It ain't easy....

[janestarz]

I used to be a bit harsh on people with good digital camera's. Some people spend hundreds of euro's on an expensive camera but don't know what 'composition' is until you beat them over the head with it.
Now that I've got my own, I must admit having a good camera and taking a good photo and it being in focus and having the light right... it's all very difficult.

Yesterday I shot some pictures of our ever-obliging cats. Drat them for being black and white, because I'm struggling with the white! And even when they were sitting still it was still very hard to take a good picture of them. Of course, Lisa loved all of the attention and came over for cuddles and huggles and sniffles and rolling on the ground...



I'm still not completely satisfied with this, but it's the best of the set. I don't want to show you the rest of the set!
At least her shoulder isn't too much of a white blob and the focus is on the right part. I only had to cut off a bit of empty carpet on the right and bottom and I adjusted the curves a bit.

I guess I'll have to read that booklet before I go off to Castlefest tomorrow...

Comments

[holyvirus.livejournal.com]

You did pick a difficult model. Camera's get total confused with black and white or heavy contrasts. The spot-meter ([.] icon) can help with light measuring and on white/black surfaces manual focus is more easier. Had to figure this out by trying all the buttons ;)

I had the same feeling when I got my Nikon D300. It was so difficult to pay attention on everything and with my camera I had to do all the camera settings by myself (no programmed profiles to fall back) I felt like a complete noob. Not to speak that I was very critical on every picture I made. I just lack the experience.

The key is practice. There will be 100 bad pictures and 1 very good. When you feel more comfortable with your camera, the good interesting pictures will come :)

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Oh, well I'm off to a good start. I made 68 pictures and one was good and one marginally okay-ish!

[woran.livejournal.com]

Black and white are very far apart that the camera struggles to get both in the picture with details intact. Its usually a choice. Either the white still has detail, or the black still has it. Its really hard to have detail in both (without post processing).
Sadly, cameras arent as good as our human eyes (which are vastly superior).
So far it looks good and if you have questions, feel free to ask!

[aroka.livejournal.com]

Looks very good for a "first shot"! Remember: throwing away 90% of your photos is normal :)

And, hmm, I remember that my Nikon has a special mode called "Active D-Lighting" for these kinds of situations. This mode tries to compress more dynamic range into a single image, as to keep details visible in both shadows and highlights. In practice I never use it since I always go for postprocessing the RAWs myself instead, which usually produces a better effect.

*googles* There should be something similar for Canon.. should be called "Auto Lighting Optimizer".

[athiel-draaick.livejournal.com]

You're critical about your own work, so it will most likely improve. I have a new camera too, and I'm still getting used to all those buttons. But manually adjusting settings is so much fun after a while. If I just would stop forgetting adjusting the ISO. Damn noise...

[charida.livejournal.com]

This is a very good photo!

I think that it is more difficult to get good photo's with a digital camera, as it is much easier to delete them afterwards. But it is so much more the challenge to get good pictures, and so much more satisfying I think. I look forward to more of your pictures.