lecchilo said:
I'm very jealous of your photos, especially now knowing you have the same camera! What lens do you use?
Hey Ivan, how have you been buddy?
I use a
Tokina f/2.8 16-50 AT-X PRO mainly, and sometimes a
Canon ef35mm f/2
Even with a kit lens though, you can take some really good shots if you have the right composition and exposure. Your photos need to tell a story, and that story comes from your eyes, not the camera. Once you figure out how to work the controls of the camera so that it projects the story you wish to tell, then your photo quality will go up considerably.
I am not a professional photographer by any means. I've not had any training on photography...just picked up a few books, and snapped a whole lot of photos to learn how the different settings effect the final look. If there are any pro photogs out there looking at these, I'm sure they could criticize them and tell me what I could (should) have done better.
I also don't do any post-processing with my photos other than to re-size them, and add a border. I use a simple (free) program called Photoscape. Other than that, they always come straight from my camera to your screen.
Here are a few examples:
For this shot of my new kitten (Charlie), I wanted to capture the look of curiosity on his face because kittens are always looking to get into something. The important thing here was to get down to his level (most people make the mistake of taking photos of pets and kids from above...you need to get down to their level). I used my ef 35mm lens because it has great bokeh (blur of background) so that I could focus just on his face. I also utilized the edge of the basket he was standing next to to give me a vertical "anchor" of sorts in the left 1/3 of the photo. I still could have done a little better job of the composition, but kittens move quickly and I needed to snap the shutter before he was off getting into something else. I put the camera in AV, and set it to f/2.2 so that it would work well in low lighting, and to give plenty of background blur. I knew how I wanted it to look with the aperature that I chose, and simply put it in AV mode to let the camera do the rest of the exposure calculations since I had a subject that was less than still. In the end though, I was real happy with the way it turned out. By the way, his eyes were focused on my Boston Terrier (Spike) that was in the other room.
And now for some simple eye candy. Most of these shots are just from obscure angles and parts of the car, but the composition is what makes them stand out. Pretty much all of them were taken with a tripod with small aperature (high f number) to get as much of the photo in focus as possible. When doing this though, your focal point is critical. These shots also utilize a custom white balance based on the lighting in the shop.
I liked this one because everything in the interior is pretty much in focus. The "California" logo is captured on the screen, and if you look closely, you'll see the yellow F430 that is in the passenger side mirror. This required a long exposure time, and could only have been done with a tripod.
I set this one up so that it went diagonally from corner to corner, and I used a large aperature (low f number) so that I could focus on the prancing horse, while leaving the foreground and background blury. This was hand-held.
On this 360 Spider, I grabbed a ladder to get a different perspective, and since I couldn't use a tripod, I set a higher aperature with a fast shutter speed to prevent blur caused by hand shake. Once again it's a diagonal presentation and gives a good feel for the lines of this beautiful car. The back of the vehicle is a little out of focus, but that's OK because I really wanted to focus on the interior and the area just behind it.
This is a great example of obscure shots of the car. It's just a tail light, but the composition and presentation is what makes this photo. When you look at this one in full resolution on a large screen, it looks tremendous. The light itself is composed in the top right third of the shot (rule of thirds), and the body seams run diagonally from corner to corner. I also used a small aperature in full manual mode to make sure that everything was in focus.
On these last couple of shots, I'll just let you look over them and think about the composition and the focus to see if you can figure out for yourself what I was trying to capture (based on what I've said in the above shots/info). There's no need to reply with your findings...just something to get you thinking a bit.
And Labster...I'm not trying to hijack your post here. I just wanted to share a little info and some examples about composition and exposure.
