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I Have Great Gear, But My Pics Still Suck!


ruthless
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Guest Clover

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, i am still looking around and still playing non stop at every spare moment i have :rofl:.

That first shot of Ralph is great.

What kind of action are you trying to shoot? Knowing what you are looking to achieve will help narrow your choices for a new lens. Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina have some great lenses in their line ups and they are often considerably cheaper than Nikon branded glass.

Mainly just the dogs, we go to the beach a fair bit and then there is Flyball as well.

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...Mainly just the dogs, we go to the beach a fair bit and then there is Flyball as well.

That is really quite a good lens as far as kit lenses go. Keep telling yourself "don't use either end". If you go wide to 18, or long to 55, you will lose sharpness. Somewhere near 40-45 will give sharpest result. Let your feet be the zoom to get in closer. And to make it a real masochism job, force yourself to use a monopod or tripod for stability. You'll hate it, just persevere and you'll be glad you did. If still not happy with results, stamp you foot and go buy a new lens, the newer 28-200 is AFS with anti-shake. But again don't depend on best results at the "ends" of the range with any zooms.

If you change the white balance don't forget to change it back under different light: same with ISO, if you up it because the light is dull it will probably increase the noise/grain in your shots. Turn it down to minimum again as soon as the light improves.

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I don't have IS with my new 70-200 lens as I couldn't afford the IS one (I wish!). I have to make sure I try and be as still as possible as I hate hate hate tripods as I'm too darn lazy to assemble and mount my camera on one. Plus when you are hiking they are a pain. If I'm not taking a shot at sunrise or sunset, I won't bother with one. Oh to have hands of steel. :p I also have a teleconverter that is a 1.4 to add to it so it's almost a 300mm then (well 280mm, that'll do me atm).
How is everyone doing? i have had my Nikon D40x for about a month now and still am not getting the hang of action shots (which was the main reason for get a DSLR). I gave in yesterday afternoon and put it on Auto, but even then the shots were not that great and i ended up scrapping most of them .

I am also on the hunt for a decent lense with a bit more zoom than the kit one i am using

Try it on shutter priority, clover.

I used TV mode for this shot of monelite and choc dobe, Divani - first try at something called panning.

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Some shots with my new Canon 70-200 lens I got in May. (have only used it twice :p ).

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It helps if you are photographing one so handsome

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Just a wild lorikeet I feed in the backyard, light wasn't great.

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Love my new lens and can't wait to try it out on holidays next month, haven't tried it on landscapes yet.

Ripley,

were all these shots with your 70-200? I hope so as I have just brought one, is yours the f//4L or the f/2.8? Love the pics.

Luke

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Hi Luke - yes it's the 70-200 but the f/4 and it doesn't have image stabilisation in it. I couldn't afford the faster one. Those shots were taken hand held.

What were the settings for the second head shot Shutter speed, ISO, Aperture? I can't get the histogram from the picture for some reason?

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Hi Luke - yes it's the 70-200 but the f/4 and it doesn't have image stabilisation in it. I couldn't afford the faster one. Those shots were taken hand held.

What were the settings for the second head shot Shutter speed, ISO, Aperture? I can't get the histogram from the picture for some reason?

I shot it in AV mode as I was in a hurry so: f/4 at 1/125 seconds. Hmm, seems I have steadier hands than I thought. ISO 250.

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Hi Luke - yes it's the 70-200 but the f/4 and it doesn't have image stabilisation in it. I couldn't afford the faster one. Those shots were taken hand held.

What were the settings for the second head shot Shutter speed, ISO, Aperture? I can't get the histogram from the picture for some reason?

I shot it in AV mode as I was in a hurry so: f/4 at 1/125 seconds. Hmm, seems I have steadier hands than I thought. ISO 250.

Cool,I am new to DSLR cameras and also to Canon as my previous camera was a Nikon cool pix 995 which had a built in lens and was overwhelmingly disapointing. I have just got an EOS 40D with the 17-85 "enthusiasts lens for everyday stuff but have made the investment in to the 70-200 f/2.8 IS USM zoom to get better close up images of the dogs etc. Got it yesterday and it has rained ever since :eek: typical! If you don't mind me asking what made you go for the 1.4X extender? As an idiot that knows nothing about cameras I would have thought that everyone would go for the 2X so was wondering what the methodology was behind the two being available.

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You lose a 2 stop of light with the 2 x extender. The 1.4 will give me 280mm, that should do for travel photography.

Ripley,

Dumb question I know but, when you say you lose 2 steps would that make a 2.8 a 4.8 or a 2.8 a 3.0, or am I barking up completely the wrong tree?

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You lose a 2 stop of light with the 2 x extender. The 1.4 will give me 280mm, that should do for travel photography.

Ripley,

Dumb question I know but, when you say you lose 2 steps would that make a 2.8 a 4.8 or a 2.8 a 3.0, or am I barking up completely the wrong tree?

A 2.8 becomes a 5.6 ...it's a huge loss of light. Some lenses also don't play so nicely with teleconverters so need to watch, that, too.

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Thanks everyone. The dogs and I headed off Saturday afternoon to the park, they did zoomies i snapped away like crazy (mind you i cheated and put it on sports mode) :confused:. Some actually turned out ok, not great but not so bad that they got deleted :p.

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From Saturday.

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From the Saturday before, it was cold and wet and very overcast.

PC I took note of not using either end of the lense range & i do think that worked quite well.

Edited by Clover
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