New camera

[darkshark]

So I just got my Rebel T3i today and I've been playing with it all day just figuring everything out. This is my first SLR and learning it has actually been far easier than I thought it was going to be since 3ds Max uses physical camera settings like fstop and shutter speeds as well.

So I don't really have any compositions or anything that I've really thought about, so this is just me taking random pictures of things around the house getting the hang of things. I would LOVELOVELOVE if any of you could provide tips on good settings for different situations, or any other little tidbits you've figured out.

http://i.imgur.com/EVAZw.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9WeWq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/l4A3c.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9FKKW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fsL0P.jpg

These are all just macro shots because it's cold and I didn't feel like going outside today rofl. Tomorrow will get some distanced shots.

[who_cares973]

I like the keyboard the most

Lucky that's the camera that I want. One of these days I'll get it

[Emo_Saur_]

The definition on those photos is incredible.

[TheNoSoMan]

Think you can shoot some videos for us?

[darkshark]

Yeah, video is the main reason I got this camera. I'm not going to be posting any video without editing it though. I'm going to have fun doing cgi overlays ;D

[PsYcHoZeRoSk8eR]

Wow. I can't wait to see the stuff you create with that thing. This is gonna be good.

[Spenner]

What mode are you shooting in?

A couple tips, though they are very basic, they help me a lot when doing macro photography (which, you will have to play with-- it's always nicer to crop out a really sharp part of a shot that's not as close as you could possibly be, rather than to have a full res shot that's completely out of focus).

TV mode will capture a smaller field of view but what it does capture is generally pretty damn sharp. I like shooting in a mid shutter speed range, around 120 to 400 depending where I'm at.

For a lot of those shots, the field of view is really shallow. I mean it's your first day with a DSLR, I don't expect you to know your way around it yet :P but a few pointers for that-- take advantage of the autofocus for composing shots. Hold the button halfway down right on whatever you want to focus on, then move the camera, still holding it halfway down, to wherever you'd like the photo to be framed in. Then press it the rest of the way, of course. As long as you don't move further forward or back, it's really easy to compose a shot and still control where the main focus will be.

When shooting with live-view, you can use the directional arrows to choose where the autofocus will sit at, I believe. That's also handy, especially when filming.

Having a background with 3D will really help you, lighting is very important-- not only for good looking shots with contrast, but because noise is a big issue, or underexposure.

You'll have to do a lot of post-processing if you use a lot of the automatic modes-- the dog one is a good example, seeing how the colour is so overly warm because of the kind of lights in the house. Deliberately choose a place with an intense warm or cool tone to it, and play with the whitebalance modes to see if you can get a shot with some decent balance out of it!

I guess that's it for now. Also, did yours just come with an 18-55mm kit lens? (it looks like it, but I've seen some other lens packages with the T3i)

[darkshark]

Yeah it came with the 18-55, as well as a 0.45x macro diopter and 2.1x zoom diopter.
I actually don't really care for using the autofocus at all, at least not on these macro shots, it seems like the camera takes far too long (in live view) to focus and sometimes fails to focus entirely. I've mostly been shooting in full manual mode to get a feel for all of the controls and know what to expect with each stop and setting.

I tried to upload some more pictures I just took, but the card reader that came with the camera package is TERRIBLE and ended up deleting everything on the card. I'm running some data recovery tools on it now to see if I can salvage it because there were some good ones. I'm going down to Fry's right now to get a good card reader.

**Edit

Alright recovered some of them. It clipped off some of the bottom of the "7" picture because of errors, it was centered before. Same with the food in the red sauce, bottom was clipped.

http://i.imgur.com/jQiX1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XqvHi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UKZTb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ODFMa.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pfVxU.jpg

Wasn't able to recover the video I shot of a fountain, but shooting it at 60fps and then replaying it in slow motion was beautiful. I can tell I'm going to need to build/buy a shoulder rig though for extra smooth shots.

[Spenner]

There's quite a bit of blur on most of them-- which is why I'm glad I have a tripod :P sharp shots are hard to pull off without tinkering with the settings based on your environment a bit.

For example, this shot was taken while moving the camera around quite violently trying to follow the bee lol-- TV mode is your friend when taking shots at higher speeds. However I'm not a pro with shutter speeds yet-- I set it too slow, and it over exposed the shot :c



A good way to practice with TV mode is to start at say, 1/600 speed, spin a coin and see what shutter speed is required to capture a picture of the coin sitting still (it's pretty dang cool when you get it right). 1/600 might be too dark, start cranking it down to whatever might work for it.

But yeah, the faster you can get that shutter to flip, the sharper the image is going to be. If you shoot in AV mode or something, at say, F/8.0 aperture or higher, it's going to be exposing the shot for longer to capture more detail. TV mode adjusts the F stop to whatever it needs to be to capture the details in focus-- so for a shot like the 7, being nearly flat, it would capture it all sharply, and softly blur the background.

Once you get some shots that are in decent focus, I suggest reading this tutorial:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/p...pen-high-pass/ (they show a pretty poor example, but it's the only technique I use now to sharpen my images, gives you way more control).

But yeah the best thing right now is to just go out and shoot a bunch of shots, practice AV and TV and M modes as much as you can, see what works with what. Test depth of field, composition; all of the elements of design are in play when shooting a shot.

[darkshark]

Yeah the blur is definitely a problem. I played with AV/TV mode last night and man it does help quite a bit. I do have a tripod too, just haven't really used it yet =/

Yeah I'm definitely not to the point of where I need to be editing photos yet. I'm a total noob right now haha.

What do you normally use for ISO? I certainly want to avoid grainy images, and auto always seems to just bump ISO up to stupid amounts like 1600-3200 for no reason...but when ISO is set to 200 or so the shutter speed is too long and I get blurring. Endless cycle of quality torment.

[LongGone]

Preferably keep ISO low (200ish maybe?)

If you're taking macro, might want to have a stable tripod with low ISO and longer shutter exposures

Unless this is out in the open broad daylight, then you might shorten the shutter exposure

[Spenner]

If you always want low ISOs shoot in M mode. That's what I used for this, that I just took lol,



200 ISO with a 40 second exposure-- at first I tried with regular TV mode but it wanted to shoot to 3200 ISO >_> so yeah, always M mode in low light, or if you're getting a lot of ugly noise. There's still a lot of noise in the near-black areas of course, but for my camera body that's not bad :s I'm surprised I got as much as I did. Not to mention with that little noise I can fix that in 3 mins in photoshop lol.

[TheNoSoMan]

Hey darkshark. Are you going to be doing CGI overlays like this?

[darkshark]

Uhhh, sure...only...way better than that lol.

Ok so I just shot a few things outside on bulb mode with the tripod and it brought up a few questions.

http://i.imgur.com/6qY1B.jpg

The tree was impossible to focus on because it was pitch black against the black sky and I couldn't see it at all, so it's slightly out of focus but that's not the issue. I set this to bulb mode and did about a 2 and a half minute exposure, but got motion blur on the stars. How would I go about getting both the tree and the stars to show up well, but in a timely manner that doesn't involve jacking the ISO up to 6400 so there's no blurring on the stars?

Others I was just playing with -

http://i.imgur.com/4UDr0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/abhIf.jpg

[LongGone]

If you're focusing on something that spacious like the sky with the tree like in that first pic and want to get everything in focus, you might want to decrease your aperture size which increases your depth of field. Afterall you're on a tripod anyway so shakes and such won't be a worry with the longer exposure time needed.. (even if its night)
Autofocus is quite reliable in my experience once you know its limits, much better than manual focusing all the time imo
That 2nd pic has a nice vibe of colour to it, although I think the two vehicles on the bottom right are out of place
The 3rd pic shows that your lens has 6 blades on its diaphragm since its a 6pointed star lol

[Renevatia]

I like the contrast on the street one.
What is that dot moving in bottom left of your third pic? a flashing light on a plane?

for the first pic, you could always try to manual focus, which is more reliable in low light unless you have one of those epic lenses that specializes in low light focusing or ultrasonic lenses.

[darkshark]

Autofocus wouldn't work on the tree picture at all, it was literally pitch black and the camera AF couldn't lock onto anything. Fstop on that picture was at 29 so it should have been able to focus on the stars too, but the sky moves just enough in 2 minutes to blur the stars out.

Trying to get things right asap because the lunar eclipse starts in 4 hours haha.

** yeah the dotted line in the 3rd pic is a plane.

[Renevatia]

Originally Posted by darkshark

Autofocus wouldn't work on the tree picture at all, it was literally pitch black and the camera AF couldn't lock onto anything. Fstop on that picture was at 29 so it should have been able to focus on the stars too, but the sky moves just enough in 2 minutes to blur the stars out.

Trying to get things right asap because the lunar eclipse starts in 4 hours haha.

** yeah the dotted line in the 3rd pic is a plane.

with a t2i i found that f20+ is literally a joke in terms of clarity
so i wouldnt suggest using such high f stop, but it looked like you are far enough to focus on both star and the tree. anything at above like 15m is literally just less than 1% difference in image distance. I'd go around f/8-13 in that picture.
Try to focus on some really far away building and then switch off the AF, take pic.

If you have a laptop, do remote shooting with kit usb should help. most of the shake comes from when you hit the shutter button.

btw I still havent found the shutter hold option on my t2i for bulb, do i REALLY have to hold it down lol...

PS omfg lunar eclipse why i still sit here. I need to get ready for this shit too. Why didnt anyone gimme a headsup fff.

[darkshark]

I have a remote so I don't even touch the camera, no shakes there. Lowering to f8 would seriously cut down on some exposure time too, so that might work well for the stars.

I DID GIVE YOU A HEADS UP. lol
I might have to drive out somewhere up on a hill or something, the moon is supposed to dip down to the horizon and look EFFING HUGE...AND RED. Should make for some nice pictures.

[Renevatia]

Originally Posted by darkshark

I have a remote so I don't even touch the camera, no shakes there. Lowering to f8 would seriously cut down on some exposure time too, so that might work well for the stars.

I DID GIVE YOU A HEADS UP. lol
I might have to drive out somewhere up on a hill or something, the moon is supposed to dip down to the horizon and look EFFING HUGE...AND RED. Should make for some nice pictures.

hopefully i can see it here in vegas, not sure about any hills around here, unless i drive up a 4500ft mountain about 40min from here, really not sure if i am up for that at 4am in the morning.