Any photographers in the house?

Edwin wrote:

I got the 50mm f/1.8 today and just messed around with it. I'm finding my shots are coming out nicer in shutter priority mode than aperture priority mode.

You're going to want to use both, depending on what you want the picture to look like. I think of the aperture as my depth-of-field level ring. The shutter speed knob is my action freeze control.

I took some time to play with textures to see what kind of effects I could create:
IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2729/4283680284_e4afd13a75.jpg)
I was going for a washed out/ retro feel

Auto Focus V Manual Focus, what should I be using? My filmmaker friend said to get rid of auto focus and do it myself but a lot of my pictures are coming up blurry. Also, I have an 18 to 55 MM lens as well as a 55 to 200MM lens. When should those lenses be used? I signed up for my first meet up next weekend and I'm trying to learn the camera better. I have a Nikon D3000.

The times I've tried a DSLR, manual focus has been much more difficult than on a film SLR. The general lack of a focusing screen with proper split prisms as well as the fact that most crop sensor DSLRs have relatively small and dark viewfinders means there is a lot more guesswork to it... On your 55-200 lens I'd say stick with AF as the depth of field will get quite small on that. Remember, you're shooting stills not video like your friend, so while AF can mess up a shot for him, MF can mean a totally missed shot for you...

Play with the lenses to see the effect that different focal lengths have. Shorter focal lengths: more in focus/deeper depth of field, more background. Longer: less in focus/shallow depth of field, cuts out a lot of background, foreshortening.

There are lots of people who will tell you you 'should' do things a certain way - there isn't really a 'should', do what works for you and most importantly - have fun!

might want to try something like this if you want to go the manual focus route. DSLR's don't have the tools to MF by default. Also consider that to increase the speed of auto focus, DSLR lenses have a very small amount of play with which to work.

Also I would suggest looking at your shots before taking advise. Are your pictures soft while using AF? So many people out there like to tell you the old ways are better, without giving the new ways a proper chance. No reason to fix a problem you don't have...End results are paramount.

edit: I thought we were moving this to tech?

As pignoli said, use the autofocus unless it is causing you issues. You'll learn quickly when you need to use manual (usually weird positioning or movement). You might eventually want to use manual predominantly, but learn the rest of your camera first.

You should mainly use the 18-55. The 55-200 is for when you need reach but can't move your feet. For example, I pull my 70-300 out for my daughter's soccer games. I'd like some closer pictures, but obviously can't walk on the field.

Try to avoid over-zooming. Remember that the autofocus needs two "depths". What you want it to focus on and something else. If you zoom in too much on something, you lack the "other thing" the autofocus needs. That can be another reason to need manual focus.

It's a toy, play with it, and you'll get a "feel" eventually.

LilCodger wrote:

Try to avoid over-zooming. Remember that the autofocus needs two "depths". What you want it to focus on and something else. If you zoom in too much on something, you lack the "other thing" the autofocus needs. That can be another reason to need manual focus. :)

Pirate Bob's Auto-focus tips:

Autofocus sensors are contrast sensors. When LilCodger says two 'depths,' a high contrast target at the same depth will work just fine. However, the camera will focus on the closest thing it can resolve. On DSLR's, the center focus area has the highest sensor resolution and usually uses a hash pattern (XX) of contrast sensors. The edge focus areas typically don't, and are only one strip of contrast sensors. The size of the focus bracket in the viewfinder does not correlate to the actual size of the sensor strips; the strips are often smaller than the bracket. When focusing close on a very small thing, it may in fact be smaller than the sensors can resolve or between sensor strips and they'll focus on the background instead (think trying to focus on a twig). Adjusting the view very slightly so the twig hits a sensor strip will allow the autofocus to resolve it.

Most modern DLSR's have a mode that will auto-pick the focusing zone, my D90 call's it auto-zone, avoid this! Most of the preset modes will select this by default as well, so staying in manual, aperture, or shutter will allow you to always pick which focus point to use. Otherwise, the results get unreliable.

Continuous autofocus can also be fickle. When subjects are moving perpendicular to you, ie panning, it typically does a decent enough job. However, if the subject is moving towards you, then it has a much hard time tracking due to the order autofocus typically tracks. The more modern cameras offset this with more advanced "3d tracking", but I haven't really tried this enough to comment how well it actually works.

Manual Focus

A split screen is an absolute requirement. No contest. Trying to manual focus on a low end DSLR is next to impossible. The viewfinders are small, dark, and without a split screen, you need true eagle vision to be able to determine focus. My old D70 had a long, dark tunnel of a view finder and while the new D90's viewfinder is better, nothing compares to my film body - the Nikon FE. The FE's viewfinder, especially with the 1.8 50mm, or 2.8 28mm, is tremendously bright and huge (the horizontal is wider than my eye can see, have to move to view the whole frame). Combine that with a split screen and manual focus is easy. However, manual focus is hard in low light (at least for those of us with poor vision), and here the more modern autofocus sometimes works better.

pol wrote:

Also I would suggest looking at your shots before taking advise. Are your pictures soft while using AF? So many people out there like to tell you the old ways are better, without giving the new ways a proper chance.

This.

Also, I really want to try a lens baby.

I did a couple of practice photos with my Nikon D3000
IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2797/4330717893_32c2cb1bf1_o.jpg)
IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2781/4331452302_21b91e1062_o.jpg)

The second photo is shot with the aperture priority mode.

the second... what is it focusing on? shooting A priority shouldnt make it that blurry

Blotto The Clown wrote:

the second... what is it focusing on? shooting A priority shouldnt make it that blurry

Seems like the camera has selected the spikes on the armor nearest to the camera as the "primary" target in the photo.

i think it's the auto-zone problem that pirate bob has mentioned above - it's part of the reason i set my camera to use center-weighted/spot metering and not matrix metering mostly. i tend to use matrix metering only when i'm outdoors shooting landscapes and such.

PS: Can someone tell me how to switch off the auto italic/bold tagging when i use shift+i etc?

Agreed, the second looks like it caught a spike and the autofocus was off. I'd also consider re-centering. With the "rule of thirds" the shoulder orb draws my eye, when it would seem you're going for the face.

avggeek wrote:

PS: Can someone tell me how to switch off the auto italic/bold tagging when i use shift+i etc?

Tap your Ctrl keys a few times. Drupal bug.

I think the first photo is pretty good. It's better than any others I've ever taken with a point and shoot. I'm going to a bay area meet up for photographers on Saturday around Fisherman's Wharf. I'll post some of those shots and hopefully I can improve.

Ulairi wrote:

I think the first photo is pretty good.

That's what is most important. Yes, it's a good looking shot.

It's pretty challenging subject matter for an aperture-priority shot *if* you are aiming to have everything in focus.

The model is angled to the camera which means if you are shooting with the shutter wide open, depending on where you pick the focus - it's likely the shoulder armor on one or both sides will be rendered OoF. The only option would then be to go with something like f/8 aperture which would ensure everything stays in focus but at the cost of potentially having items in the background be rendered in focus as well - not so much of a problem here since the background is a blank wall, but still...

LilCodger - thanks for the tip on the drupal bug.

Since we're sharing and nitpicking ...

My favorite shots always seem to come from the local Butterfly House:

IMAGE(http://huckaby.us/Files/Butterflies1.jpg)

IMAGE(http://huckaby.us/Files/Butterflies2.jpg)

Those are good, but not close enough. There is too much blurry foreground and too much blurry background distracting you from the important part of the picture. Just IMHO.

When shooting macro, it is very important that you have a reliable manual focus mode. I find that traditional manual film cameras have a decided advantage to most modern DSLRs in that regard because they have superior viewfinders.

psu_13 wrote:

Those are good, but not close enough. There is too much blurry foreground and too much blurry background distracting you from the important part of the picture. Just IMHO.

Yeah, they're shot with a D50 (crappy little viewfinder) and a 50mm 1.4. That's about as close as I can get. Any closer and I can't focus plus the DoF gets even narrower. There's a reason my photography wish list is headed up by a 200mm Micro lens ...

Paleocon wrote:

When shooting macro, it is very important that you have a reliable manual focus mode. I find that traditional manual film cameras have a decided advantage to most modern DSLRs in that regard because they have superior viewfinders.

... and a D3. The viewfinders in the low end dSLR's are difficult. I just can't bring myself back to film though. To many never developed rolls.

LilCodger wrote:
psu_13 wrote:

Those are good, but not close enough. There is too much blurry foreground and too much blurry background distracting you from the important part of the picture. Just IMHO.

Yeah, they're shot with a D50 (crappy little viewfinder) and a 50mm 1.4. That's about as close as I can get. Any closer and I can't focus plus the DoF gets even narrower. There's a reason my photography wish list is headed up by a 200mm Micro lens ...

Paleocon wrote:

When shooting macro, it is very important that you have a reliable manual focus mode. I find that traditional manual film cameras have a decided advantage to most modern DSLRs in that regard because they have superior viewfinders.

... and a D3. The viewfinders in the low end dSLR's are difficult. I just can't bring myself back to film though. To many never developed rolls.

The more I read about digital, the more it is obvious to me that the manufacturers have attempted to bypass this very issue by introducing "guessing" software that does things like facial recognition in an attempt to compose the picture for the shooter. A shot like Robert Doisnoeau's Kiss would almost certainly have been massacred by that sort of thing.

In most cases, the software comes up with perfectly serviceable, if pedestrian, guesses, but macro makes things harder for the software to guess.

Controlling autofocus is a complicated thing. But, for macro the real issue is that the depth of field is so shallow that the system basically can't find any reasonable focus point so it tends to just thrash.

Low end dSLR's used up close and personal are the worst of both worlds. The autofocus has trouble finding anything to work with. Between the viewfinder and the small LCD, most of my attempts at manual focus end up deleted as blurry messes.

LilCodger wrote:

Low end dSLR's used up close and personal are the worst of both worlds. The autofocus has trouble finding anything to work with. Between the viewfinder and the small LCD, most of my attempts at manual focus end up deleted as blurry messes.

Here is your answer:

IMAGE(http://www.ne.jp/asahi/japan/manual-camera/f-1_01.jpg)

LilCodger wrote:

I just can't bring myself back to film though. To many never developed rolls.

I don't know why but I've never liked film. Digital was what finally interested me in photography. Probably just laziness on my part.

LilCodger wrote:

Low end dSLR's used up close and personal are the worst of both worlds. The autofocus has trouble finding anything to work with. Between the viewfinder and the small LCD, most of my attempts at manual focus end up deleted as blurry messes.

Maybe I just got lucky, but I'm quite partial to this shot of my boy taken on my Pentax K100D with autofocus and kit lens (18-55mm) at 55mm, Aperture Priority @ f/8 (1/90s) -

IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2530/4121418580_82c105eabb.jpg)
(Granted, f/8 is pretty much the 'whatever' aperture and the bokeh could've been better)

on Av vs Tv, the camera is always going to try to pick the highest shutter speed or smallest aperture respectively, because this gives you the sharpest images. The side effect of this is that you will have the camera giving you maximum DoF in Tv, which is why it can be more forgiving.

Case in point, the action figure above. It's quite possible that both images are shot at the same focal point, but the DoF in the first image is much larger than in the second. In the second, it seems to barely cover the tip of one spike.

Ulairi, what does the tags on flickr say the shutter speed/aperture/iso combo was for each picture?

Novocain wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Low end dSLR's used up close and personal are the worst of both worlds. The autofocus has trouble finding anything to work with. Between the viewfinder and the small LCD, most of my attempts at manual focus end up deleted as blurry messes.

Maybe I just got lucky, but I'm quite partial to this shot of my boy taken on my Pentax K100D with autofocus and kit lens (18-55mm) at 55mm, Aperture Priority @ f/8 (1/90s) -

IMAGE(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2530/4121418580_82c105eabb.jpg)
(Granted, f/8 is pretty much the 'whatever' aperture and the bokeh could've been better)

Wow. That looks like my nephew.

Paleocon wrote:

Wow. That looks like my nephew.

All half-Asians look the same

Novocain wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Wow. That looks like my nephew.

All half-Asians look the same :)

Heh. Next time, you might want to open the aperture a bit more to make the other kid in the background disappear. As it is, it looks a little like he's grabbing your kid's booger.

Anyone here have any experience purchasing from either Beach Camera or Tri State?