Help me out with my new EOS 350D

[davemackenzie]

Hey guys,

Bought my eos 350d last week and im very impressed, at the moment, im using the kit lens (18-55mm) is there any settings that i should use all the time?
it's going to take 14 days for my new lenses to arrive (nifty fifty, sigma 70-300mm) so for the moment i'd like to make use out of the kit lens as its quite a nice piece of mechanics for a intro lens. I'll load up a few indoor b&w's that i've taken, im just wondering if anyone has the eos and uses any settings to get a better picture ie for landscapes, close ups etc, and if anyones got on with the custom function's settings

[dazza74]

Worth a read, was posted a few weeks back. This will give you a good insight into how your D-SLR works :

http://www.berniecode.com/writing/ph...phy/beginners/

[davemackenzie]

Cheers Dazza

Heres some i've just taken this morning around my estate

[dfrear]

What ISO do you have the camera on? Those images are very grainy, the tractor being the worst. Some of them also look quite a bit out of focus.

Oh and why the B&W? The first one looks as though it would look great in colour, you can see that great stream of light coming through the trees but I feel its wasted in B&W.

Sorry if I've come across as being overly critical here, it wasn't intended

[stevegreen]

Originally Posted by davemackenzie

Hey guys,

Bought my eos 350d last week and im very impressed, at the moment, im using the kit lens (18-55mm) is there any settings that i should use all the time?
.......................... im just wondering if anyone has the eos and uses any settings to get a better picture ie for landscapes, close ups etc, and if anyones got on with the custom function's settings

There are no settings that should be used all of the time, thats the beauty of the DSLR, different settings and maximum flexibility

If you are looking at shooting a variety of subjects then I would recommend you invest in Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. It's a cracking book and will explain how everything impacts on exposure

[Curious Yellow]

The only setting I keep on all the time is to shoot with jpg+raw if that's what you mean? It saves you a lot of grief later!

[dfrear]

And after that I would suggest getting these:

The Digital Photography Book
The Digital Photography Book: Part 2

Both by Scott Kelby - if you ignore his feeble attempts at being funny there is an amazing amount of content in the two books covering everything you could imagine (apart from sports photography I think)

[davemackenzie]

Cheers for the response guys, i was shooting differently but usually on iso 100 as i wanted some deep blacks on the photo's, the tractor was a pain because it was terribly windy so i couldnt get a good enough shot, i just need those new lenses to arrive

[dfrear]

Lenses won't make any difference to wind Tripod will fix that though, a good one anyway. My advice would be not to fall into the trap of buying lots of lenses so soon after getting your camera. I think the two you've chosen are probably the best two budget lenses you could start off with though.

What mode are you currently shooting in? If your in auto, take it to Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority.

[davemackenzie]

I didnt want to use the auto setting as i found it a bit limited, i was using iso 100 as i wanted some deep blacks on the pics, plus some good shadows etc, shutterspeed was set to 160 (i've just been experimenting basically) i also changed the preferences to b/w colour with red filter effect to give a more deep contrast. Maybe i should just take the photo's using std settings and do all the conversion on the pc

[davemackenzie]

Also forgot to add, pics are taken in raw so i can load them straight over into lightroom etc, plus i was skeptical about any quality loss if taken in Jpeg L

[dfrear]

I shoot a lot of JPEG and my 400D retains nearly all the detail/quality with great compression rates compared to RAW. I only shoot RAW if im a) Shooting landscape or b) a little uncertain about my exposure/white balance. That is of course my own preference and I can't say which will be best for you.

[stevegreen]

Originally Posted by davemackenzie

I didnt want to use the auto setting as i found it a bit limited

Out of interest, what did you find limiting about Auto mode?

[senu]

You could do worse than spend some time on
HERE

and
THIS SITE TOO

[senu]

Originally Posted by davemackenzie

Also forgot to add, pics are taken in raw so i can load them straight over into lightroom etc, plus i was skeptical about any quality loss if taken in Jpeg L

With a large card you could do RAW+Jpeg.
Youll be surprised how well the In-camera Jpeg processing can be
But for B&W ect I would do the conversion in software .It means you have the original to tweak to your hearts content..

Oh.. do find time to have a look at the links in the post above.. I think youll find them very helpful especially as the first one is specific to your camera and the second one somewhat biased towards Canon although usable for any DSLR