My photography

[Pezzoni]

http://pezzoni.deviantart.com/gallery/

Wondering what people thought? All taken with a Cannon EOS 350D.

Thanks for any comments, wether positive or negative

[Tranan]

http://pezzoni.deviantart.com/gallery/

Wondering what people thought? All taken with a Cannon EOS 350D.

Thanks for any comments, wether positive or negative

genarly good picturs, you migt consider dvaning you macro photo, They need alot of work.

[Pezzoni]

you migt consider dvaning you macro photo,

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

Thanks again,

[Tranan]

you migt consider dvaning you macro photo,

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

Thanks again,

work on yor macro photo, it can bee beter than that.

[Pezzoni]

What would you suggest to improve it? Perspective? Angle?

Thansks,

[Tranan]

What would you suggest to improve it? Perspective? Angle?

Thansks,

Ligths and focus (not that focus but focus wath you want frome the pic).

tyr the 1,6 and 0,83 rules of layout.

[YT300000]

The puppy got an awww from me. The sand and water got a jaw drop from me.

Good work, though I'm not too keen on the ones with the unfocussed backgrounds.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

All pretty tightly cropped, perhaps a bit too tightly in some cases. Maybe try to loosen up a bit on the composition. Some nice ideas there, with a little work you could be pretty good. Some of the macro work is very nicely thought out and makes decent use of the depth of field, but you need to pick some real good subjects and composition for macro stuff to work well. I'm considering buying a 350D myself, but the rather nice Nikon is slightly cheaper.

By the way, it's the Forth Rail Bridge, it just crosses the Firth (estuary) of the river Forth. I live a few miles down the road from it.

[darthdavid]

I love Keep Out. While your OK at doing so, you could do a bit better at making sure your subjects aren't centered. It's more interesting for them to be off to one side.

[Pezzoni]

Thanks for the comments: Next time I have oppertunity, I'll have a go at some shots with a slightly less 'centered' look.
I'll also try some shots with a larger depth of field, as looking through the comments and my gallery, a lot of them are limited in that respect, where they don't necassarially need to be.

Thanks again

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Dont go eschewing using depth of field, it's a very handy thing and the fact that you even know how to use it throws you above the average right away. The most important thing you need to work on is the famous 'rule of thirds' since many of your images have very central focal points, where one slightly more offset would make a more interesting composition.

Use shallow depth of field where you need to, like isolating a portrait subject from their background or to highlight a particular feature like your handrail shot, but avoid it in landscapes and other wide settings. I also like the fact that you were willing to experiment with the more abstract image, like your long-exposure shot of the car lights. Constant shooting and experimentation can only be a good thing, your well on your way by the looks of it.

On a sidenote I'm going to buy a new Digital SLR in the next few days and am torn between the EOS 350D and the new Nikon D50. I keep hearing the Canon is rather small and lightweight, you got any things you particularly like or dislike about it that my wieght my decision onw way or the other?

[Pezzoni]

Dont go eschewing using depth of field, it's a very handy thing and the fact that you even know how to use it throws you above the average right away. The most important thing you need to work on is the famous 'rule of thirds' since many of your images have very central focal points, where one slightly more offset would make a more interesting composition.

Use shallow depth of field where you need to, like isolating a portrait subject from their background or to highlight a particular feature like your handrail shot, but avoid it in landscapes and other wide settings. I also like the fact that you were willing to experiment with the more abstract image, like your long-exposure shot of the car lights. Constant shooting and experimentation can only be a good thing, your well on your way by the looks of it.

Excellent advice, which I shall bear in mind - thankyou

On a sidenote I'm going to buy a new Digital SLR in the next few days and am torn between the EOS 350D and the new Nikon D50. I keep hearing the Canon is rather small and lightweight, you got any things you particularly like or dislike about it that my wieght my decision onw way or the other?

I've never tried or researched the Nikon camera, so I can't offer a comparision, but the 350D is fantastic. It has a great range of settings, functions and adjustments, looks and feels very solid, and seems to do everything quickly and responsively. I can't really pick any faults with the camera itself (not having ever tried anything better - I don't actually own a camera, I just borrow it from my Dad ), it's a fantastic piece of kit for definate.

[RogueIce]

The seal and puppy were cute.

I like the nature shots, especially that lakescape one. It's so very...peaceful.

The fire shot was also interesting, although more "fire" in it might've been handy (but then it's hard to make fire do exactly what you want it to, isn't it? ).

EDIT: I really love your puppy one, by the way. Too bad Alltell isn't on the supported carrier list for that DeviantMobile thing, otherwise I'd have your puppy on my phone right now.

[Namarie]

On a sidenote I'm going to buy a new Digital SLR in the next few days and am torn between the EOS 350D and the new Nikon D50. I keep hearing the Canon is rather small and lightweight, you got any things you particularly like or dislike about it that my wieght my decision onw way or the other?

I've never tried or researched the Nikon camera, so I can't offer a comparision, but the 350D is fantastic. It has a great range of settings, functions and adjustments, looks and feels very solid, and seems to do everything quickly and responsively. I can't really pick any faults with the camera itself (not having ever tried anything better - I don't actually own a camera, I just borrow it from my Dad ), it's a fantastic piece of kit for definate.

The 350D is brilliant. I work in PC world and its my favorite SLR ^_^ Actually, I think all the canons are my favorite... Only problem is they're pricy... though Im pretty sure with the 350D, Canon has some ongoing offer on a 512MB card upgrade if you register with their Image Gateway... which is like their version of photobucket. Its free though, so its not bad I guess.

Anyway, I work behind the counter a bit with the cameras, so if you had any specific questions about the 350D I might be able to answer them for you, the D50 Im not too familiar with because we dont carry them. So its really all kind of one sided, but eh, I'll offer what I can.

[Pezzoni]

The seal and puppy were cute.

I like the nature shots, especially that lakescape one. It's so very...peaceful.

EDIT: I really love your puppy one, by the way. Too bad Alltell isn't on the supported carrier list for that DeviantMobile thing, otherwise I'd have your puppy on my phone right now.

Thanks

The fire shot was also interesting, although more "fire" in it might've been handy (but then it's hard to make fire do exactly what you want it to, isn't it? ).

A few people from other locations also mentioned that they thought it could do with a tighter crop. When I uploaded that one, it wasn't really somthing I'd experimented with: I was just taking the picture as shot. More recently, I've been playing with taking parts of an image, and it can really help make somthing great from a relatively mediocre shot (the view of the sky through the leaves was one I cropped down)... It's the beauty of a camera with lots of megapixels I guess

Thanks again,

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Here's another tip then, when I worked for magazines it was always smart to leave a bit of room around the subject so that it could be cropped in a variety of ways by an editor, so that they could put writing around it or fit it in with something. It's a good idea for anyone because then when you get the image home you can play around with cropping to find the best image available from the shot. You can always crop a shot tighter, but you cant enlarge so best to be slightly open when shooting.

Namarie, I've always been a Canon fan and owned a number of EOS range cameras, never owned a Nikon in my life, but I'm hearing good things about the D50 and it's a clear £100 cheaper than the Canon so I could get another lens with it for the same money. The differences are small, mainly a couple of extra modes and the 6MP vs 8MP, but the image quality is supposed to be virtually as good as the Canon. I also keep hearing the Canon is quite small compared to normal SLRs and a bit fiddly to work with. I'm not small in any way so it might be a pain for me to operate.

I plan to go to the local mall and see if I cant lay hands on both of them so see how they look and feel, then I'll make my decision then. No sense just ordering the first one that comes to mind if I can get a grip of both.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Pezzoni, I thought a quick demonstration might help to show the rule of thirds and cropping a bit better. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say...


The pipe looks better suited to a tall format, moving with the pipe and removing all the dead area to the left and the distracting material to the right. The eye now moves from bottom left to top right with the pipe, and all the major detail lies on thirds rather than in the centre.


Cropped the landscape closer into one third sky/two thirds ground to lose the 50/50 cropping before. Went with more ground than sky since no real cloud detail of interest. Cropped tighter to remove large black area of no detail, leaving some to contrast the open sky and move the eye to the bottom right third as the eye scans the image. Made the sky more blue since I had it in photoshop anyway.


This was more fun. Cropped to a squarer format and laid the main focal point of the image on the intersection of two 'thirds' lines. Since the image was not very sharp I also played with it in photoshop. I made the flower more intense by making the background almost colourless and enhanced the blur look by deliberately blurring all but the flower and it's spines, throwing the sharp/blurred nature into contrast and making it look planned.


Easy one again, just cropped it so the seal is near a 'thirds' intersection and made sure the seal has space in the image to 'look in to', rather than cropping it with the seal in the bottom right third where it would have appeared to be looking out of the frame.

Let me know what you think, and if you think them an improvement. Only took 5 minutes to do all these, it's not a hard thing to do and there are many ways to crop each one, these are just random picks and the way I would do them here and now.

[Pezzoni]

Wow, thanks.
I see most of those as a big improvement (and the colour editing on the flower is awesome). The only one I'm not sure about is the landscape one: The cropped version seems to make it more easy to focus on the distracting elememnts a bit more; like the big tree sticking up on the left, although I think that is mainly to do with the size of the photo being reduced rather than anything else. If that tree wasn't in the shot, it would also be a big improvement, so that is probably more my photography skills than anything else!

I've unfortunately got an exam coming up on tuesday, so I can't go and take some shots now, but I do have a week off after that, so in between the drinking / other social amusement, I might grab the camera, and head off somwhere to take a few, bearing in mind all the advice in here

For the rule of thirds thing, does it mean somthing along the lines of the main focal point of the image being on one of the crossed sections of the below image?


Thanks

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

You got it exactly, if the main area of interest in the picture falls on the intersections of those lines, or follows one of those lines, then you stand a good chance of having an interesting composition. As with all art however it is only a guide, and doesn't mean you have to absolutely follow it in all cases. Portraits for example, particularly close-ups, dont really benefit from this rule, but the more you use it as a guide the better your compositions will be.

[Pezzoni]

Great, thanks for the clarification.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Well, I've had a quick play around with both the Canon EOS350D and the new Nikon D50 and I'm afraid that I'm going to go with the Nikon rather than the Canon.

As well as being a good £100 cheaper than the Canon it takes photos of exceptional clarity thanks to it's superior lens, and I have to say that the Canon feels tiny in my hands. The Nikon is great, just the right size and has all the controls you could ever reasonably want in an SLR. It's a bit of a revelation for me, I've always been a Canon man through and through, so this will be my first Nikon. I suppose I'll have to go out and get a few shots with it to show you all, just to prove I am buying the thing.

[Pezzoni]

My Dad got his 350D as body only, and then got a proper (rather than kit) lense to go with it?

Sounds like the Nikon is an awesome camera though (I doubt you could go wrong with either) and with similar features and better quality for the same price, doesn't look like you could go wrong, enjoy it. Looking forward to seeing some of your shots!

[Pezzoni]

Just got another couple taken:

[Fleet Admiral JD]

I love the candles. Excellent work. The off-centeredness worked for that one.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Well, got my new Nikon D50 the other day and the firs thing I did was take it to work and get a couple of snap shots of my friends at their snack-bar. I'll have to start getting out and snapping again, I'm way out of practice...