FEATURED The Big Photography Thread

Thanks, hokie, for pointing me here. I'm an amateur photographer and I try to get out frequently to take pictures for the sake of taking pictures. Most of these shots are pretty terrible, but I sometimes get some good ones -- or I at least think they are somewhat good.

At this point, I'm mainly working on composition. For hardware, I have a Nikon D5100. I have three lenses for it, the stock one (18-55mm 3.5G), a low light one without zoom or VR (35mm 1.8G), and a recently obtained telephoto lens (70-300mm 4.5-5.6G).



I'll start with an older photo. I stopped by my grandparent's house for a weekend quite a few months ago. They have an old barn out back and decided to break my new camera in. I walked around and took a bunch of photos around the farm, but I'm only posting this one. Most of them were not that good as I was still getting used to my camera.




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A few months later, we had a big storm roll through. I've seen pictures of lightning in the past and it has always fascinated me from the standpoint of the actual storm and capturing it in a picture. With nothing else to do, I went outside and attempted to get at least one shot, and ended up with a few. Overall, I took around 240 pictures to get these three.


An interesting shot with the ring of lightning on the left side. Background is darker than I wanted it to be, which I was still adjust at the time.


A good shot that is my favorite of the three. The background is still a bit darker than I'd like.


This one had better background lighting (longer exposure time), but the tripod moved on the deck, which caused everything but the lightning to be blurry.


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Shortly after the storm, the "SUPERMOON" was supposed to be out, and I figured that I might as well take a change to see what I can get. While waiting for the moon to rise, I took pictures of stuff around me as I was driving to get a good spot to take picture.


I saw a train. The color combined with the reflection of the sun gave an interesting effect.


The sun was still setting and I was looking for a spot. I drove by a tree that had interesting shadows surrounding it, and used the roof of my car to balance the camera to get this shot.


Then I installed Windows XP. Wait, no, it is just a farmer tending to his crops. Whatever he was spraying was not bug repellent as the bugs were out in full force. I'm not sure why I like this photograph, honestly. It feels simple and smooth.


THEN THE MOON ARRIVED. At first, I thought I wasn't going to get any good shots as it was very faint. Luckily, that was just a ruse and it got much brighter.


The light faded very quickly, so I could only get a few more shots left before it was the moon on a black background. With the light levels, I had to use a tripod to get this one. The clouds were covering up the moon, which gave it the red effect. Only thing I don't like is one of the rods (bottom right) got in the frame, which I could crop out.


While the sun was setting, I was able to get this shot of my car before leaving.


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This was a random spontaneous picture taken on a rainy Sunday before work. I had to use a high shutter speed (1/160) to show the water's form as it hit the ground. With as dark as it was out, I had to use a high ISO, which makes it grainy.

I'd say you have done very well for yourself so far Thiddy, much better than I have.

Were you using the 300mm lens for the moon shots?

hokiealumnus said:

I'd say you have done very well for yourself so far Thiddy, much better than I have.

Were you using the 300mm lens for the moon shots?

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Thank you for the feed back. You are certainly better at closeup shots than I am. I know how to do macro photography, but I just can't seem to get it like my old Powershot A620 could.

Those pictures were before I got my 70-300mm, but I borrowed a similar lens to get those shots.

Here are a couple shots I took at the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. They have a butterfly house. There are lots more butterfly pictures, but I like these two, one for the eating butterfly and the other for the insane looking plant. The rocket replica is outside the front door of the museum.







Apologies for the sizes, I used office to convert these and it's not as versatile as what I usually use.

Nice camera hokie and wow beautiful shots from the both of you. Love the weather shots. I am hoping to catch one but than again I have a tendency to run inside when there's lightning.

Got myself a black background and been playing around with the lightbox in the daylight. Finally using full manual mode and changing the shutter speed to get the light I want.

Very nice!

A couple more, then I'm probably done until the next time we go somewhere worth taking the camera.

This was at the Duke Homestead in Durham.



This is, obviously, a bumble bee. It's not a great photo, but this one is to give perspective to how small the flowers are in the next photo...



...which are on my mother-in-law's butterfly bush.



Lastly, we have my son playing his first ever chess game. Since then he has developed a liking for it.



Please forgive the watermark; since this thread is public, I just want the ability to know if someone uses them elsewhere.

Jack said I should hit this thread up, so very briefly i'm on it!

I have a Lumix GF2 with the stock 14-42mm lens, a 14mm pancake lens and the telezoom 45-150mm lens teamed with Lumix UV filters and a Neutral Density filter for when I need it., oh and a velbon DF-50 tripod or something like that.

As well as for general travel pics I use my kit for photographing antique gas engines and more recently some sexy pc pics. Well I try.

Here's my little guy with the enourmous telezoom lens hanging on, taken with an iPhone 4S ontop of a volcano!





This is what I was up there for! Pretty epic, manually stitched together, it took over 15 minutes to shoot all 11 pictures for the 360. Here it is a little bigger but not close to 100% - lanzawallpaper.jpg



Here are some of my favorite engine photographs, the first probably being my favorite shot to date.





And finally some recent rig pictures...





JR

Hey JR, thanks for joining the thread!

If you'd be so kind, please see the OP for photo inclusion requirements (the main one being that the photos need to be uploaded here). Hate to be a stickler, but as you may have seen in our water cooling picture thread, the photos are here and stay here without being removed accidentally (or intentionally to free up hosting space). We can be somewhat flexible on size, but not on where they load from.

That said, those seemingly tiny Lumix cameras really pack a punch. Between your and Jack's photos, that thing has really impressed me! They're almost comical with giant lenses like you've got on there (especially when combined with a lens hood), but the photos are anything but comical. You've got a good eye and control of it as well. The person behind the camera is of course just as important as the camera itself.

EDIT - WOW that was a fast response getting those uploaded, thanks JR!

Recent pic of mine...

Very nice pictures everyone! I would to share a few of mine along taken this year.
I often use prime 85mm and 35mm lens.
A trip to Napa County at the Calistoga Mineral Water Co.

DSC04459copy Rusted all iron water truck about 10 feet tall


DSC04470copy From the hill top over the vineyards


DSC06647copy Mickey on the birthday cake at the park


DSC07609copy Tiny little chicken about two week old actually fits in a palm of my hand.

Great shots Max!

Here's my homemade "Lightbox".

Don't laugh as it's my first attempt at it with the Fisheye to take everything in. lol

I'm looking to buy a camera of my own once I have to return the D90 I'm borrowing. Camera options are pretty confusing to me right now, I'd like something small and compact so was thinking mirrorless but they all seem targeted towards the point and shoot crowd, where I'm more interested in messing around with settings to create great photos on non moving objects. My other thought was the Canon SL1. Anyone have any advice?

Our point & shoot is near-SLR quality, but still extremely compact - Canon S95. The Canon S100 was released since we've had that one and is better and cheaper.

However, after using it for a while I'm now a huge fan of the T3 if you don't mind its shortcomings (slow'ish-to-focus live preview mode and 720p video without any manual adjustments; aside from that it's perfect IMHO). You can get a refurb T3 for only $340. Refurb T3i used to be $440, but it's out of stock (there's a body only refurb direct from canon for $320, but it's out of stock too).

Yeah I know about the s95 but I'm thinking more towards interchangeable lens mirrorless camera's like the sony NEX series, basically a DSLR but without optical viewfinder.

Camera's like this http://reviews.cnet.com/best-interchangeable-lens-cameras/ But I'd like to figure out which is best for someone who wants to tweak settings and expose photos manually.

What I'm looking to buy is the sony Nex-6 at them moment, still more research to do but it looks like what I want.

Interesting. I've never looked into that type, so I have no idea, sorry!

I don't know what your price range is or how much they are in the states but take a good look at the Lumix G6, over here there are some exceptional deals on the outgoing G5 as well. I was going to part with my GF2 but decided to spend the money on some case mods, another SSD and hopefully a new cpu/motherboard, can't have it all ways!

Also its called the G6 so unless we have been largely misinformed it should be pretty damn fly.

JR

SeeThruHead said:

Yeah I know about the s95 but I'm thinking more towards interchangeable lens mirrorless camera's like the sony NEX series, basically a DSLR but without optical viewfinder.

Camera's like this http://reviews.cnet.com/best-interchangeable-lens-cameras/ But I'd like to figure out which is best for someone who wants to tweak settings and expose photos manually.

What I'm looking to buy is the sony Nex-6 at them moment, still more research to do but it looks like what I want.

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Seems the compact in between point and shoot and big DSLR cameras are the Lumix as you can see a few samples in this thread and as well as the Sony NEX is in that caliber and a few others, can't remember off the top of my head.

Look on Ebay for NEX's or Lumix's for example. I lost one biding battle at the first attempt on the Lumix GF3 and won the second one which looked more pristine than the first one to begin with. I can say I am very lucky. Try it out and keep an eye out.

hokiealumnus said:

Our point & shoot is near-SLR quality, but still extremely compact - Canon S95. The Canon S100 was released since we've had that one and is better and cheaper.

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I can vouch for the S100. It takes fantastic pictures and has the versatility of an SLR in terms of manual ISO/shutter/f-stop adjustments/can shoot in RAW format. All in a pocket-sized point and shoot

The first 9 pictures below are taken with a Canon EOS 550d (T2i) while the last one is taken with the EOS 60D.

Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens testing. I highly recommended this lens if you've just bought an SLR and want something with a wide-aperture. It's affordable and takes great shots.






I didn't really have the right lens for this sunset. I just grabbed the camera and shot before the opportunity was lost (through a window no less )


This one was taken from a distance on a tripod with the 55-250mm kit lens.


More 50mm.


Ran into these guys on a nature trail. They walked right beside me about 20ft away and practically posed while I took pictures. 55-250mm kit lens again.


Same nature trail as the deer.


If you want to take good pictures of animals, you need to get down to their eye level! Crawled around on my stomach for 15 minutes to get these next two shots and it was completely worth it.


I think this is the best picture I've ever taken.


Playing around with the new 60D (well, old-new) that I bought from a friend.


Here's a few more examples of shots from the S100.