Beginner Photography - When boredom kicks in

[Supernorn]

Hey there

I'm from the UK - and unfortunately live in the middle of nowhere, in a little place called Coulsdon.

As you can imagine, this leads to extreme boredom - so I've decided to try my hand at photography. While wandering around Kent for a week, I purchased myself a Nikon D50 to keep me company. When it comes down to it, I really don't know what i'm doing, but I'd like to think I've got an eye for detail. These were taken in Kent and back home, so I'd like to share:

[Section_Ei8ht]

Very nice! Especially for someone who claims to not know what they're doing. Keet at it. You definitly have an eye for what makes a good photo.

[Sentura]

i must say, after reading what you wrote, and looking at the first harmonic pic, i got a bit startled when i saw the second one. nonetheless, beautiful work. can i ask where the second pic was taken / what it is/was?

[amckern]

oHHHHHH

Abandon Places! w00t

[FrieChamp]

wow awesome photos!

[Grin]

The second one with flames is nothing short of awesome. Also the rollercoaster and the last three are nice.

MORE.

[hessi]

and again i spotted some blur-filter-fake-DOF-photoshopped photo. with the focal length you used in this picture you cant achieve such a small range of sharpness. though you applied the filter in a vertical gradient way.

when using short focal lengths you get unlimited sharpness ranges. so any "DOF"-like effects will NEVER appear. to get those unsharpness you have to use long focal lengths. this will have 2 effects: 1. background gets blurred out (thats what you wanted) but the 2. effect is, that the background get a bigger "scaling".

as you can see in this picture the statues head stays pretty much the same size because i moved the camera forward and backward (300mm == biggest distance). because the background is getting a bigger scaling it gets more blurred out. the 55mm looks much more sharp than the 300mm one because you have still same amount of pixels but the window you see (or the angle of view) is smaller. i hope this makes things clearer and i dont have to see such horribly photoshopped images again

when will people learn that applying blur filters to their images does not make them look any better?

though some of your photos are nice. the one with the bird is heavily sharpened. people can see filter contours in the blue of the sky.

[Supernorn]

I can see what you're saying, but I haven't sharpened or blurred any of the photos.

Original: http://blackmage.org/supernorn/photos/p ... C_0431.jpg

Also the rollercoaster and the last three are nice. MORE.

The Rollercoaster is at Folkestone beach in Kent and is next to some kind of abandoned Arcade. The weather was wet and windy and pretty awful, and there were removal guys pulling the arcade apart when I got there, but I have more:

[hessi]

mh. strange camera. still looks unreal to me. then don't care for me

[Metal-la-la-la]

Really great pictures! The one with fire is really awesome

I'm thinking about buying a camera too...

[hessi]

i purchased a canon ixus 70 for my mum yesterday. seems to be a nice cheap camera, but i got to wait for the postman till i can give feedback. if you have money i would recommend a Canon EOS 350D or 400D. they have awesome quality and many add-on possibilities. i still have my EOS 300D which is kind of "old" by now but as long as it produces nice images, i wont buy a new one.

if buying a camera don't pay too much attention on resolution, because doubled resolution results in powered by 2 megapixels. so the difference between 6MP and 10MP is pretty much not noticeable. make sure you can try everything out. take a look at unphotoshopped images. take a look at RAW data. best thing i can recommend is to ask a friend to borrow his camera for a day or 2 and play with it. usually the people in stores don't know what they are talking of.

greetings.

[Spellbinder]

I think they are great aswell! The first one though is like you have nothing in it, it is just green (to me) maybe i just miss it. The rest though is great!

[e-freak]

love all of them - though the cornfield really looks a little unreal (allthoug - i am using a EOSD as well ^^)

[Psy]

Did you start that fire?

[Supernorn]

Fun with Lava Lamps: