Newbie here!

[AtomicApple]

Hi guys,

Actually I'm not really that new to photography, I upgraded to dslr a year ago, but i'm still not very familiar with it. I usually just point and shoot and it produces sharp photos, but i feel that i'm not fully utilizing the capabilities of the camera. Now i'm back after a long hiatus and I intend to pick up photography as a serious hobby.

Anyway here are some photos i took back then. Tinkered with them on Lightroom 4. I'm not going to care about the composition now, but trying to focus more on getting the exposure and DOF right. Please leave your comments. Thanks!

 

[Cowseye]

While this is not the place to post ur pics and ask for comments (we have the critic corner), getting exposure right can be a very simple task for some situation and daunting task for another. And most of the times, it really depends what you want to achieve and also what's your taste in a picture. A fashion pro photographer used to tell me, there are many correct exposures, but only one will fit you.

If you need to know where to start, learn the basic triangle for exposure if you have not (Aperture, Shutter speed, ISO) and follow by the metering systems (spot, matrix or center weighted). Don't mis flash into the equation yet until you (at least) familiar with the above. Google for Greg Cazillo for his lessons and YouTube video. Lots of them are on good exposures and knowing your camera, he is Nikon based but it should be easily translate to most DSLR.

 

[sjackal]

Hi guys,

Actually I'm not really that new to photography, I upgraded to dslr a year ago, but i'm still not very familiar with it. I usually just point and shoot and it produces sharp photos, but i feel that i'm not fully utilizing the capabilities of the camera. Now i'm back after a long hiatus and I intend to pick up photography as a serious hobby.

Anyway here are some photos i took back then. Tinkered with them on Lightroom 4. I'm not going to care about the composition now, but trying to focus more on getting the exposure and DOF right. Please leave your comments. Thanks!

Very nice pics with good exposure and colors.

The composition is not too bad too, quite interesting.

Painting on second pic wall a bit distracting but I doubt you can rip it off the wall to take pics, changing an angle or perspective would had changed the composition, moving the pots might offend the owner, photoshopping it out might be against some ethnics of travel journalism (are these travel pics?), so not too bad.

 

[AtomicApple]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Yup! These are travel pics.

I already have rough knowledge of the exposure triangle, but I usually do without the flash since I still don't know how to use it properly. Regarding the exposure, should the histogram be as far right as possible (without the blowing the highlights) to get as much detail as possible? Or is it ok for the histogram to be anywhere as long as there is no clipping?

 

[spree86]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Yup! These are travel pics.

I already have rough knowledge of the exposure triangle, but I usually do without the flash since I still don't know how to use it properly. Regarding the exposure, should the histogram be as far right as possible (without the blowing the highlights) to get as much detail as possible? Or is it ok for the histogram to be anywhere as long as there is no clipping?

It depends on a lot of what you are shooting and what you are trying to achieve. Use the histogram as a guide but don't follow it absolutely.

 

[sjackal]

Depends on your purpose. If I don't want to post process and only want to use pics straight out of camera, I get it right in cam, but the much preached "get it right in cam" often is a situation of compromise at midtones, you either loss some blacks or some whites or both, not every scene is a clear horizon of sky and land thus not always feasible with GNDs and tripods.

If I wanna maximise the capability of my file, I 'expose to the right' to capture more shadow details and get richer midtones, but how much 'to the right' depends on how much whites I wanna keep, it differ scene to scene, color channel to channel. Eg watch the red channel for human skintones. But I seldom go more than 1 stop. A high contrast scene is going to clip the whites easy so decide which is more important for that particular pic, shadows or highlights.