~New Camera~First Proper Shot at Photography

Well i got a proper camera today :) Nikon D60 with VR Lense 18-55mm. It also came with a large case and i bought a 4gig san disk ultra sd memory card :) Also bought a film for the lense

I have always loved using cameras and getting a great shot is satisfying so i saved up by working throughout the holidays and bought the D60.

I around the house and took afew photos. Testing out the settings and other things. I am sticking to Auto and pre-set modes on the camera for now as i need to learn more about apeture and shutter speed and how to utilise them for their best situations. If you have and advice on this, i would greatly appreciate it :)

Here are the shots i took. Please not they are resized down alot from their origional size.

My cat called "bandit"

My cat called "Trigger" (he's a poser :P)

#

There. Expect more to come :)

Thanks

EDIT:

New photos :P

(would have been good but didnt auto focus properly

(Character shots of bandit)

I like most of them :thumbup:. Weird perspective on the last one though. Most of them have a lot of blurry spots, I suggest taking the picture further away, It'll still be quite close but it'll remove some of the blur (In my experience which is nearly 0). Try taking the photos when it's darker as well and see how they turn out? :)

^Messy random post for the win I guess?

Second picture makes me want to catnap :(

^ Agreed with messy random post. :P

Some good shots, I really like #1 and 3 from the older ones and #1 from the new ones. I'd also suggest taking a few photos from further away, you could always crop the picture later.

But god job. :thumbup:

OMG. Just thought of a great idea for your "poser cat"

Actually have a poser shot. Have its arm up (as if it was taking a picture of itself) and have it pointing down. Too bad it wasn't a black cat, it would have just added to the effect <3.

Lel, great ideas just come to my head.

[/highness spree].

I like most of the pictures, its just the random blurry whiskers that irritate me. Some of them don't have the best lighting either, which makes some of them blurry. Of course a lot of the blurriness/outoffocusness will fix themselves once you get used to the camera.

I would say my favorite one would be the first character shot of bandit. It makes me chuckle, and is well taken (except for maybe the top part, if only that still had the sheets in it and didn't over-saturate it). Still is a pretty hawt photo.

[/cc of the photos].

And with the use of the manual settings on your camera: I usually use them when I can't get the effect of the photo that I want from the auto-modes (I usually use sport when I don't want flash, full auto when I do). This often happens for me with morning light (not evening, hmm). Even then I only mess with the shutter speed.

With the aperture: I'm still crappy at how and when to change that. I can't give advice on that :x.

the first picture of tiger is my favorite, but there is a wierd lens flare or something over the eye...

and the last one is also one of the better ones.

some of them arn't focused in the right spot, so keep working on that, and mebbe try manually focussing on things that close, especially with things such as fur, with alot of texture, as apposed to something like a leaf.

keep taking photos ;p

You're well on your way to becoming a great photographer. Just keep taking pictures. :D

The first few are absolutely great. :thumbup:

Grats on the new camera :thumbup:

As for the 'test shots':

They look ok, they are basically snapshots. Which isnt bad at all, you will move away from the 'snapshot' period when you have your camera under control and you know what you can do with it. Looking at other photos and experimenting+practice will help alot too.

When shooting cats (something I do.. too much), try to include their ears as much as possible. But it can turn out nice if you dont, like in the third photo.

My personal favorite is the first 'Character shot of Bandit', which doesnt look like a snapshot and seems kind of 'pro', even though that wasnt your intention. ;)

The colors also look best, try to do something with the lighting/contrast/saturation in your photos so they dont look bland. Maybe a tiny bit of sharpening could be added as the 'final touch', but it doesnt really need any.

As for the background, the green kind of distracts the viewer.

I played a little with it, this is what I did:

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1) I selected the green background with the Lasso tool, converted that part to black and white.

2) Re-framed it, so the interesting things stayed

3) +25 saturation, thanks to LP for that 'trick'

4) 5px border, since I always finish it with a border.

The one below is overexposed, maybe you could change the levels to make it a bit darker.

Thats it, if you need any advice ask me. Im glad to help, especially when it comes to photography. :)

I have been waiting for your reply for along time woopi :D

Thank you very much :)

I really only wanted to show the raw photos. I so plan to edit the good ones when i have time :)

Thank you for your advice, i will take heed of it. Thank you fro the touching up advice also