Yet more first photos for you to C&C

theo cupier

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Having made a bit of a nuisance of myself in here over the past few weeks, I thought it only fair to let you see the fruits of my labour, now I'm in the DSLR club. :D

I have been the proud owner of a D80 for the grand total of 3 days now and today was the first not to be continually gray and raining. So, I got out with the camera for the first time and put in some practice. The following are what I think are the better results from a couple of hours with my sons at the park. No real expectations of the time, other than catching a few "moments" and trying to get the boys used to daddy with a camera stuck to his face so they don't constantly act up to it.

I have to say that I've been using the D80 as little more than a very good point & shoot camera mostly - either just putting it into "sports" or "portrait" mode and seeing what happened. Although mostly what happened was that as soon as I hit "portrait" mode, the boys started running around like loons and the moment I hit "sports" mode, they stood around looking contemplative. I did try a couple in Aperture auto mode (trying to force a shorter DOF), but can't recall if any of these feature in the below.

It's been ages since I last used my old film SLR and I've been point & shooting for the past few years. My head still feels like it's swimming with all the parameters to keep control of, so I look at these (and the ones I deleted) and think that I either got the composition OK-ish but something technically wrong, or vice versa. Nontheless, it was slightly gratifying to come away with a few more "keepers" from this session than I would have with the point-and-click. A long way to go in my learning curve, however, so C&C is most welcome to give me pointers on what I might need to concentrate on most.

Final request, can you let me know whether you think these are all over/under exposed, I've been trying to calibrate my monitor and getting some odd results, so it would help to know if you think the problem is more with this than my camera!

#1. Number 2 Son, in contemplative moment on toadstool.


#2. Number 1 Son - the youngest swinger in town (no, I have no idea why a 6 year old wears a shirt and tie to the park on a Saturday morning!)


#3. Number 2 Son, keeping tracks on his car


#4. Number 1 Son climbing

I did a crop of this one, losing the far left blue upright and ending at the yellow hoop just behind him, but it ended up looking too busy, so I stuck with this which is pretty much full frame.

#5. My first dabble at a bit of "real" PP


Clicking each takes you to the Flickr page.
 
Agreed - #5 is great. I like #3 too. Good pictures!
 
Thanks for the nice words. Very encouraging to a newbie!

Going back to one of my original questions, hows the general light levels looking on these shots for you? I'm a bit bothered about my monitor calibration - on my monitor Photoshop seems to keep trying to overexpose things when I let it do auto levels.

I resisted the temptation to go with the auto changes on these images and did it by eye, so should I ignore PS in future and stick with what my eyes are telling me, or is my monitor out?
 
#5 is brillaint.
Its not just the seletive colouring i like. Some good composition rules adhered to in a very good way. Its that the lad is jumping into the space of the photo which is very good.

PLUS, what a posh child to go and play in a shirt and tie :smashin:
 

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