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Hey guys, I just recently got a Nikon D3200 and a 35mm 1.8 lens. I feel that I've gotten the hang of most of the basics and most of post production and can start focusing on not just recording information with my pictures, but saying something with them too. These pictures are from a recent explore. I posted them elsewhere on UER, but I'm wanting more exact criticism.
I was using autofocus for all of these because I was trying to focus on getting the exposure right and learning post production. I didn't want to make the people I was with wait 2 hours for me to get my pictures right and thought that would help. Next time I go out I'll get out of autofocus, but for now these are my best. Any and all criticism is appreciated.
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Posted by TDNext time I go out I'll get out of autofocus, but for now these are my best. Any and all criticism is appreciated.
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Why? Read the manual and learn how to work the magic of auto focus to your favor. Your camera will have several auto-focus modes. Manual focus is usually difficult and time consuming on digital cameras. Older lenses gave you about a full turn lock-to-lock with a comfortable amount of resistance but lenses made primarily for digital cameras are optimized for faster auto-focus which makes it challenging to dial-in by hand. I only use it when it's impossible to get auto-focus to focus or can't get it to do what I want.
Couple comments:
Your colors are all over the place. Personally, I would lock it into daylight or whatever of your choosing so it stays consistent from shot to shot.
Go to some boring places like a park or the zoo and take plenty of practice shots in aperture priority mode. Set the focus at one point just so it doesn't move around from picture to picture. snap a picture at each stop from widest to narrowest and get a hang of how it turns out. Your F/1.8 35mm APS-C is an equivalent of 50mm F/2.7 to full frame in viewing angle and focal depth. This lens gives a very neutral perspective, like what you'd see in the driver's side mirror. Wide angle lenses make things look further than they're hence the warning lettering on the bottom of your passenger side mirror. I prefer wide angles myself.
In this picture, you can see the foreground is blurry and everything beyond mid distance is sharp. When you're not messing around with focal depth, you usually get the best quality image at a few stops narrower than the widest.
[last edit 9/23/2015 2:40 AM by Deuterium - edited 1 times]
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Hey TD,
Just to echo what Deuterium said, use the auto-focus to your advantage. Trying to master manual focus is not only very time consuming but it also puts the cart before the horse when it comes to other things.
My biggest suggestion would be to work on your composition. Photo number two and three (more so two) certainly begin to show an understanding of the rule of thirds. Using straight objects, in this case the beams, are an awesome way of directing a viewers attention to certain areas. The rule of thirds doesn't always have to be your go to technique either. There's the spiral, one point perspective, two point perspective and natural framing, these are all great ways to tell the story you want to tell.
On a positive note, your exposures were well done. The windows were well mastered, avoiding blow outs and glare. Most of all you avoided strictly toasting your images in HDR glow and that's a huge plus when starting out. I look forward to seeing your future work and your next thread.
Keep up the great work TD and safe exploring!
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Thank you both for the feedback, and the advice. I learned last night that what I should have said was I'm going to use single point autofocus instead of whatever the mode is called where the camera has full control of which point it focuses on.
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I really love your composition, and like what that first guy said, you're colors are all over the place, but I have no idea if all these pictures are from the same trip. But if you're posting a group of photos as a set or intend them to be looked at like that, then you want some consistency.
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Regarding the above comments on the colour of OP's pictures, what specifically are you recommending? If TD was shooting in RAW, would you recommend that he set the WB to be the same across all of his pictures? To what extent should he correct for shooting indoor/outdoor, with stained glass (which always makes things tricky!) and with changes in colour of the ambient light (esp during sunset/sunrise).
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I've never heard of the rule of the thirds until this thread. Things are a bit different for SLRs, because what you see in the optical viewfinder and what the sensor captures aren't an exact match. If you're composing with the LCD, everything you see is captured.
Posted by d0dg3rjavascript:sub()
Regarding the above comments on the colour of OP's pictures, what specifically are you recommending? If TD was shooting in RAW, would you recommend that he set the WB to be the same across all of his pictures? To what extent should he correct for shooting indoor/outdoor, with stained glass (which always makes things tricky!) and with changes in colour of the ambient light (esp during sunset/sunrise).
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There is no one answer.
Films are not adjustable. Tungsten films were designed so white sheet looks white when shot with incandescent lighting and the same white sheet looks the same outdoors. Setting to a fixed WB makes it behave like film. On auto balance, your skin will have different tone with a light pink background compared to a light blue background, because the camera will try to tweak the white balance. I use cloudy day and daylight settings the most often.
If you leave it on daylight, it maintains the color effect of sunset/sunrise.
On the other hand, if you're taking a picture with sky light on a cloudy day, everything gets a blue tint. If you want the white to look white, aim the camera on a white paper and manually calibrate using the manual WB setting.
Finally, the finished file would not look the same between the camera LCD, your monitor and different monitors unless they're each precisely color calibrated, but you can tell when colors are all over the place from shot to shot.
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Posted by enirus
I really love your composition, and like what that first guy said, you're colors are all over the place, but I have no idea if all these pictures are from the same trip. But if you're posting a group of photos as a set or intend them to be looked at like that, then you want some consistency.
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Thank you, first of all.
I shot all of these raw with white balance on auto because I knew it didn't really matter since I was shooting raw anyway and planned to make adjustments.
In post I treated each picture individually and did what I thought made each picture look best, with no regard for the continuity of my colors. I didn't know that keeping a rather consistent WB was a kind of unspoken rule.
Posted by d0dg3r
Regarding the above comments on the colour of OP's pictures, what specifically are you recommending? If TD was shooting in RAW, would you recommend that he set the WB to be the same across all of his pictures? To what extent should he correct for shooting indoor/outdoor, with stained glass (which always makes things tricky!) and with changes in colour of the ambient light (esp during sunset/sunrise).
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I'd like to echo all of these questions. If it is down to preference, as Deuterium suggests, then why not just treat each picture individually? Tweaking WB would most likely give the best individual images, especially when you're dealing with a really diverse set of lighting scenarios like I was here.
Thank you to everyone for the feedback!
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I'm still learning, but I really like what you're doing. And I love my autofocus, but I end up having to switch, too. Sometimes it's just hard, even with single point in certain circumstances.
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If you're shooting RAW, I believe you can change the white balance without any quality loss. I don't know how to do much post processing.
One thing that even RAW is affected by is long exposure noise reduction. The noise from sensor doesn't stay the same over time. Noise reduction mode takes a blank dark shot immediately following image capture and merge use the second image to cancel out noise. The big disadvantage is that a 10 second exposure requires an additional 10 second for the dark blank shot. It takes time, and it consumes battery but it makes a big difference in cleanliness of image.
Posted by olcripple
I'm still learning, but I really like what you're doing. And I love my autofocus, but I end up having to switch, too. Sometimes it's just hard, even with single point in certain circumstances.
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The focus target point is in the middle, but you can move it around by pushing buttons. If you're going to take several shots with the same focusing distance that's when you can auto-focus, then switch to manual focus to keep the same focus so the camera does not refocus with each frame.
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Posted by Deuterium
If you're going to take several shots with the same focusing distance that's when you can auto-focus, then switch to manual focus to keep the same focus so the camera does not refocus with each frame.
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Take a look in the settings on your camera. It may be cryptically named, but both of my Canon cameras (Rebel XSi and 5DII) have the option to move the focus command off the shutter button and onto a separate button (in the case of my 5DII, the star button near the shutter button). I'd be surprised if Nikon didn't offer a similar setting somewhere.
What this allows for is you can now set a focus point, then reframe the image and not have to worry about the camera trying to refocus when you go to take your shot.
I use this in combination with a single, centered AF point so I always know exactly what the camera has focused on when composing my shots.
On the 5DII, the option is called "Shutter button/AF-ON button", and the setting for this setup is "AE lock/Metering + AF start".
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Posted by Archer
On the 5DII, the option is called "Shutter button/AF-ON button", and the setting for this setup is "AE lock/Metering + AF start".
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It's similar on the Nikon D-3200. AE-L or something. You half press the shutter button and then press the AE-whatever button to focus. It doesn't refocus until you press that AE-whatever again, which is pretty useful. I accidentally changed it when I first got my camera and haven't looked back since.
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