Weekend in town...

[Natsia]

I've only ever posted in one thread in here before...
My sister and I took my nephew to the gardens this weekend to feed the squirrels so I took my little cybershot along.
Some of the pics are really grainy, I dont quite know how to smothe it out, anyone know? The instruction book is useless.
OK Piccies:
An old building:

Typical Capetonian in his chorrietjie (english : beat up old car)

Table mountain:

One of the Koi ponds with roman(? Kinda contradictory yes/no?) type feature:


Crits are very welcome. Tell me what you hate so I can work on it!

[frex]

1. Where is the building standing on....I mean, show us some ground...
2. too much light here
3. bit pale and it needs contrast
4. where is the statues head?...and it needs some space on the left

If your pics turn out to be grainy check your ISO settings...the lower the better.
Nice area you live in and you should be able to present some great shots soon

[Natsia]

Yeah, Statue lost the top of her head... I was shuffling round to try and get all the people out of the pic :P
more ground, lower ISO!
Thank you frex!

[el-Ignoramus]

Great pix Nats

I usually work with ISO 50 on my G5, I go higher only if it's too dark and the camera can't see enough light and I don't have a tripod

I loved first three pics, and fourth one is great as well, but needs different alignement, rule of two thirds, i.e. the fountain needed to be a bit to the left to get more attention, also I think a landscape would have been better in this case, more space and more background

does your camera support Aperture priority??

if so, get a big Aperture, it helps a lot in this type of pictures

ohh and the merceded pic, me think due to large ISO is came too bright, a smaller aperture will also help with it

great shots all in all, hope you all enjoyed it

[Natsia]

Thanks El. I'll have a look at the aperture settings. I played with the ISO last night when frex mentioned it, they are a lot smother now.
Thanks for crits!

[el-Ignoramus]

here's another thing you can do that will dramatically enhance the colors in your pics, get a polarization filter, it basically removes most of the reflections from your picture, i.e. reflection from a glass surface, from water, from a glossy surface..etc, also it'll reduce reflection caused by dust particles in the air, we might not see it, but it's there, this enhances the colors deeply, specially those of a sky, Now I checked and I think your camera can't have filters on it, Buy a cokin filter, they are dirt cheap, and either hold it in your hand while taking the pic, or rig some Velcro tape to hold it in place

Hope that helped

[frex]

In regard of using a pol-filtre I want to mention that one has to rotate it till it shows the best result...if the camara has no thread, the velcrotape might be be better than a masking tape as it still allows rotating the filtre :-)
Natsia, you can still do a lot of improvement in Photoshop

[Natsia]

lol. *mental picture of a taped wrapped monster*
Thanks guys.

[el-Ignoramus]

hey here's an idea, buy the filter holder from cokin, and attach it to your camera, it allows rotation of some of the filters, and this way you can add as much filters as needed

go get'em tigeress

[Natsia]

Hardly a tigress... More like wounded buffalow.

[frex]

Hardly a tigress... More like wounded buffalow.

I'd rather meet the tigress...less dangerous! LOL!!!

[EVPohovich]

An old building:


Maybe zoom out some to show more of the building and possibly the street.

Typical Capetonian in his chorrietjie (english : beat up old car)


This one looks a tad blown out (too white) for my taste. Also, there is no real focus to this photograph. I know that you want us to focus on the car, but only because you told us to. The image should speak that.

Table mountain:


Not really sure about this one either. Maybe a different angle or a cloudy day would have made the mountain stand out better. I just keep looking at the edge of the photo.....at the foliage.

One of the Koi ponds with roman(? Kinda contradictory yes/no?) type feature:


What pond? I also think you missed the head of the statue.


Just remember this is new for you, DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED you just need to practice a little more. There are only a few select individuals that have a "natural eye" the rest of us need to work at it. Take a serious look a the resources section in this forum, located here. Especially take a good look at the Morgue File tutorial, I think it will help you tremendously.

I would also suggest that you really learn how your camera works. If you can't figure it out from the manual there are tons of forums on the Internet that can help you with "How My Camera Works".

Good Luck. Post more.

[Natsia]

Thank you for being honest E.

[robbmcaulay]

Do I smell digital zoom on the third one? Best to stay away from using dzoom in-camera, it simply crops it (nothing you can't do in Photoshop). If it is digital zoom, you should be able to disable it in your camera's menu.

I like the car composition

[Natsia]

Aww, thank you rob.