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Canon eos 450d

tko187

Member
Joined
18 Jun 2008
Messages
244
Hi guys i just bought the above camera, only took a few pics. If anyone has any experience with one of these cameras would love some guidance with all the functions. Its my first dslr camera and i dont really know much about them. Its another thing i need to learn about. London Dragon i seen your shots really nice, i know you sent me an earlier message regarding lenses and stuff but unfortunately i dont have this anymore, so if you could help would be good, regarding filters and using the manual focus. Thanks.
 
Hi LD i got the 18-55 with the camera, have been messing about with it but still lots to learn, do you know of any good forums?? Im still trying to work out what iso, aperture, and all that stuff is, pretty technical stuff, i guess it will take a while.
 
firstly use auto focus.next try to use the AV setting on the small wheel top left?...then use the top left wheel to select the f stop required eg.6.3 or 7.1 this is aperture priority.

its a common setting alot of photographers use.if your not used to the camera and its functions dont be using manual and shutter speed priority just yet. set the iso to about 500 say? should give you half decent shutter speeds, if not bring tour f stop down to its smallest number im guessing about f 4.5. if your still not getting good shutter speeds up the iso. remeber to meter for the plants!

dial the camera down a full stop too, to give you quicker shutter speeds (if you use raw software this aint a problem)

i get with iso 500 f4.5, a shutter speed of about 100 or 125th easy enough to freeze the fish. it all depends on what lighting you have though.

when it comes to photographing properly go with f11 or there abouts. get everything pin sharp in focus. oh and get the tripod out. ;)

hope this helps.

mark
 
owwww 450d....the newest canon out..sweet..just experiment and play with your camera ..learn by doing.. plus read the little Manuel booklet that came with it i actually found it useful on explaining what all the setting do....good luck
and my favourite setting is defo "av" and just select the exposure u want manually..
cheers.... passerby
 
passerby* said:
my favourite setting is defo "av" and just select the exposure u want manually..

AV all the way :D

passerby* said:
plus read the little Manuel booklet that came with it i actually found it useful on explaining what all the setting do....

it comes with all canon cameras and is brilliant little thing
 
I know , i know, im reading the instruction book, i just thought id ask around aswell while im at it. The More information the more better guys..Thanks.
 
LondonDragon said:
Start showing some photos, don't be shy ;)


I agree. You can only become a better photographer by taking pictures. It will be fairly obvious what you need to do to improve once we can take a look at the shots. You should also invest in some type of image software. This is where the finishing touches are made to the images and it is almost as important as the camera itself. Few people discuss this item but it's actually a very important element of digital photography. You ought to be able to find an old version of Adobe Photoshop for a low price for example.

Cheers,
 
I use Nikon Capture to edit my photos, small application and you can do a lot of manupulations with the photos there, all my photos posted in this forum have been edited and resized with Nikon Capture Editor.
 
I use Lightroom and CS3 for editing. 8)

Dave.
 
Ok i will post some pics......but be warned!! I am purely just clicking away just now messing with the setting trying to get to know my camera. Will definitely post some today. Thanks .
 
Dave Spencer said:
I use Lightroom and CS3 for editing. 8)
Dave.
Also have both of these software packages but they are more complex and all I need to do is resize the photo, apply some USM and increase or decrease contrast/Brightness, just find the Nikon Capture package the easiest package ever.
Most people will just think its only usefull for users with Nikon gear but has nothing to do with it, its just a photo editing software, it does have built software for Nikon cameras that can actually customize the curves in the camera, but thats not relevant to other non Nikon users.
 
Yep, this is true. Imaging software is like ice cream. Everyone has a favourite flavor. The important thing is to understand how to use the features to get the look you are after and to correct some of the weaknesses of the image. tko there should have been some software with your 450D. Have you loaded it?

Cheers,
 
Hey Clive, i havent loaded the software as of yet, i will do it today. First ill post some pics.....so you can all laugh at me :lol: :lol:
 
Ok guys here a few snaps, just for you...take it easy now.

Just one of the sky
sky.jpg


My otto on moss, out of focus!
ottoonmoss.jpg


rose.jpg


My son, i blurred the background.
omar.jpg


park2.jpg


billstree.jpg


park.jpg


1-1.jpg


Yup thats me TKO187

merc.jpg


Anyway thats me just having a go, no tripod and tinkering about with the settings.
 
Heres two i edited about with the disc i received with the camera. You can compare from last post. Thanks for looking.

park2-1.jpg


park-1.jpg
 
I really can't comment on the pictures other than saying they're better than most of mine but I did just want to say that your Oto isn't an Oto! It's a Chinese Sucking Loach or Gyrinocheilus aymonieri. They get much bigger than Otos and are no way near as good algae eaters IME.
 
hope you dont mind me asking, what kind of editing did you do? ive put both pics side by side inphotoshop and cant see a difference. just curious :D

at least your enthusiastic.

mark
 
Here's my take,

Photo 1 is OK but you should have either cropped away the branch on the lower left or included more of the tree for interest and variation. That's a compositional thing though. Technically it's fine.

Photo 2 you've already guessed it. That's a cardinal sin to have the main subject unfocused. There are a few possible reasons:

1.Were you using autofocus? With close up shots you need to take control of focus. The camera may not know what the subject is that close.

2. It could also be that you were too close for that particular lens to focus. Lenses have a minimum focus distance so backing off may have solved that.

3. Your shutter speed may have been too slow for hand holding the camera. You need to be mindful of that with low light scenes. What's weird is that it looks like you used a flash because the lower portion of the eye has a highlight. If you did use a flash then I would suspect reason number 2 because flashes are capable of freezing the subject and avoid blur. This is actually a very instructive shot because you need to think about what elements in this composition that ought to be in focus. Normally, I would want everything from the fishes dorsal fin forward to be in focus with the sharpest focus being the fishes eye. Unfocused foreground annoys me more than unfocused background so here is where I would try smaller apertures and use the depth of field preview to try to ensure foreground and fish eye focus.

Photo 3 again seems less than sharp. The water drop should sparkle and instead it seems vague. Again, you might have been too close. Another problem with this is that the main flower seems overexposed. This is an area where your imaging software can help pull back the brightness of the flower.

Photo 4 I like the composition of this shot and you were right to blur the background with a large aperture. As you can see though, the window is over exposed as a result and is more than a bit distracting. It might have been better to crop the window out. Your software can make the window less distracting by lowering the brightness. It also would have benn better to lose the Gameboy or whatever. The lesson here is that bright objects outside the main area draw the viewers eye away from the main subject and generally weakens the composition. Beginners looking through the viewfinder often get tunnel vision on the subject and fail to scan the rest of the scene.

Photo 5 is a tough shot from a lighting perspective, but again, one that can be fixed in two ways. The camera meters the scene for brightness and is overwhelmed by the brightness of the sky so it "stops down" or uses a fast shutter speed to stop too much light from entering. But the trees are not as bright as the sky so not enough of their reflected light can enter. So there is almost total loss of information in the trees as well as their shadows.

If you intend to shoot a lot of outdoor scenes like this it may be worth buying something called a graduated neutral density filter (Graduated ND). This glass filter has the top half dark and gradually fades to transparent. When mounted on the lens the dark portion blocks much of the light from the sky while the transparent area below allows all of the light transmission from the land. The cameras sensors then does not become overwhelmed by the sky's light.

Lacking this type of filter the only way to fix this is through your software, which can brighten dark pixels and darken bright pixels.

Photo 6 does a better job of even lighting but there is some distracting orange in the lower left corner. There is still something not sharp about this though. Again, manual focus and depth of field preview is called for here. Pay attention to what the camera says it is using for shutter speed and aperture in auto mode. Then, take the camera out of auto mode and into manual and play with the aperture settings and ISO to ensure at least 1/125th shutter speed and good sharpness.

Photo 7 suffers from similar compositional errors. The power lines above are completely unacceptable. You would have been better served getting on you tummy to lower the perspective to cut out the lines. I also find the people distracting so if they serve no purpose compositionally they should be eliminated.

Photo 8 is nice. It would have been nicer if you could have used a higher shutter speed to freeze the bubbles but you would have paid a high penalty and risk underexposure. Using a higher ISO would help. remember that doubling the ISO effectively gives you exactly one f-stop. Try taking this shot again multiple times, each time doubling the ISO and see what penalty you pay in terms of noise and grain.

Photo 8, well what can I say? The CLK of that vintage is one of the most beautiful cars Mercedes have ever made. I had the 320 hardtop once. This car also has the best and most effective headlamps ever invented (if it's the Xenon version.) I could always see where I was going at night down dark country lanes. In this shot though the headlamps as well as your white trainers are overexposed and so you've lost detail in these areas. We should be able to count your shoelaces. Software can fix this but fixing overexposure is more difficult than fixing underexposure.

Perhaps this is more criticism than you ever wanted to hear.. :wideyed: .

Cheers,
 
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