Ravvin
07-07-2014, 11:07am
Hi all.
This is just meant to be a brief introduction of myself, but I tend to get sidetracked easily.
Years back, I was interested in photography and ended up with a Pentax P30 and a few lenses and filters. I really enjoyed it, but found it a very expensive hobby on a student’s income. Eventually I packed all my gear away and didn’t take a picture in close to 15 years.
About 9 years ago I moved from Queensland to Tasmania and got a job in the forest industry as a “Forest Technician”, (grunt work). Over the years I have worked my way up the ladder to GIS Manager/Forestry Surveyor/Contractor Supervisor and found I needed to take lots of photos of different things as part of the job. I mostly used a compact Powershot camera, for its small size and fairly rugged construction, but I was never satisfied with the resulting pictures. It’s pretty much fully automatic and the pictures always seemed flat, lacking depth. I recently got a promotion and pay raise, so decided to get back into photography.
After some research and comparison of different DSLR cameras, I decided I would try to get a Canon EOS camera, preferably 18 megapixel or better. Some of the deciding factors were that these cameras had a lot of compatible lenses, seem reasonably well made, had plenty of manual control options and were in a price range I could justify for an entry-level camera.
With this in mind, I started checking for-sale listings, eBay, Gumtree and online camera shops. After a few false starts with dodgy listings and sellers who never answered, I became the owner of a Canon EOS 650D with the EF-S 18-55 and 55-250 lenses.
I read the entire manual, most of which seems to be telling me to use the pre-set modes and spent the weekend playing around, trying different settings and seeing the effects. The difference between pics taken with this and the compact camera are amazing. As an example, I took a series of photos along a dirt track with a “grip”, or cross drain, dug diagonally across it. The pictures from the compact camera just showed a flat brown track. You couldn’t pick the grip out at all. The photos taken with the 650D made the grip stand out, almost like it was a 3D image. It’s hard to explain without seeing the pics, but it’s like comparing a square drawn on paper to a wireframe cube spinning in a drawing program.
I played around a bit, experimenting with depth-of-field effects, and feel I understand the basics of that, but going from the old film cameras, with the fixed ISO rating of the film currently loaded to the new digital camera with auto/manual selection is a bit of a brain strain. Back when I used my old Pentax film camera, I generally chose to work in Aperture Priority mode as I could watch the shutter speed the camera selected and close down the aperture to increase depth-of-field until the shutter speed got too low to be able to hold steady enough for a sharp image. Now, with the auto/manual selection of film ISO from 100 to 12800, I have to remember to specify an ISO as well, or it changes it based on some internal ruleset and throws off my expected results. It feels like I need a mental third hand to juggle all the settings. The best thing about these digital cameras is that I can instantly see the results and try again. Not like the old film cameras.
I spend much of my week and weekend in various parts of the Tasmanian bush, so much of my photography will be macro work, landscape and wildlife shots. I decided I needed more information and started looking for guides and tutorials on digital photography, as well as an active community where I could ask questions of people with far more experience than myself. After a brief look through this forum, I decided to join as it seems to fit the bill. I hope to be a contributing member and promise not to ask too many silly questions. But I probably will anyway. :D
This is just meant to be a brief introduction of myself, but I tend to get sidetracked easily.
Years back, I was interested in photography and ended up with a Pentax P30 and a few lenses and filters. I really enjoyed it, but found it a very expensive hobby on a student’s income. Eventually I packed all my gear away and didn’t take a picture in close to 15 years.
About 9 years ago I moved from Queensland to Tasmania and got a job in the forest industry as a “Forest Technician”, (grunt work). Over the years I have worked my way up the ladder to GIS Manager/Forestry Surveyor/Contractor Supervisor and found I needed to take lots of photos of different things as part of the job. I mostly used a compact Powershot camera, for its small size and fairly rugged construction, but I was never satisfied with the resulting pictures. It’s pretty much fully automatic and the pictures always seemed flat, lacking depth. I recently got a promotion and pay raise, so decided to get back into photography.
After some research and comparison of different DSLR cameras, I decided I would try to get a Canon EOS camera, preferably 18 megapixel or better. Some of the deciding factors were that these cameras had a lot of compatible lenses, seem reasonably well made, had plenty of manual control options and were in a price range I could justify for an entry-level camera.
With this in mind, I started checking for-sale listings, eBay, Gumtree and online camera shops. After a few false starts with dodgy listings and sellers who never answered, I became the owner of a Canon EOS 650D with the EF-S 18-55 and 55-250 lenses.
I read the entire manual, most of which seems to be telling me to use the pre-set modes and spent the weekend playing around, trying different settings and seeing the effects. The difference between pics taken with this and the compact camera are amazing. As an example, I took a series of photos along a dirt track with a “grip”, or cross drain, dug diagonally across it. The pictures from the compact camera just showed a flat brown track. You couldn’t pick the grip out at all. The photos taken with the 650D made the grip stand out, almost like it was a 3D image. It’s hard to explain without seeing the pics, but it’s like comparing a square drawn on paper to a wireframe cube spinning in a drawing program.
I played around a bit, experimenting with depth-of-field effects, and feel I understand the basics of that, but going from the old film cameras, with the fixed ISO rating of the film currently loaded to the new digital camera with auto/manual selection is a bit of a brain strain. Back when I used my old Pentax film camera, I generally chose to work in Aperture Priority mode as I could watch the shutter speed the camera selected and close down the aperture to increase depth-of-field until the shutter speed got too low to be able to hold steady enough for a sharp image. Now, with the auto/manual selection of film ISO from 100 to 12800, I have to remember to specify an ISO as well, or it changes it based on some internal ruleset and throws off my expected results. It feels like I need a mental third hand to juggle all the settings. The best thing about these digital cameras is that I can instantly see the results and try again. Not like the old film cameras.
I spend much of my week and weekend in various parts of the Tasmanian bush, so much of my photography will be macro work, landscape and wildlife shots. I decided I needed more information and started looking for guides and tutorials on digital photography, as well as an active community where I could ask questions of people with far more experience than myself. After a brief look through this forum, I decided to join as it seems to fit the bill. I hope to be a contributing member and promise not to ask too many silly questions. But I probably will anyway. :D