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2ATA
3 December 2013, 06:01
Good morning gentlemen. I took the plunge and am embracing my artsy side once again. Decided to start getting into photography. This past weekend I picked up a Nikon D3200 with 18-55 and 55-200 lenses. Do you gentlemen have any good general pointers to share? Looking at general photography people places, weapons.

I do have an art background mostly oils, pencil, charcoal, pastels. Its also been 20 years since I was really in any art programs.

[adore]

UWone77
3 December 2013, 14:25
As Stickman tells me all the time, lighting, lighting, lighting, but that's about the extent of my knowledge.

Checkout Youtube, some great, and not so great information on lighting and backgrounds there.

Calengor
3 December 2013, 14:50
Good morning gentlemen. I took the plunge and am embracing my artsy side once again. Decided to start getting into photography. This past weekend I picked up a Nikon D3200 with 18-55 and 55-200 lenses. Do you gentlemen have any good general pointers to share? Looking at general photography people places, weapons.

I do have an art background mostly oils, pencil, charcoal, pastels. Its also been 20 years since I was really in any art programs.

[adore]

Here's a link that really helped me when I got back into photography around 11 months ago:

http://www.alexandrebuisse.org/resources/photo-class

Like UWone77 said, light is the biggest thing. Without good light (natural or otherwise), you're kinda fucked. There is only so much you can do in post-processing if you didn't have good lighting to begin with.

Good lighting and get off the "Auto" or other picture settings on the camera. Go to "A," "S," or "M." A is aperture priority, S is speed priority, and M is fully manual.

Someone ask stickman on his Tumblr page about starting out in photography recently and here's what he said:


http://stickgunner.tumblr.com/post/68853913976/your-work-inspired-me-to-try-and-get-into-proper


Start shooting in Ap priority, or anything else other than the fully automatic modes. Once you escape that trap, start to work on other things. You will start to find that the largest priority is good light, and everything else is secondary

Also, Shoot in RAW if you can instead of JPG, but that depends on how much work you want to spend in post processing. I haven't really used Nikon's NX2 since I've gotten Lightroom, so I'm not completely up on the capabilities of NX2. Lightroom costs about $150, covers most of what I need, and at least starting out, they have a 30 day free trial you can use.

If you are thinking of shooting JPG and you have the space to save them (both on the memory cards and your computer) you can always shoot both RAW + JPEG fine (or whatever quality you want). When you first start working in RAW, you may think that the pictures don't look as good as when you looked at in the screen, or when you first saw the thumbnails, but that's because the camera is making a JPEG of the RAW file for those and it's deciding to interpret the RAW data as it sees best. It's up to you to get it back to that using post-processing or to make it look even better (generally the case).

TripleBravo
4 December 2013, 01:46
My biggest advice is just get out and start shooting photos. Experience is the best teacher. Stickman via UWone77 is exactly right…master the light.

RiverRat
4 December 2013, 10:36
I'll chime in a little here, having been in exactly your position a couple of years ago. I'm not a professional studio shooter, photography is primarily an outdoor hobby. It makes my take on lighting a little different than the mantra you've heard.

I believe that there less pure mastery of lighting technique in landscape/wildlife photography. My experience suggests it is more exploitation of what you're given through a combination of advance scouting, persistence, timing and a little blind luck. It makes the good photos even more precious, knowing that moment could only exist briefly. In the studio, it's completely different.

With that in mind, always having your camera with you is critical. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've hit my head against a wall because I didn't have a rig with me. The most recent was a group of bighorn sheep alongside the highway I was driving. Yup, headbutting as they crossed the road and foraged on the slope. I watched those critters for the better part of an hour, quietly cursing for much of it. At the very least, having the gear with you lets you experiment when you see that interesting light quality or subject matter. And while it can be tough to accept, you'll eventually have to get by that "first dent in the car moment" when your camera ceases to become that precious new toy and becomes a working tool.

Now, a couple of more concrete, technical suggestions.

Start shooting in aperture priority and spend an hour researching depth of field and the effect of focal length compression. Then spend a couple of hours shooting trivial subject matter of different types (people, pets, landscape) experimenting with what you're read on the same subject. You'll rapidly get a feel for preferred settings for different situations and you'll find yourself thinking about how you want to capture images. The more you take photos after that, the more you learn and the more it becomes second nature.

Consider setting your autofocus to single point mode and getting used to re-framing to your desired composition. Entry level DSLRs are notorious for having both slow and imprecise autofocus mechanisms. I fought against this with my Canon T2i until I killed the body during the recent Colorado floods. I expect you'll find similar shortcomings with your D3200.

Last, grab an inexpensive non-destructive post processing solution (and shoot RAW). That non-destructive part is pretty key in my mind, since you'll spend a lot of time re-tweaking edits you make as you learn what you like (and how your printer works). Lightroom is primarily intended to be a workflow tool, but it can be used for some post processing. I suggest Photoshop Elements as a more fully-featured option. It runs about $70, probably will do more than you need (including layer editing) and offers a free trial period if you download it from Adobe. Other option I briefly tried was GIMP, which is a free and open-source editing package. If you're doing HDR, you'll probably end up with Photomatix (and the full version of Photoshop to remain in 24bit workspace).

Cheers, and have fun with your new camera!

2ATA
5 December 2013, 06:01
Thanks for the tips guys. I've been running around taking pictures of everything I can find. I think I'm already driving the wifer nuts.

Eric
5 December 2013, 12:38
There's great info posted here already and I'm clearly not in the same league as most of the photographers here who have dedicated a ton of time and money into their craft. I'll just add that making the transition from shooting in jpeg to raw was an eye opener for me. The format gives you so much more flexibility and the ability to sometimes salvage otherwise unusable shots.

2ATA
6 December 2013, 05:46
Does RAW make a difference in the appearanc of the image itself (as in a RAW image and a JPEG side by side) or does it just make it easier to use in editing?

RiverRat
6 December 2013, 08:10
Does RAW make a difference in the appearanc of the image itself (as in a RAW image and a JPEG side by side) or does it just make it easier to use in editing?

The RAW file is basically the image as captured by the sensor. You get greater color depth (14 bit color instead of 8 bit) and there's also no loss of information from compression for storage. There's no sharpening/white balance/contrast adjustment applied to the saved RAW file. You handle all that in the first step of post-processing, which allows you a finer degree of control with fewer manipulations on the finished image, instead of letting you camera make decisions without your active input.

You can "develop" the RAW when you import into your editing software (still non-destructive, though it's frozen in time when you get into Photoshop) or you can handle it all in the editing software after import. I've gotten used to white balancing, lens correction and very light sharpening during import, but do most of my brightness and color correction (including B/W desaturation) in Photoshop, since these tend to be more iterative corrections sometimes involving layer masks.

Eric
6 December 2013, 13:11
Many cameras also allow you to save each photo in RAW and JPEG at the same time; two files for the same photo. Just a heads up that RAW files are substantially larger, so now those 32MB SD cards make sense!

caporider
6 December 2013, 14:09
RAW gives you roughly an extra stop of headroom to play with exposure, and as mentioned allows you to "fix" white balance. Given how cheap SD/CF cards are these days, RAW is all I shoot.

Stickman
6 December 2013, 20:22
Like most have said, lighting is important. Try to take some pictures on a cloudy day. You don't need a lot of equipment and a full studio to get some great results. Also when you're starting out, just take a lot of pictures and see what works for you.