/60) means longer exposure time = more light and possibly motion; fast shutter speed (1/4000) means short exposure time and no chance of motion, a freeze fame essentially. High ISO, say 1600 will expose extremely quickly (darker times) where ISO 100 will expose slower (outside, bright lighting), Aperture will give that cool effect of a blurry background, but think of it like an eye. The more dilated (large pupil) F1.8 the more light that can fit through the lens, the less dilated (small pupil) F22, the less light. This feature physically changes in the lens, either creating a small hole (F22) or a large hole (F1.8). Do some reading and play around with it and you will see all these effects.

hope this helps some.

 

Thanks, the above helped a lot too. How do the UV filters, and polarizing filters affect shots? And yeah ive learned quick that flash isnt the way to go. Ill have to look for a good flash accessory or something cause the current ones about useless for a good shot.

 

added a bit more to my post. Circular polarizing filters redirect the light incoming to the lens and allow you to adjust it essentially. Easily seen when taking pictures of say a lake. Without the filter you would get lots of light reflecting off the lake and would not be able to see much detail in it. With the filter you can essentially find the direction of light and correct for it so that you eliminate all the reflection and glare and can see the water. Hope that clears it up, its kind of a tough concept to explain but is easily understood when you play with one for a few minutes.

Like I said UV filters don't do anything that I have noticed for shots, but they will protect your lenses and are only $5~ a piece so worth the investment.

Definitely look into either a remote flash or get a flash diffuser, will work wonders ($15 or so no amazon).

 

info on it:
http://www.edbergphoto.com/pages/Tip-polarizers.html

here you see the water I speak of, in reference to Circular Polarizing Filters.
http://free-du.t-com.hr/dnac/dAexamp...izer/water.jpg


and a sample with(bottom) and without(top) a flash diffuser, excuse my out of focus shot. This was done with a simple white index card hand held in front of my flash:

 

i think the bottom picture is better.


i myself have an S1000fd Fujifilm camera. pretty decent little camera, an entry-level camera for 'serious' shooters, and is about as much as i will pay for one for the amount of shooting i will do.

 

mustangvsix has all the answers......lol.

Once again, I'd try and find yourself a fairly nice lens (more than likely a fixed lens because they're cheaper) that has a low aperture (f1.8 would be a good choice) just to play with and get an understanding of it. Also, I think they give some of the best photos, simply because of like what mustangvsix said. The blurry background and focused image is SWEEEETTTT!

Other than that is sounds like you're on your way to getting everything.

Just a warning....it becomes an addiction. I spend about 1/4 of my days during the fall time taking pictures lol.

 

You should get yerself some of these. 24-70 f/ 2.8 AF-S and 70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR1

lol

Careful, photography can get expencive quick!

please forgive the shitty phone pic. lol

 

You are correct Jack. I've looked at getting a telephoto lens attachment up to 200 MM, geez, that alone can run 500 smackers. Plus a halfway decent camera to start is at least 500 smackers.. Then you gotta learn how to use all that stuff or you might as well have a polaroid.. But when you get that perfect picture, it does feel good, You want to look at it all the time...

 

Yea i know for certain photography is expensive fast. We spent around 900$ on our camera, a 55-250mm IS lense, bag, and some other things that were small. Guys i need some serious almost directions of how to take pictures of things at night. The camera tries to have the capture speed for so slow at night, that if my subject is moving at all i have no chance really. Im typing this atm from Honolulu, Hawaii. After watching a lauo with some fire spinners and of course they shut off the lights as they did this. The problem with that is, as i tried to take pictures of them spinning, i thought it would be cool to freeze the persons movement and flame. Well like i said, the higher the capture rate, the less light it actually captures. So say i had my capture at 1/4000, it would be really really dark, if i didnt use flash or something. Of course anything thats far away at all flash is basically out of question, so i had to slow my capture rate to say 1/30 just to get enough lighting to see whats in the picture, which of course blurred them because of the fast movement. Advice on taking fast pictures at night? If you guys want to see some examples leme know and i could probably post some up, i gotta move over 700 picture from our vacation to the computer anyways. Anyways sorry for the long read, and thanks for the input.

 

when you have little light, there are a few things you can do.
1. Crank up the ISO (your photos will get more "grain" which is really digital noise/distortion)
2. Open your lens as far as it'll go (smallest f-stop)
3. Increase Shutter Speed. The longer the shutter stays open, the more light will hit the sensor. If you're taking shots in very poorly lit areas, a tripod at night is almost always necessary.

 

this is a decent example of a shot I took last year-ish.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisd...57622601708260

let me know if you can't see that page.

shutter was at 1/60, aperture at f4.0 (could have been opened to 1.8, but i'll admit, i was a bit drunk and the ISO is up to 2000 which is decently high. higher ISO sensitivity causes the image sensor to take in more light. it's tough to get all of your settings correct when first starting, setup some practice scenes in your backyard at night/dusk and play with your camera settings.

Ideally, start in either Aperture or Shutter priority so that the camera will choose the other for you automatically. then take some test shots, incrementally increasing/decreasing the shutter speed and taking note of how it affects the image and do the same for the ISO setting. after you're comfortable with that, you can begin putting it all together to get a correct/pleasing exposure in Manual mode.

 

Dude, no way are you gonna get 1/4000th in the dark and see anything at all.

night time shots, well, ok, if you can get a prime lens like say the 85 1.2(you shoot canon right?_ and you crank your ISO up to 3200 you will STILL get motion blur for those flame dancers.

 

+1 to this.

Night time means still shots only. Unless you're "looking" for blur.

 

I knew i wasnt going to get anything with 1/4000th shots, i just threw up a number. I used 1/2000, and it was still crap so i ended up having to use like 1/30. My cameras ISO range is 100-1600 unfortunatly so it doesnt like nightime shots anyways. So basically for anything nighttime related i should just try to stick to still shots? I had kind of forgotten what the F# did, but i ha it set on auto 95% of the time. I still need to pick up the UV filter and polarization filter, hard to when weve een extremely busy here. Ive pretty much fully gotten the hang of what shutter speed does to shots, and anything above 1/1000 should be in full daytime. Im still playing with everything but im gunna post up some of the fire dancer shots, despite the fact of my little knowledge and i believe they turned out quite well.

 

Please. I never learned as much as until I posted up my photos and had people tell me what I should and should not be doing.

 

Here r proof of words.





Just a few randoms of the bunch. My seats werent too great but they were ok. Ill post up some other pictures of other random bs besides hardcore dark ones like the above probably tommorow or after. Was pretty cool, the taller fire guy was only 18, and the other was 10! The 10 year old is actually world champ and has been since 08(supposedly).

 

HAHA! I'm liking those shots actually. In that size they don't look that bad. Looks kind of like the guys have rings of fire around their arms.

 

Not bad at all honestly.

That is a very challanging shooting enviornment, and will definatly test the limits of your camera.

 

Yea they turned out decent for what its worth. However once i got the hang of it, it was hard to mess up. Ill show you guys some landscape photos from today, as well as a waterfall hike we took earlier this evening. So far i think our investment was very well made and ive thoroughly enjoyed it so far. I believe weve taken around 1200 captures already and only have around 660 photos kept. Also whats up with lense hoods? Seems like most people with an SLR have a hood for their lense, what do they do and are they worth it? Or are they mostly just to look cool?