[Dennis]

i think we need a thread where all of the camera and photography buffs can spread their knowledge and advice to the newbs like myself. so well here we go.

ill start

hey emay can we get the details on that niffty cheap white box thing you ahowed us in another thread. supplies needed and custom settings would be great thanks.

lets see other questions for the masses.

optimal settings for taking pictures of bright objects at night i.e. parade floats, the moon.

or hell just start posting random different pictures taken during different conditions and what settings you adjusted and what to to get them to turn out.

my thought behind this is i absolutley hate reading. i cant learn shit from reading. i learn by hands on. and sense i dont have time to go take hands on classes in photography i figure ill pic your brains on here

[Haseeb718]

Im the same way you are. I got the David Busch guide for the D60 and it just teaches you how to use the camera. I rather just do trial and error.

[06RedfireGT]

Exposure time: 1/800th
f stop: f/10
ISO: 400



Shutter Speed: 1/50th
f stop: f/5
ISO: 200



Shutter Speed: 30
f stop: f/8
ISO: 200

[PowerShiftz02GT]

nice pictures. what camera is that Redfire?

[06RedfireGT]

Canon Rebel XTi.

[Emay]

First of all, as bad as you hate reading, your going to have to knock that wall down, break down and do it. I can't stress enough about how much one can gain from the knowledge within some of the books available. The reason is, the books aid you in opening your mind to the creativity and you can't possibly learn enough hands on, to understand light. You can tweak all day on a camera and never get that eye grabbing shot because of poor understanding of the light in your situation.

Since you don't have time to take classes, I imagine your time behind the camera is also limited. Both are terrible handicaps to photography.

All that said, can you look at others photographs and get close or similar results? Sure, but you won't be spot on. You need to understand what to do to "make that shot".

Every situation is different. I've shot sunsets and every single shot required tweaks and adjustments because of my understanding of light and how it reacts in the sensor of my camera.

Example, Redfire likes his night shot over the highway enough to post it here, and it's a real nice shot. Based on his results, my version would have been moved to the following:

First I would put the camera on auto white balance take a test shot, and set a custom white balance to take away the yellow in the lights.

Set the camera to
iso 100
F/5
Shutter 20 seconds, may need tweaked to get results I want.

Here's my reasoning. I would shoot for the light blur that's the most important piece to me. I don't want the exposure to show the grass, I would want that darkened out. Iso adjustments gets me there. This will also get me a nice black sky which will pull a bit more drama to the picture. Lastly, I move the Fstop more wide open to take away the halo/star affect around all of the lighting in the pic. Keeping the focus on the streaks of light.

All of that right there, learned by getting close in understand lighting affects on crop sensors in a book. Every situation is going to be very different.

Red, sorry for using you as an example, that picture was a perfect example for my point so I took advantage of you there.

[06RedfireGT]

Go right ahead man. I am open for any suggestions.

I didn't really like that shot that much anyway. I just posed it to show an example of a long exposure shot.

[Emay]

on a side note, that jet shot is a money maker..

[Dennis]

thanks guys very good info i guess ill have to read no matter what

[Emay]

Do it in spare time, even if you can't sit down and soak it all in in a few short sittings, read what you can, and then each time using the camera apply what you learned. Even sectional application works well.

What camera are you shooting with Dennis?

[Dennis]

nikon D40

[Dennis]

and about that nifty white box? lol. im wanting to do one to take some nice pics of my new phone for another site

[Emay]

The white box is a DIY that you can do to any size you want, use your imagination.

Cut the sides and top out of it, lay white paper over those cut outs and line the back wall and bottom with additional white paper.

Use halogen home depot lights or similar and your done..