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Camera Fans..


chettle

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Depends what you want to achieve mate? Landscapes, macro, stills, animals, sports.....list is endless. Get a good quality tripod, Manfrotto pro and a good mounting head, this will be one of the most important things you can buy. get a polarized filter and a lens clear filter.

Polarizing filter makes the sky very blue, but read up on how to use it.

 

Shoot with Av mode that way you control the apature, camera works out the rest for you. If you want to do macro, buy a macro lens for best results. You will take hundreds of shots and only have a few keepers. If doing insects, focus on the eyes, the rest will follow. You will be looking at an f stop around the 11 to 18 mark and an iso if 400. Shutter speeds depending on how dark you want you images, always shoot in RAW never JPEG. use photoshop, adobe lightroom and a great program called Topaz adjust, Topaz is a plug in for Photoshop.

Macro Butterfly

 

Butterfly2.jpg

 

A topaz adjusted photo.

 

BeaulieWoodenGate.jpg

 

Photo taken at 2200 last saturday.

 

IMG_6345.jpg

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I personally cant be bothered with photoshop and the likes and I use jpeg now RAW.

 

Youtube videos to get you going. I wont recommend one as there are millions and its just who you warm to :thumbs:

 

First thing to buy is a bag to put your nice camera in then get a nice strap. I have an optec pro. Its quite nice :thumbs:

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I managed to get a bag in the bundle luckily, along with a couple of 8gig memory cards! Got a tripod too! Just need to get some filters and i think ill be set?

 

Had a bit of a play, but it was only a quicky!

 

DSC_0026.jpg

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Shall definately be having a browse of that forum though! Cheers! :thumbs:

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Hi Man, Good purchase :) there is a user guide on these camera if you select that you can tell it (through select menus) what type of photo you are taking and what you want achieve it will then select everything for you but will tell you what's going on so you can learn from it.

The D3100 was made for people who have not had a DSLR before and have moved form bridge cameras so is very user friendly. Read the book and get playing with the settings it wont take you long.

 

Those photos are a good start. The first one with your Zed, you've blown the highlights in the sky, ND Grad filter can help with this, But you can simply change your setting i see you shoot with the ISO on 400 drop that down to 100. and increase your shutter speed from 1/30 upwards maybe 1/160/1/200 also you can change the metering point of the camera you had it pattern.

 

Sign up to www.talkphotography.co.uk its a very good community there and you will learn lots !there are lots of very in-depth tutorials and you can share your photos for critique which improves your work ten fold. but don't be put off by it lol some of the Togs on there are very blunt! lol and can be off putting but they trying to help in their own way lol

 

Just get practising dude! and most importantly have fun!

 

I have to shoot off to work now but feel free to pm if you have any questions etc.

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Go out and get snapping, dont get too bogged down worrying about filters/tripods/flashs at the start....

 

If you find yourself getting into this photography stuff theres more than enough ways for you to spend your money. Your soon find yourself wanting to get better gear and busy thinking of ways to covince your otherhalf spending £1K on a lens is good value for money :lol: (EG: A good lens never really drops much in value, so in a way is a good investment :teeth: )

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Anyways far too many shots of tiny things with macro lens in this post....go and get a wide angle lens and take pictures of things that look nice without having to use a microscope :lol:

 

img7919s.jpg

 

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olympicpara.jpg

 

Epic! :#1:

 

What lens are you using for those?

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The exif data on the olympics photo says it's a canon 10-24mm.

 

I wish it was a Canon lens, all done with a Tamron 10-24mm a few hundred cheaper than the Canon version :)

 

The last pic was put together from 3 shots so thats probably why the exif data is confused, personally i love the wide angle lens (no offense to those who love macro shots :p )

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For Nikon, I can recommend the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5... I used it a lot this time last year at Angkor..

 

It's probably what I'd recommend for a new photog. You can just use this, no need for lighting, tripods, and other stuff. Just get out there and look at things.

 

The other thing I'd recommend for any Nikon shooter, get the 50mm f/1.8 lens - it's nikons cheapest, but is a great lens - i think you can pick them up for about 150?

 

Here's some samples with the Sigma:

 

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Angkor by Joe Heath

 

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Shiva by Joe Heath

 

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Door by Joe Heath

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Regarding using the camera, my advice would be to drop auto mode, and learn how to use the P,A & S modes. You may have to google the basics, but they arent that hard. Pick one (A is a good one to start with) and experiment. Play around at home taking nonsense pictures just to get an idea of how the settings affect the picture.

 

Remember there are only 3 main settings - aperture, sensitivity (ISO), and shutter speed. Understanding these three and how they alter the picture is crucial. (a clue, in A mode you get to choose the aperture setting and the camera works out the other 2 for you).

 

Above all, use google, there is so much info and tutorials out there.

 

HTH..

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