After much thoughts, I brave my cheeky self to open this thread along with all the experienced photographers and state of the art gears.
I'm just a newbie with my first compact camera trying to shoot and learn to utilize every bits of it before I buy my own DSLR, if I still find myself in the hobby and I'm ready for it. Like how I decide to move from my camera phone to my current cam.

I do realize that post-processing is pretty much as important as the shooting skill. I've been playing with the photoshop brightness, contrast, curve, shadow, highlight function lately but hard to find a compromise point between reality and pretty. So there will many questions of "is it looks real" to you for those pictures with some editing. Learning the photoshop now for some light editing and framing to add marks for my picture.

Comments and critics are very much welcome and please please please help me with my various questions.
Hope I don't get ignore because of my lousy cam and boring pictures, tell me how can I improve instead.
Thanks.

Here are some attempts when I first got my camera, before I sort out my Beijing trip and Zoo Negara pictures.

LRT near my house.


Some tree and sky.

The 6. are slightly edited to reveal "highlight" on the sky part.
I realized that the tree part will get dark shadow because of the bright sky behind it.
My limited knowledge tell me that I should use a lower f number and I did it.
I got more tree and leaves details now but that made the background overexposed and lose the beautiful blue sky and clouds.
Picture. 7 is a total failure. The sky became white paper and cannot recover by photoshop but I like how the tree looks like.

I did not get till a point that balance of details and exposure but I hope the photoshop editing is ok.
What do you think? Or I should not edit at all.
I was in a car park waiting for my friends that time.

Your pics are fine for a newbie

Try using the Rules of Third during compositing, before you snap a picture.

Maybe you can try Foreground framing, and leading lines.

Keep the histogram nicely positioned, dont worry about dark images, just dont hit the spike which is the 230-255 in the histogram. (itll make your image over exposed)

Just did a wiki of the Rules of Third and feel shameful I don't know about this before.
Very much agree to it after seeing all the examples.
Are there rules of first or second or forth for me to read up? I cannot seems to find it.

Will try to understand foreground framing and leading lines, is it something of the composition too or the depth of field.

And for the histogram, Isn't it will only be generated after the picture was taken? Or was it a feature that you can see the histogram while shooting/focusing?
Or should I shoot and refer to the histogram, then adjust, then shoot again until the I see a nice "bukit" shape on the histogram?
Sorry if my question sound stupid.

Here are some macro pictures which still far from satisfy, but I'm like cannot get it better after many tries.

I'm trying to focus on the whole screen instead of just the carapace(head) part are clear and leave the legs blurry.
Try with the macro mode and manual focus mode but still either I get to focus on the legs or or the body.

This post has been edited by V3i HoN6: Oct 23 2007, 08:01 PM

love your tarantulas man
Keep up the good work.

Nice pictures

well your newbie digital compact shots ARE an example of how people should use their camera.

at least you didn't snap lens cap or mug, some people just like to cincai snap and post - nothing to show, waste people's time.

yours shots are good! keep it up!

Wohoo love the spiders too

that just sounds exactly like me

your shots are great...
i like how you post process it to make it look so dramatic...

Any taiko care to teach me how could I focus the whole object (my spider) on the macro shoot.
Can lighting help? I'm struggling to put a bigger f number but it will be too underexposed.
I try not to use the flash in this situation as it is placed on a angle that will be blocked by the protruding lense. A close shot with the flash on will result a dark corner on the right bottom. I wonder other Canon A710 users have this problem?

Plus I don't feel natural with the flash light in such close distance. My tarantulas look shiny.

Would like to see yours too when I'm back in Penang.

Well actually I'm guilty of shooting ceiling fans and flowing water taps to test out the shutter speed on the first few nights.
I'm too excited with the camera and haven't ever play with aperture, ISO and shutter speed prior to that.
But of course those are try out shots that not worth posting.
Will keep shooting whenever I can until I got really bored with it.

I couldn't grasp the idea of dramatic but thanks a lot on the compliment.
Reading through your gallery too and would like to do a mini studio for my tarantula too.

Honestly not bad for a newbie like u. But i would love u to not rely too much on post processing and try to capture ur best shot frm ur cam, rather than relying on editing.

Looking forward for ur next batch of pics.

If you want the whole subject (the spider) to be sharp, you have no choice but to use smaller aperture(big f number), maybe f11 or f16 would be good enough. Then reduce your shutter speed to get the correct exposure.
However, if shutter speed too low, your subject might be blur unless it keep still and not moving around.
If that the case, then you can up your ISO, so that your shutter speed can be faster.

Thanks for all the inputs.
Will go through you guys gallery when free.
Learn to see from more angle and direction.

Yeah, I feel like cheating a bit with photoshop but I can't help myself to not doing it.
Almost all of my editing is "+10" or "+20" contrast or "-30" shadow.
I like the "after" more but sometimes look back its feel unnatural so right now I keep trying on my photos till my eyes can spot till a level I won't overdone it.
But nonetheless I will still try my best to capture the best from tweaking the cam.
Don't know when is the next outing but I still have bunch of pics haven't uploaded.

Gotta slowly try out on this.
Yeah, the reading materials on the net tell me to slower the shutter but avoid any shaking in between. The subject is nice enough to stay still for me but me hands is kinda shaky.
Trying to hang it with my mini tripod but it won't allow me to bend closer to the subject.
Too bad my camera don't allow such small aperture size. But will try with the combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO all together.

Laoo aaltong sifu comment already
More spidey please ...

My trip to Beijing. 天坛。A place the ancient emperor worship the god of sky.
Really I wasted the good chances of this very unique place and the good weather.
It was my first time holding a camera during a trip and the tour guide basically rushed us like sheep.
I feel like running around with the tour and struggling to take photo over the crowd's head, and by the same time listening to the tour's explanation.
Would have think more and adjusted to better setting if given some times but I promise my gf to shot a lot of pictures for her to see.
So i just dont care so much, shoot whatever I can in the times given.


This post has been edited by V3i HoN6: Oct 24 2007, 07:41 PM

yes...like the other member said...don rely too much on PS... you can tweak it to fine-tune the photos but try not to overdo it... sometimes some shots look better naturally without that dramatic look

shooting ceiling fans and flowing water taps are NOT guilty acts. it shows you made attempt to understand your camera.

who doesn't do that? c'mon i snap my toys once a while just for fun. sometimes simply snapping could give you inspiration, ideas and lessons.

and to give you some inspiration on CEILING FAN shots, here's what my wife took the other day using my previous camera, the Fujifilm S7000 Prosumer.

Fantastic shot of the ceiling fan.
How can you blur the background this much, I try with my biggest aperture 2.8 but the background still very visible.
And for shot like this, for sure i have to use tripod?

Continue from the same place.



C & C for this batch please.
Be mean if you have to.

Btw, can someone show me how you would crop picture 13.
I feel like the left side distracting.

This post has been edited by V3i HoN6: Oct 25 2007, 03:41 PM

believe it or not, she was using hand. the fan was decently fast, lighting not that dark yet. late afternoon i think.

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Added on October 25, 2007, 3:57 pm#11 would be nicer if you don't cut the tip off.
#12 no subject, might as well shoot the front of the statue
#13 the idea is there, try to avoid the other distraction like on the left
#14 is nice. have to play around with exposure a little. perhaps even composing it to avoid the humans.
#15 just a snapshot
#16 just another snapshot but I believe with proper composing something could come out of it.
#17 ... no idea. composition la.
#18 ... just another snapshot but has potential.
#19 just another snapshot

This post has been edited by goldfries: Oct 25 2007, 03:57 PM

From ur pics in bejing i believe u can do alot better with a DSLR. As what goldfries mentioned, most of teh pics r snapshot frm a normal ps camera. Sorry to say that but u need to work alot on the compo.

Yeah, I feel boring after looking at other's gallery and looking back at mine. The composition is weak but I was pretty helpless that time rushing around and trying to avoid the crowd.
Okay, let's just admit I'm still too noob.

Maybe DSLR will help a little but certainly will be underutilized by me. I will not go there unless I satisfy with what I can do with my P&S.

Will look for inspiration and go shoot again.