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Photography

  • Thread starter Lauderdale
  • Start date
I bought a very good digital camera primarily for its’ superb macro capabilities which I used to photograph my CP’s...see my CP photo album below.

The camera has a 10x digital zoom and can be used in full “manual” mode.  I would like to expand my horizons and do some nature photography.  Do any of you know of a website or book that will explain the use of F stops, aperture settings and other advanced techniques?
 
Hi Jan, congrat on your new digi camera.It is an addiction too !
Nikon and canon has their web site that will explain your needs in photography. You bought a compact type,right? with an F stop of 8 it has problem getting all round sharpness of the focused object. Depending on the type of lenses of Digital SLR camera the lenses,the F value range from 2.8,3.5,4.5 to either 22 or 32.

Anyway to improve in photography need more photo taking and use own visual evaluation of the printed photos..Robert
 
When I purchased my camera, all I look at is the optical zoom.
I would not recommend using the digital zoom as image quality suffers when using it. Unfortuantly many camera manufactures try to "sell" the zoom of the camera with the digital zoom, which to me is useless.
What digital zoom does is enlarge a portion of the image, thus 'simulating' optical zoom. In other words, the camera crops a portion of the image and then enlarges it back to size. In so doing, you lose image quality.
 
This is a website I happened upon while browsing:

Ken Rockwell's site.

I find a lot of the information there useful. He makes a lot of good points.

As far as digital zoom goes you can get the same effect by cropping and resizing your photo. I never use it.
 
Is your camera an SLR? Can you change out lenses?

Many people misuse the term "macro". Macro photography simply means the image on the film (or sensor) is the same size (1:1) or bigger than the original object.

Thus, a 5 mm feature would occupy 5 mm of space on the sensor. That means it will be HUGE when blown up to size.

I just bought a Canon EOS 20d SLR with the EF-S 17-85mm IS USM zoom lens.

The next lens I'd like to get is the 100mm macro lens.
 
Oh, and don't forget...

You camera is DIGITAL, which means you can learn an awful lot about it by playing with the settings and seeing what happens... it's not like you're wasting film.
 
Those are nice.  To add to what Scott said about macro, it originally meant the size of the recorded image is at least as large as the actual object.  But the term has been misused for years to refer to any close-up photography, even when the image is smaller than the object.  Very little of what's called macro is actually macro.

The only reason I mention this bit of trivia is that a real macro lens is an expensive piece of glass, but can give astounding results.  Getting those results needs special lighting, at least a ring flash, and a rock solid tripod.  I used to have a bellows for my Pentax screw mount lenses and it allowed me to go way beyond 1:1.  But I never spent what was necessary to use it well.

As for learning photography, maybe your city has a continuing education/adult ed program that offers a digital photography class.
 
Ooops!  My camera has a 10x optical zoom...not digital as I typed.  Digital zoom is worthless.

Thanks for the Rockwell site Dyflam.  It has a lot of great information.
Great site Gecko.  Fantastic photos.  I bookmarked it also.

This is an example of the kind of pics I get with the 10x zoom.
It was taken at our annual airshow this year.  Not bad for a hand held shot and the C-130 was at 5000'. I have no idea why the cargo door was open.
c_130.jpg
 
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