How many people have this camera?  If you do, post some pictures.  This camera really is very powerful, especially to the photo noob like myself.  Here are a few pictures I did this morning using the supplied kit lense.  I can't wait till I get some better ones.

Nice work!  

Now to put some "L" glass on it and let it really shine!



Mark.

I like the last one a lot.

I can't wait for it to get nicer out here, and some flowers blooming. I once got asked if I was a botanist because I was crawling (carefully) through a flowerbed to get closeups of some blossoms... ha.

Quoted: www.btammolabs.com/images/IMG_0223a.jpg www.btammolabs.com/images/pets/IMG_0033a.jpg www.btammolabs.com/images/pets/IMG_2137a.jpg Obviously, everything is severely resized.

The hummingbird picture is amazing.

Quoted: www.btammolabs.com/images/IMG_0223a.jpg www.btammolabs.com/images/pets/IMG_0033a.jpg www.btammolabs.com/images/pets/IMG_2137a.jpg Obviously, everything is severely resized.

Those are absolutely amazing.  What lense are you using for each?

One of my favorite "action" shots with my XT.  (70-200 f2.8 L)



Mark.

So it seems the 70-200 2.8L seems to quite popular.  However I've looked at the prices of the 2.8Ls and they are a bit pricey.  

I was looking at the following:

70-300mm lense

Any comments?

Are you referring to this one?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=4657&A=details&Q=&sku=183198&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

If so, I was a little worried about it not have Image Stabilization.  Can't carry a tripod around everyone if you know what I mean.

Also, are all the L lenses White?  Do they come in black or is that the easy way to tell the difference?  I think they would look odd having a white lense and black body.

Not all "L" lenses are white.  Just the telephoto zooms. e.g.  the 24-70 2.8 is black. the 70-200 is white.

Here is a great site with all kinds of good info about lenses etc...

www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/


Mark.

Quoted: One of my favorite "action" shots with my XT.  (70-200 f2.8 L) m-mason.smugmug.com/photos/136676470-L.jpg Mark.

That is friggin awesome!

Quoted: Quoted: One of my favorite "action" shots with my XT.  (70-200 f2.8 L) m-mason.smugmug.com/photos/136676470-L.jpg Mark. That is friggin awesome!

Thank you.  I try.

Mark.

Quoted: Quoted: I've also read some postings regarding lens creep?  Is that something you guys notice? Only with low quality lenses.

Some higher quality lenses can creep too.  It is a function of lens angle, front element weight, radial angle/focal length on the barrel, and the necessary torque required to turn the barrel.

My 18-200mm VR has a little bit of creep between 135 and 200mm, but only straight up or down.

I guess another question I have is where do you guys purchase your lenses from?

I had posted a link to http://www.bhphotovideo.com, do you guys shop there?  Do you buy from a B&M photo store?  If you buy online, are there any others that are good besides the one I listed?

Sounds good.

Quoted: B&H has a great reputation and a competative prices. Adorama is also recommended. I bought all my stuff from B & H. Avoid those that are too good to be true.

Yesterday, I ran into BestPriceCamera.com.  I was shocked to find out that I could get a Rebel XT for only $399.  I was excited until the common sense function of my brain kicked into high gear and so I decided to research them as any sensible person would do.

(The following link will infuriate you.)

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Best_Price_Cameras_6

Why on earth do they still exist?

There's some potential there. You need to work on nailing the exposure though. They're all underexposed. Nothing you can't fix in PS but why do that when you can get it right in the camera. Hope you don't mind my little sample adjustment but I'd rather see the originals look more like the right side.

Quoted: There's some potential there. You need to work on nailing the exposure though. They're all underexposed. Nothing you can't fix in PS but why do that when you can get it right in the camera. Hope you don't mind my little sample adjustment but I'd rather see the originals look more like the right side. images.digiproimaging.com/arfcom/flowers.jpg

Thank you for the comments.  The first problem I had was that I was not shooting in RAW.  Mainly because the software required 1024x768 resolution or higher to work.  Apparently 1280x720 isn't higher. lol.

I bought a 19" monitor just so I could start shooting in RAW and using the DPP3 that came with the camera.

I modified the original 5, so they "should" look a little better.  I do agree they were underexposed.

I worry about how far I should go in the post processing of the image.  I'm pretty new to that so all comments are appreciated.  However, please note that all images above and below are taken with the "kit" lens.  I hope to get a better telephoto lens in the near future alone with a better low zoom lense to replace the kit lens.  Just gotta save the money.  

Few others I took of my nephew today.



Few more outdoor shots

"Couple Days Ago"


"This morning"




Inside House shot in Low Light

Quoted: Thank you for the comments.  The first problem I had was that I was not shooting in RAW.  Mainly because the software required 1024x768 resolution or higher to work.  Apparently 1280x720 isn't higher. lol.

Please take this constructively. The first problem wasn't in not shooting RAW. The first problem was not getting the exposure right to begin with. I'd encourage you to work towards nailing the exposure in the camera rather than relying on RAW as a crutch. If you get it right up front you can spend less time making adjustments during post and more time taking pictures.

#1
You've lost a lot of shadow details in this shot but for a snapshot I wouldn't sweat it much. You'll notice that his truck is blurred. You shot this at 1/30" and 34mm focal length. The rule of thumb for handholding w/o flash is to shoot 1/focal length. However, you can see that 1/30 wasn't enough to freeze the truck's movement. Increasing your ISO from 400 or opening your aperture should've made it possible to shoot at 1/60 which should've worked well.

Snow
I really like this shot.

Flag
Very evenly exposed. Nice job.

Keep shooting and keep posting.

Thanks Jax.

Can you(or anyone) please comment on the following.

When I shot these 2 below, the camera's exposure meter showed that it should have been exposed properly, but I'm not quite sure.  If not, should I not rely on my cameras exposure meter?


Thanks again in advance.

These are better. You can trust your camera's meter but don't be afraid to compensate +-EV. Are you watching the histogram? You're still losing shadows and highlights but getting better. You should be able to see the "blinkies" on the histogram that tell you where you're blowing out the highlights. I don't care if I have a few as long as they're not in the main subject (like a forehead or something).

How are you metering? Experiment with the various metering options. I seldom use matrix metering but that's because I only care about the immediate subject. I rarely care about the rest of the scene. I find I tend to use center-weighted metering primarily. However, I shoot a lot of youth sports and the kid is all I care about. If the rest of the scene is blown out I don't care. If the sun is really making me work than I might use spot. Of course, having said that, I'm almost always in manual so the metering doesn't come into play. I will, however, usually let the camera suggest something by metering the scene and then I'll adjust it as I see fit.

I'd suggest putting the camera on a tripod and shooting the same thing over and over adjusting the shutter speed first and then the aperture. Watch how they interact with each other. Of course keep in mind that as you adjust the aperture your depth of field decreases.

Hope that helps and makes sense.

Yes I noticed that the left side was missing and was having spikes at the right side.

I've been using the "Evaluative Metering" mode.  I have a "Partial Weighted" and "Center-weighted Average" Metering options.  I have not used any of those to date on any pictures.  I'll experiment with them to see what happens.

I don't have a tripod yet, but it is my next purchase.  Any suggestions?

Quoted: Yes I noticed that the left side was missing and was having spikes at the right side.

You want an even distribution across the histogram w/o either side going a) spiked to the hilt or b) off the chart. B is the worst. If it's not on the histogram it's gone. You can't bring back the highlights if they were never there. Same with the shadow detail.

I've been using the "Evaluative Metering" mode.  I have a "Partial Weighted" and "Center-weighted Average" Metering options.  I have not used any of those to date on any pictures.  I'll experiment with them to see what happens.

Ok, evaluative and matrix are the same animal. In this mode the camera is metering the entire area and trying to make the complete scene 18% grey. Grass is already pretty close to 18% grey so the camera may have been thrown off a little in the dog pic. Switching to another mode may have made it easier to only meter the dog while ignoring the background in relation to exposure.

Center-weighted will meter just the center portion of the scene (generally you can adjust the size of the area it looks at). This is good for narrowing down the meter's "focus" so only the subject is metered.

Partial must be Canon's version of spot metering but a Canonite will need to answer that. Spot metering is very useful when, say, you only want to meter a subject's face. You don't want the rest of the body playing a role in the exposure, you just care how the face is exposed.

I don't have a tripod yet, but it is my next purchase.  Any suggestions?

I have Giottos 9160 legs. You don't hear much about this brand but I'm very satisfied and think they make great stuff. They're very sturdy, not that expensive, and support 22 lbs. I never worry about my camera coming down.

Technically you could use these legs and just screw the body to it but you'd really like a head to pan/tilt. I really like the idea of buying the legs and head as separate pieces since you can swap either out if they're not working for you. While you don't have to go as fancy as I have, I use a Kirk BH-3 ballhead for complete freedom of movement. Since I also change out bodies and lenses, both of my bodies have Arca-Swiss L-brackets and I also have a quick release lens plate for the 70-200. Bogen makes their own quick release plates and heads but I prefer the Arca-Swiss style.

Canonite checking in:

partial metering only meters in the center circle of the viewfinder screen. It looks like an () on the LCD. (I use this most frequently)

evaluative meters the entire viewfinder (looks like (O) on the LCD)

center weighted, as the name implies, is weighted at the center, and averaged for the entire scene. (Looks like [  ] on the LCD)

Have you considered using a grey card?

As to the grey card, I haven't considered it and am not sure what to do with it.

I've been watching the histograms of my pictures on the LCD after each shot, and it seems to be really hard to get a nice pattern from dark to light.  Sometimes I can get a nice pattern.

I can test a single picture, look at the histograph and try to lighten or dark depending on what the original looked like.  Even by trying to compensate, it still is pretty difficult to make the graph appear even.

#1 appears to have a decent spread across the middle part of the histogram but nothing to the real dark or real light areas.  The first one I took looked way too dark, so I had to compensate to get it to at least look like this.


#2 again, first started out way to blow out white which probably was caused by the white siding.  so I compensated by having less siding in the picture.  It appears to be somewhat even across the histogram in the middle, but again not too much at the dark end, but some at the light end.


#3, despite everything I tried, I was unable to get an even spread.  I continued to have a spike in the middle grey area and a spike at the white end.  Now Is this classified as over exposed? I took 3 pictures at the same focal length, but at different shutter speeds and apetures, and this was the best of the 3.



Again, all comments are appreciated as I'm still quite new and really eager to learn this.  All 3 shots above were taken with the kit lense 18-55

Your histogram won't always be a nice even bell curve. It shows luminosity values for the whole picture, and since all scenes contain different values, you will have lots of spikes everywhere. I general, you shouldn't have major groups at either end of the graph, but depending on the scene, there could be.

Example: You take a picture of a rainforest that is mostly green. Your green histogram will have a bunch of data while your red and blue graphs will show very low values across the board.

Example 2: You take a picture of a white piece of paper against black asphalt. You will likely end up with one spike at the highlight end and one spike at the shadow end. There is no color data in between, therefore there will be no values recorded on your histogram.

An even spread is not going to happen unless the photo has everything in mostly equal proportions from total darkness to searing brightness.   There are some scenes that will just never make a dynamic photo.   More than an 'even' histogram what you want is a shot where you don't have all the data on the graph crowded into one end.  

It's hard to explain but if you look at the histogram you will see it divided into 5 sections.  This is approximate 5 stops of dynamic range the camera has available to it.  If you have a shot where most of the data is jammed into the first three stops and very little in the last two (left to right) you probably have a picture that looks dark, grayish, and unattractive where things that should be bright white are a shade of light gray.  Or you have a mostly dark scene with only a few bright points in it.  One is ugly, the other may well be exactly what you would expect and fine.   You have to use your judgment.

The other situation is that there is little to nothing in the first two stops and all the rest is crowded into the last three with what looks like a mound cut in half on the right end of the graph.  This is almost always bad.  It means that much of your shot is blown out and lost.  The shot will looked washed out and colors will be hazy without any richness to them.   This means that almost anything that would be a bright highlight is nothing more than a detail free blob of color/white in your photo.

A spike on the right is not always a bad sign but if it's right against the right end of the graph then it could mean you have blown out some detail.  If you have a spike on the right end but then a big area of little or no data past that till the right edge of the graph that means you could use a little more exposure to make the highlights bright instead of gray.  It's the art of getting right up to the line that takes practice and time.

Now...... all that is just to say this:  If your snow/siding/paper looks gray and the histogram is all scrunched in the middle it means you need to expose longer.  If your snow is bright white and the rest of the histogram is all scrunched in the middle then you are fine.  The scene just doesn't have much other bright detail and not much dark detail either.

For instance.  Take a picture of a bright white wall in the sun with some dark features in the shot.  In this case almost all the histogram will be stuck over to the right after you force the meter to expose longer than it would want to on it's own.  There would be a few small spikes along the rest of the graph and next to nothing in the left end of the graph.  This is a perfectly fine histogram for a bright white sunlit wall.

Like the others have said, you'll seldom get a perfect tonal distribution. What you want to avoid is what I've highlighted in your last histogram. Any time the histogram goes off either side you've completely lost the detail. Green is good, red is bad.



It's not a concern if you have spikes all the way to the top anywhere along the histogram...except the sides. Spikes on either end lead to lost details.

So would you say #1 is pretty decent and #2 is ok histogram wise?

I do see what you mean about #3.  So that is indicating blown out highlights?

Quoted: So would you say #1 is pretty decent and #2 is ok histogram wise? I do see what you mean about #3.  So that is indicating blown out highlights?

Yes you have blown highlights in #3. They would be in the snow patch on the left side, so it probably doesn't matter (there probably isn't much detail in the snow anyway).

Quoted: Quoted: So would you say #1 is pretty decent and #2 is ok histogram wise? I do see what you mean about #3.  So that is indicating blown out highlights? Yes you have blown highlights in #3. They would be in the snow patch on the left side, so it probably doesn't matter (there probably isn't much detail in the snow anyway).

#1 is fine.  It could use some contrast and increase in the blacks with software but the scene is a pretty flat one.

#2 is fine exposure wise.

#3 has blown highlights like the above poster said.  They are in the snow patch and unless you intended to show the grain of the snow then I'd say the rest is fine.  There will be times when you have to choose.  You will clip highlights or lose shadow detail in order to get the subject to look good.

Not much else to add to the last two posts. Keep in mind that you are the determining factor as to what "properly" exposed means. I could show you award-winning images that have very little highlight detail. However, for the photographer, they're perfect. Only you can determine what's important in the scene. If, as the others have said, the detail in the snow in #3 is immaterial it probably doesn't matter that it's blown out.

Now if I were printing this, I'd still adjust the blown out area so it's not pure white. If it registers 255 then no ink will be printed and personally that's not desirable. I'd adjust it to 240-245 so at least something is printed as opposed to just having the blank paper come through.

ETA: This will probably be my last post on this for a bit. I've got surgery in the morning so I'm not sure when I'll be back online. Hopefully someone else can explain if you need more info or it can wait till I'm back. Good luck and happy shooting.

Quoted: Now if I were printing this, I'd still adjust the blown out area so it's not pure white. If it registers 255 then no ink will be printed and personally that's not desirable. I'd adjust it to 240-245 so at least something is printed as opposed to just having the blank paper come through.

This is a good point and something to consider if you plan to make prints.

Thanks for all the comments.  I didn't know about the 255 and no whites being printed.  I'll keep that in mind for future use.

What Photo software are you guys using?  I'm just using the software that came with my Canon.  It seems rather limited and only for quick edits.  It's basically all or nothing.  If you want to sharpen, you sharpen the whole picture.  If you wan to increase saturation, you have to increase it on the whole photo.  It would be nice to increase or decrease such things on parts of the photo rather than the whole thing.

Are there you guys using software that gives you a little more control over your post processing?

I think most of us are using Photoshop.

Adobe Lightroom for basic processing

Adobe Photoshop CS2 for more detailed work or major edits.

I figured as much, but wanted to see for sure.

Quoted: Thanks Jax. Can you(or anyone) please comment on the following. When I shot these 2 below, the camera's exposure meter showed that it should have been exposed properly, but I'm not quite sure.  If not, should I not rely on my cameras exposure meter? Thanks again in advance. www.metalsaber.com/images/animals/pug8.jpg www.metalsaber.com/images/nature/nature15.jpg

When shooting with a lot of green like in that dog shot, I have had good success with metering on the green grass and exposing to -2/3.

That makes the image pop a little more, but your exposure is very good in my opinion.

A Circular polarizer would probably make that second shot better, unless you wanted the glare.  Circ pols, really cut down the glare, and bring the colors out much more.

A little bit of over exposure is OK sometimes.  It works fine on snow when you are not needing to capture details

Example:


This picture was taken in Matrix metering mode, and the D200 was smart enough to give me good exposure on the boy, and white snow.  This type of situation may require you to push the exposure up by 1-2 stops depending on how the camera tries to expose the scene.

Here's another scene that needs a little overexposure:



This pic was taken with Matrix metering as well, with a fill flash.  Outside the window, and hair highlights are blown, but don't ruin the scene because of the correct exposure on the woman and baby.

Few more I took today.

Bee looking for lunch.


These were taken at the 444 Day Memorial park in PA.

That last one is amazing.  The others are quite good too.