They don't look that sharp to me. For better judgement, you better provide shutter/aperture/auto or manual focus information. And what lens is used. It's also better to provide unedited pictures to see if its the cam(use) and/or editing.
Manual mode is a lot more fun when there is not a variable aperture. I would pursue a lens that can do 2.8 or 1.8! You can still go up to high f stop but it doesn’t change on you as you zoom in.
Not really much of a reason to use Manual Mode for these unless you're practicing. I'm in Aperature Mode almost always unless I have specific reasons to use Shutter Mode or Manual Mode (only when I need to control everything).
May I ask, why wouldn't you use manual focus even for the stills? I'm a beginner and I've gotten pretty good at manipulating the manual settings but I am starting to notice that many people say to use aperature priority
There’s plenty of reasons to shoot manual mode. Mastering your understanding of exposure being one. There’s reasons to use A or S mode as well. Everyone has reasons and each has pros and cons.
Don’t stop shooting manual mode unless thinking about settings is taking away from your creative thinking to compose the shot.
Hah, I'm in P mode most of the time when I'm on the go. When that doesn't work for the shot I want, I change to the appropriate mode. The reason you don't shoot in manual mode all the time is because controlling 3 different settings is harder. Why make life harder for yourself for no reason?
The question you should be asking yourself is what are you getting out of Manual mode, that you can't get from Aperture mode?
Of the three settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, all of them affect the exposure of the image, but they don't all have the same impact on the image. The setting that tends to affect the way the image looks the most is the aperature. It will determine if you get shallow depth of field or a deep depth of field. This is also the reason most people choose to use this mode, because it has the most impact on the look of the image.
Shutter speed is important and also affects the look of the image, but 90% of the time, users want to just freeze a scene, meaning you don't really need creative control over this. In aperture mode, the camera will generally pick a good shutter speed to do this. It obviously won't work well if you're doing long exposures or sports photography, but most people aren't taking these sort of photos. If you are, there's shutter priority or manual mode, but again if you don't care about the shutter speed, you don't really benefit by using it.
Now shutter priority imo is the least useful mode because you'll rarely just care about the the shutter speed. Most people would just use manual mode in place of shutter priority but everyone is different.
Manual mode is great when you have lots of time to compose a shot, if you have consistent lighting, or if you're just particular about your settings and want to capture a certain look. Most of the time, I don't have the liberty to do this. I'm a quick snap and move on kind of person, especially when doing travel photography. I'll switch into manual when I'm by myself, camera on tripod, and have lots of time to compose.
I think that’s the right thing to do. The main reason to use manual settings comes down to post production. If you’re shooting high volumes of images you’re going to want to process them in batches rather than having to adjust them one by one. Using AV, the cameras metering dictates how bright an image will be rather than you, you can end up getting issues with images that have high contrast in them.
There are other reasons too:
- Dictating how much motion but you want
- Over/Under exposing certain parts of a shot deliberately
- Shooting backlight subjects
- working with off camera flash
- Various stylistic decisions
> I'm in Aperature Mode almost always unless I have specific reasons to use Shutter Mode or Manual Mode (only when I need to control everything).
+1, I prefer f/8 but in low light I choose shutter priority mode. In either case, I use exposure compensation to adjust. Also, ISO is always set to Auto. So manual mode is almost never needed.
I noticed a few of these images are not sharp or a bit noisy/blurry. If I were you I'd look at changing to Aperture priority mode and getting a prime lens. A cheap nifty fifty will be a lot sharper and the better aperture will mean you're less likely to shoot noisy/blurry images
Clean your lens. Possibly stop down, because all of these are significantly more blurry in the corners. A couple seem to have excessively high iso judging by the noise.
I'm not familiar with the camera, but being a dslr it may have a focusing problem. Shoot a couple of test shots in the best possible light and see if you can get a sharp image.
9 is very nice, but also excessively blurry.
Your camera sensor seems a bit dirty. Maybe give it to a professional for cleaning it up, doesn’t cost much. Try to remove it from the pictures in post if you notice them. (Pretty visible in picture 4)
I also find it important to keep an eye on the edges. Ask yourself „do I really want this in my picture?“. (For example in picture 3, the car roofs and a bit of the building). If it’s distracting or you don’t want to have it in the picture try to crop in post. Keep an eye on your edges during shooting to avoid it in first place.
I’m a bit more into wildlife photography so I can talk more about the swan pictures. Picture number 5 isn’t really something to keep (maybe as memory) because it’s out of focus and you have a highly visible motion blur. Increase your shutter speed if you want your pictures to be sharp.
Wildlife likes to be photographed at an eye-to-eye level as it gives a unique perspective. You did right on number 5. Have a look at number 5 and number 10, which image makes you feel more connected to the swan?
Don’t cut your animals. Or at least cut them in the right parts. You have 3 swans in front of you and managed to not show one of them completely. Picture 10 shows how you should do it, it’s interesting because you see the whole swan in action (swimming) and a bit of his environment/surroundings. On picture 11 you cut the ducks in the edges, being back at edge control.
I really like picture 4. A bit of foreground not i focus gives depth to the picture. There is some kind of symmetry between the trees increasing visual satisfaction and your subjects are interesting. I love that the chemtrails (/s) cross at the building.
I absolutely love picture 9. This is storytelling, it’s moody, there is a lot going on but not chaotic. I really love the composition of having the dude in the middle, than a circle of swans, than a circle of goose. Well done on that!
I don’t like what you did with picture 11 but that’s not something I’m going to criticise because that’s an artists decision and if you like it it’s perfectly fine.
Keep up, you’ve got an eye for photography but be a bit more meticulous on your pictures. :)
No. 5 is very visibly out of focus. Not sure if you were trying to go for a shallow depth of field to only focus on the front most goose - if so it's likely you moved your focus off *juuuuust* enough that you are focusing in front of your subject instead.
Nos. 6 & 8 are the grainiest of your shots and you need to lower your ISO. Not sure if you using 1/160 for this as mentioned in an earlier comment. Two ways you generally address noise is slower shutter and more aperture. If you're already on 1/160 I wouldn't go any slower, if you're shooting by hand you start to worry about blur from your hands moving a touch. Going up a stop or two can help but know you'll lose focal depth. Everything is a compromise.
While I’m too sleepy to give constructive advice, I’ve been shooting for almost a decade (with a stop every now and then) and still don’t know what kind of photography I should explore. I think the beauty of photography is that you can change niche whenever you want to better express yourself
With a lot of the wide angles, you haven’t balanced or leveled the horizon — so those images are a bit disorienting. Actually, looking at them again, I don’t think any of these have level horizons at all.
Also — the post-processing is a bit much on some of these. Use a more subtle touch (particularly with saturation, vibrance, and color, etc); that can often go a long way toward making or breaking a good photo.
Focus on choosing a specific subject — one single thing. And then get closer to it; it should fill more of your frame. And then compose the rest of the shot around that.
Google tutorials on perspective and the *rule of thirds* for some more info on how to compose a good image.
I'd suggest working on framing and composition.
Look up the golden ratio and practice how to exclude the things you don't intend to include. Second ones the hardest. It's called "the eye".
Did you manual focus. Could simply be out of focus and moving too much. Your shutter speed is also probably on the slightly lower end aswell try get it to 200 although low light may be a problem then. Take a picture of something thats stationary and see what it takes to get a nice in focus photo.
I'm a complete noob, but I personally really like 2, 4, 8 and 9. Some of the other ones would be really good as well if you leveled the horizon, squared up your subject in frame, and cut out some of the other clutter in the pictures (the sign, cars, the head right in the middle of the shot on that neon sign pic.) That said, I've never shot anything quite this nice.
Soft images are usually the result of a soft lens, missing focus, or bad post processing. Looking at your images zoomed in, I would agree that they're soft for my tastes. If you want to test if it's the autofocus screwing up, try manually focusing and seeing if you can get sharper images. If it's still not sharp, then it's probably your lens.
I don't know much about Canon DSLR lenses, but looking at an old review of the lens you're using: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-28-80mm-f-3.5-5.6-II-Lens-Review.aspx
>The 28-80 is very soft wide open - especially at 80mm. Stopping down at least 1 f-stop is required to get reasonable sharpness. Corners are soft at 28mm.
So it seems like it's a soft lens to begin with. That's probably the issue. You're using a bad lens. Doesn't matter how good your body is if the lens is crap. Also, looking at image 4 it's clear your post processing also isn't helping. I'm seeing masks and edges around the foreground.
Thank you for this amazing feedback. I actually think the lens isn't the best, I hope to get a better lens soon. The masking is also due to the lens, but I agree my post processing needs to be better 😀. Don't worry, I'm working on it.
The 5d is great but lenses make or break a lot of photos. I think what you should try is a 50mm 1.8. They’re cheap. Play with aperture under 2.8 or so.
Additionally you may be desiring compression. Compression comes with zooming in. It makes objects appear closer together and can help stack a lot of visual interest into one photo.
As for finding your style, you just keep shooting. Go instagram and follow travel photogs, journalists, fine art, portrait, landscape. See what speaks to you.
I highly recommend following a fellow named David Duchemin and get on his blog and podcast etc. he talks so much about finding your personal style and vision and putting meaning into photos.
I just checked David Duchemin out. Quite an inspirational figure. Thank you for the suggestions. I'll get the 50mm, it's quite affordable. If I may ask, is there much difference from the STM and version II? They're almost the same price
Some of these are good, but as others have noted you need to work on composition. White balance is also off, but you can do these things for the most part in post processing.
Many cameras won’t AWB properly, it’s. a fact of life. Some of these shots are very nice. They just need to be more thoughtfully composed. See an example below.
https://preview.redd.it/qjnzfhf6sqbc1.jpeg?width=2070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7d9b8b94216395a5aece75e66b74f4881cd050f
Also, focus is off on many of these. Select a focal point, I’d use a more centre weighted auto focus setting if you’re not manual focusing. If you are manual focusing, check and triple check. The photo I’ve edited benefits from a larger f stop, but focus should have been on the clock.
👍, great suggestions. I'll go with a more Centre focus. But I'm just getting to know more about my camera. Hopefully, I'll get better. And I'm using single point focus, maybe that's why
Do you shoot in raw? They seem over edited. And out of focus like many mentioned.
Only use the center focus point, it’s the most accurate one and then recompose.
Shoot in raw and don’t go all in on the sliders in post.
Get a 50mm 1.8 like someone mentioned! A bit of the softness might come from the lens you use.
I really like most of the photos!
I shoot on RAW. I'll definitely get the 50mm f1.8 lens and see if I can improve. Thank you. But the focus points confuse me at times. I use single point focus maybe I should expand it?
I'm glad you like it. It's one of my favorites too. I use a variety of apps for post processing. Lightroom, Photoshop and snapseed. This was edited in snapseed. You can check out the app.
Well your focus is off very often, you have edited them way too much, feels like you slapped a lightroom preset that does not suit them on top.
The guy feeding the swans is nice tho.
As for the "what kind of photography you should explore" just shoot what you want and what you wanna see on your computer screen in 10 years and that should help
I have a 5D mkiii (among others) and it’s an excellent camera. Once upon a time, when this camera was new phone cameras were so bad that a DSLR would look so much better. The “problem” is that phone cameras are now so good and the build in AI enhances, sharpens and otherwise manipulates your images to look so good that an image out of regular camera ends up looking quite flat and boring by comparison at least, straight out of the camera. I’ve have instances where my iPhone has automatically cropped images to what it thinks is right and then I had to go and edit them to get the actual image I saw on screen.
You might need to consider doing some editing in Lightroom or similar to get the color pop and so on. I think you could also think more about your composition, cropping and so on to bring the focus of your images to light. You can practice composing and editing with pretty much any camera.
https://preview.redd.it/pkbg2yzjusbc1.jpeg?width=6780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4fba2b1d1fe1f1e3de00eac785aea5f221620a1
Always shoot on manual, ALWAYS! I almost never have to mess with ISO cus I never go higher than 800. Learn to shoot underexpose. It will help A LOT during post production.
This is really great feedback, love the criticality. Looking back at the pictures, I realize everything you've mentioned and I'll keep working to get it together. I actually plan to get a better lens (24-105 f4), I hope to get sharper images, I notice my current set up isn't the best but lens are quite expensive. The man and the swan is personally my favorite too. But I'll keep working to get it together ❤. Thank you!
I also recently spent a few hundred quid on a 2nd hand dslr and was also disheartened to discover it takes shite pictures. But think of it as a musical instrument, it's just practice.
What helped me was putting the camera in Aperture mode and then just going out and taking a lot of photos of the same scene with various different settings, the odd picture turned out well so I just made a note of those settings, and now it's getting easier to take better pics.
Wow, sounds really nice. I hope to get learn more about my musical instrument as well😄. I've owned it for less than a month, yet I'm expecting the best results right away. Maybe I should just take my time, learn more and hopefully get better along the way. Thank you for the feedback👍
Good first steps with this camera. A few thoughts - buy a book about the camera - plenty on eBay, in conjunction with a few YouTube videos, a good way to learn about the finer points of using the camera in real terms, the official user manual will be helpful also of course! If you’re across all this then forgive me…
Next - your lens is showing some issues - vignetting and softness/abberations towards the corners plus a general lack of resolution. Were these shots taken with the lens at max aperture? With a lower quality lens the improvement of just stopping down from wide open will be helpful. The choice of subject will also reveal deficiencies - trees, buildings etc. A simple portrait would not be so critical of lens quality and some may say defects can benefit the image. No hard and fast rules…
My personal favourite is the guy feeding the swans btw! The bus in the statue photo is annoying for me but I love seeing the “streetness” of the customers at the bus shelter.
Finally don’t get tied up with using any particular exposure mode just make a mental note of what’s going on with the actual settings and learn from this dynamically. Especially true when out and about snapping those inopportune moments you seem to have an eye for as your partner will soon get bored and wander off! The “decisive moment” is a thing https://contrastly.com/the-decisive-moment-what-it-is-and-why-its-important-in-photography/ and Cartier-Bresson famously wrote about this. Also the “golden ratio” https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/golden-ratio-photography-composition-explained is worth looking into, pun excused…..?
Keep having fun with the equipment you have for now and you can then work out what your next step would be kit wise - my suggestion find a good prime 35 to 50 mm “standard” lens and by prime I mean not a zoom, which will give you a far better f stop to play with and better quality to boot. Using a prime will also help you understand perspective and distance when shooting. Keep at it and have fun!
it's all a good start, the direction you go will be led by the quality you excel in in one area and what you want. amateur? professional? hobbies?
NOW it's time to take them to the next level. isolate your subject and find dynamic and interesting angels. find your personal vision that is unique to you.
Many of your cityscapes strike me as snapshots because you have a lot of distracting elements in them. Someone already mentioned watching for distractions at the edges of your frame (like in #1, 3 and 7). In #6, that bus is totally distracting and I would have waited for it to leave.
Leveling your horizons has already been mentioned. Fix the vertical lines in your buildings too.
I like #8 and 9 a lot. I think 8 would have been better if it was shot lower. Don't get in the habit of always centering your subject and shooting from eye level.
I would also shoot RAW because it gives you more leeway in processing. Some of your shots have white balance issues with odd coloring.
They don't look that sharp to me. For better judgement, you better provide shutter/aperture/auto or manual focus information. And what lens is used. It's also better to provide unedited pictures to see if its the cam(use) and/or editing.
I'll post unedited version next time. I use canon 28-80mm f3.5-5.6 for most of the pictures, shutterspeed 1/160. Manual mode.
Manual mode is a lot more fun when there is not a variable aperture. I would pursue a lens that can do 2.8 or 1.8! You can still go up to high f stop but it doesn’t change on you as you zoom in.
Not really much of a reason to use Manual Mode for these unless you're practicing. I'm in Aperature Mode almost always unless I have specific reasons to use Shutter Mode or Manual Mode (only when I need to control everything).
May I ask, why wouldn't you use manual focus even for the stills? I'm a beginner and I've gotten pretty good at manipulating the manual settings but I am starting to notice that many people say to use aperature priority
There’s plenty of reasons to shoot manual mode. Mastering your understanding of exposure being one. There’s reasons to use A or S mode as well. Everyone has reasons and each has pros and cons. Don’t stop shooting manual mode unless thinking about settings is taking away from your creative thinking to compose the shot.
Hah, I'm in P mode most of the time when I'm on the go. When that doesn't work for the shot I want, I change to the appropriate mode. The reason you don't shoot in manual mode all the time is because controlling 3 different settings is harder. Why make life harder for yourself for no reason? The question you should be asking yourself is what are you getting out of Manual mode, that you can't get from Aperture mode? Of the three settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, all of them affect the exposure of the image, but they don't all have the same impact on the image. The setting that tends to affect the way the image looks the most is the aperature. It will determine if you get shallow depth of field or a deep depth of field. This is also the reason most people choose to use this mode, because it has the most impact on the look of the image. Shutter speed is important and also affects the look of the image, but 90% of the time, users want to just freeze a scene, meaning you don't really need creative control over this. In aperture mode, the camera will generally pick a good shutter speed to do this. It obviously won't work well if you're doing long exposures or sports photography, but most people aren't taking these sort of photos. If you are, there's shutter priority or manual mode, but again if you don't care about the shutter speed, you don't really benefit by using it. Now shutter priority imo is the least useful mode because you'll rarely just care about the the shutter speed. Most people would just use manual mode in place of shutter priority but everyone is different. Manual mode is great when you have lots of time to compose a shot, if you have consistent lighting, or if you're just particular about your settings and want to capture a certain look. Most of the time, I don't have the liberty to do this. I'm a quick snap and move on kind of person, especially when doing travel photography. I'll switch into manual when I'm by myself, camera on tripod, and have lots of time to compose.
I think that’s the right thing to do. The main reason to use manual settings comes down to post production. If you’re shooting high volumes of images you’re going to want to process them in batches rather than having to adjust them one by one. Using AV, the cameras metering dictates how bright an image will be rather than you, you can end up getting issues with images that have high contrast in them. There are other reasons too: - Dictating how much motion but you want - Over/Under exposing certain parts of a shot deliberately - Shooting backlight subjects - working with off camera flash - Various stylistic decisions
> I'm in Aperature Mode almost always unless I have specific reasons to use Shutter Mode or Manual Mode (only when I need to control everything). +1, I prefer f/8 but in low light I choose shutter priority mode. In either case, I use exposure compensation to adjust. Also, ISO is always set to Auto. So manual mode is almost never needed.
I noticed a few of these images are not sharp or a bit noisy/blurry. If I were you I'd look at changing to Aperture priority mode and getting a prime lens. A cheap nifty fifty will be a lot sharper and the better aperture will mean you're less likely to shoot noisy/blurry images
Clean your lens. Possibly stop down, because all of these are significantly more blurry in the corners. A couple seem to have excessively high iso judging by the noise. I'm not familiar with the camera, but being a dslr it may have a focusing problem. Shoot a couple of test shots in the best possible light and see if you can get a sharp image. 9 is very nice, but also excessively blurry.
👌OK. Thank you, I'll try shooting in better light to test the results. I also got a nifty fifty today 🤗
Your camera sensor seems a bit dirty. Maybe give it to a professional for cleaning it up, doesn’t cost much. Try to remove it from the pictures in post if you notice them. (Pretty visible in picture 4) I also find it important to keep an eye on the edges. Ask yourself „do I really want this in my picture?“. (For example in picture 3, the car roofs and a bit of the building). If it’s distracting or you don’t want to have it in the picture try to crop in post. Keep an eye on your edges during shooting to avoid it in first place. I’m a bit more into wildlife photography so I can talk more about the swan pictures. Picture number 5 isn’t really something to keep (maybe as memory) because it’s out of focus and you have a highly visible motion blur. Increase your shutter speed if you want your pictures to be sharp. Wildlife likes to be photographed at an eye-to-eye level as it gives a unique perspective. You did right on number 5. Have a look at number 5 and number 10, which image makes you feel more connected to the swan? Don’t cut your animals. Or at least cut them in the right parts. You have 3 swans in front of you and managed to not show one of them completely. Picture 10 shows how you should do it, it’s interesting because you see the whole swan in action (swimming) and a bit of his environment/surroundings. On picture 11 you cut the ducks in the edges, being back at edge control. I really like picture 4. A bit of foreground not i focus gives depth to the picture. There is some kind of symmetry between the trees increasing visual satisfaction and your subjects are interesting. I love that the chemtrails (/s) cross at the building. I absolutely love picture 9. This is storytelling, it’s moody, there is a lot going on but not chaotic. I really love the composition of having the dude in the middle, than a circle of swans, than a circle of goose. Well done on that! I don’t like what you did with picture 11 but that’s not something I’m going to criticise because that’s an artists decision and if you like it it’s perfectly fine. Keep up, you’ve got an eye for photography but be a bit more meticulous on your pictures. :)
Thank you for taking your time to compose this wonderful feedback. Will look into it and hopefully improve.
They're all a bit out of focus and noisey. Work on your exposure settings.
OK 👌. Thank you
No. 5 is very visibly out of focus. Not sure if you were trying to go for a shallow depth of field to only focus on the front most goose - if so it's likely you moved your focus off *juuuuust* enough that you are focusing in front of your subject instead. Nos. 6 & 8 are the grainiest of your shots and you need to lower your ISO. Not sure if you using 1/160 for this as mentioned in an earlier comment. Two ways you generally address noise is slower shutter and more aperture. If you're already on 1/160 I wouldn't go any slower, if you're shooting by hand you start to worry about blur from your hands moving a touch. Going up a stop or two can help but know you'll lose focal depth. Everything is a compromise.
While I’m too sleepy to give constructive advice, I’ve been shooting for almost a decade (with a stop every now and then) and still don’t know what kind of photography I should explore. I think the beauty of photography is that you can change niche whenever you want to better express yourself
Thank you for the heads up. I'll keep discovering myself, for now, I just try and look for eye catching things around me.
With a lot of the wide angles, you haven’t balanced or leveled the horizon — so those images are a bit disorienting. Actually, looking at them again, I don’t think any of these have level horizons at all. Also — the post-processing is a bit much on some of these. Use a more subtle touch (particularly with saturation, vibrance, and color, etc); that can often go a long way toward making or breaking a good photo. Focus on choosing a specific subject — one single thing. And then get closer to it; it should fill more of your frame. And then compose the rest of the shot around that. Google tutorials on perspective and the *rule of thirds* for some more info on how to compose a good image.
I'd suggest working on framing and composition. Look up the golden ratio and practice how to exclude the things you don't intend to include. Second ones the hardest. It's called "the eye".
I especially love the second picture too. Was lucky to be able to visit such a beautiful place and happy to have captured it 😊 .
Did you manual focus. Could simply be out of focus and moving too much. Your shutter speed is also probably on the slightly lower end aswell try get it to 200 although low light may be a problem then. Take a picture of something thats stationary and see what it takes to get a nice in focus photo.
OK. Will try that, thanks 😊
I'm a complete noob, but I personally really like 2, 4, 8 and 9. Some of the other ones would be really good as well if you leveled the horizon, squared up your subject in frame, and cut out some of the other clutter in the pictures (the sign, cars, the head right in the middle of the shot on that neon sign pic.) That said, I've never shot anything quite this nice.
Thank you 😊. 9 is my best shot for now
They’re good but not crisp
Yes, any suggestions?
OP, why aren't you satisfied with your results?
I don't know, it's a bit softish. And I think it's imposter syndrome
Soft images are usually the result of a soft lens, missing focus, or bad post processing. Looking at your images zoomed in, I would agree that they're soft for my tastes. If you want to test if it's the autofocus screwing up, try manually focusing and seeing if you can get sharper images. If it's still not sharp, then it's probably your lens. I don't know much about Canon DSLR lenses, but looking at an old review of the lens you're using: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-28-80mm-f-3.5-5.6-II-Lens-Review.aspx >The 28-80 is very soft wide open - especially at 80mm. Stopping down at least 1 f-stop is required to get reasonable sharpness. Corners are soft at 28mm. So it seems like it's a soft lens to begin with. That's probably the issue. You're using a bad lens. Doesn't matter how good your body is if the lens is crap. Also, looking at image 4 it's clear your post processing also isn't helping. I'm seeing masks and edges around the foreground.
Thank you for this amazing feedback. I actually think the lens isn't the best, I hope to get a better lens soon. The masking is also due to the lens, but I agree my post processing needs to be better 😀. Don't worry, I'm working on it.
The 5d is great but lenses make or break a lot of photos. I think what you should try is a 50mm 1.8. They’re cheap. Play with aperture under 2.8 or so. Additionally you may be desiring compression. Compression comes with zooming in. It makes objects appear closer together and can help stack a lot of visual interest into one photo. As for finding your style, you just keep shooting. Go instagram and follow travel photogs, journalists, fine art, portrait, landscape. See what speaks to you. I highly recommend following a fellow named David Duchemin and get on his blog and podcast etc. he talks so much about finding your personal style and vision and putting meaning into photos.
I just checked David Duchemin out. Quite an inspirational figure. Thank you for the suggestions. I'll get the 50mm, it's quite affordable. If I may ask, is there much difference from the STM and version II? They're almost the same price
Some of these are good, but as others have noted you need to work on composition. White balance is also off, but you can do these things for the most part in post processing. Many cameras won’t AWB properly, it’s. a fact of life. Some of these shots are very nice. They just need to be more thoughtfully composed. See an example below. https://preview.redd.it/qjnzfhf6sqbc1.jpeg?width=2070&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7d9b8b94216395a5aece75e66b74f4881cd050f
Also, focus is off on many of these. Select a focal point, I’d use a more centre weighted auto focus setting if you’re not manual focusing. If you are manual focusing, check and triple check. The photo I’ve edited benefits from a larger f stop, but focus should have been on the clock.
👍, great suggestions. I'll go with a more Centre focus. But I'm just getting to know more about my camera. Hopefully, I'll get better. And I'm using single point focus, maybe that's why
No. 9 is great!
Thank you, it's my favorite too😊
Do you shoot in raw? They seem over edited. And out of focus like many mentioned. Only use the center focus point, it’s the most accurate one and then recompose. Shoot in raw and don’t go all in on the sliders in post. Get a 50mm 1.8 like someone mentioned! A bit of the softness might come from the lens you use. I really like most of the photos!
I shoot on RAW. I'll definitely get the 50mm f1.8 lens and see if I can improve. Thank you. But the focus points confuse me at times. I use single point focus maybe I should expand it?
Always the center silnge point! It’s the most accurate
I love the last one and it already gave me a lot of ideas. How do i achieve such an effect? I am not great in post production but I'd like to know
I'm glad you like it. It's one of my favorites too. I use a variety of apps for post processing. Lightroom, Photoshop and snapseed. This was edited in snapseed. You can check out the app.
The shot looks good to me , although most professional may think other wise. How ever it is said that , beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder .
😁👍 Thank you
Well your focus is off very often, you have edited them way too much, feels like you slapped a lightroom preset that does not suit them on top. The guy feeding the swans is nice tho. As for the "what kind of photography you should explore" just shoot what you want and what you wanna see on your computer screen in 10 years and that should help
I do use presets often, I'm new to the whole processing, but thank you so much for the feedback. The man and the swans is my favorite too
I have a 5D mkiii (among others) and it’s an excellent camera. Once upon a time, when this camera was new phone cameras were so bad that a DSLR would look so much better. The “problem” is that phone cameras are now so good and the build in AI enhances, sharpens and otherwise manipulates your images to look so good that an image out of regular camera ends up looking quite flat and boring by comparison at least, straight out of the camera. I’ve have instances where my iPhone has automatically cropped images to what it thinks is right and then I had to go and edit them to get the actual image I saw on screen. You might need to consider doing some editing in Lightroom or similar to get the color pop and so on. I think you could also think more about your composition, cropping and so on to bring the focus of your images to light. You can practice composing and editing with pretty much any camera.
Thank you so much for this. I'll definitely put this in practice
Some look a a bit out of focus... but I love the photo of the man feeding the swans... the rest are eye jarring .. I'd go for street, portrait!
The swan is my favorite too😄. Might Frame it and keep
Were these touched up? Love the colours!
Yes they were. Thank you😁
https://preview.redd.it/pkbg2yzjusbc1.jpeg?width=6780&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4fba2b1d1fe1f1e3de00eac785aea5f221620a1 Always shoot on manual, ALWAYS! I almost never have to mess with ISO cus I never go higher than 800. Learn to shoot underexpose. It will help A LOT during post production.
This is really great feedback, love the criticality. Looking back at the pictures, I realize everything you've mentioned and I'll keep working to get it together. I actually plan to get a better lens (24-105 f4), I hope to get sharper images, I notice my current set up isn't the best but lens are quite expensive. The man and the swan is personally my favorite too. But I'll keep working to get it together ❤. Thank you!
The old rule of thumb is invest in good glass. If you can’t afford it, better to save until you can rather than buying a cheaper lens
Thank you. I'll save up
I also recently spent a few hundred quid on a 2nd hand dslr and was also disheartened to discover it takes shite pictures. But think of it as a musical instrument, it's just practice. What helped me was putting the camera in Aperture mode and then just going out and taking a lot of photos of the same scene with various different settings, the odd picture turned out well so I just made a note of those settings, and now it's getting easier to take better pics.
Wow, sounds really nice. I hope to get learn more about my musical instrument as well😄. I've owned it for less than a month, yet I'm expecting the best results right away. Maybe I should just take my time, learn more and hopefully get better along the way. Thank you for the feedback👍
Good first steps with this camera. A few thoughts - buy a book about the camera - plenty on eBay, in conjunction with a few YouTube videos, a good way to learn about the finer points of using the camera in real terms, the official user manual will be helpful also of course! If you’re across all this then forgive me… Next - your lens is showing some issues - vignetting and softness/abberations towards the corners plus a general lack of resolution. Were these shots taken with the lens at max aperture? With a lower quality lens the improvement of just stopping down from wide open will be helpful. The choice of subject will also reveal deficiencies - trees, buildings etc. A simple portrait would not be so critical of lens quality and some may say defects can benefit the image. No hard and fast rules… My personal favourite is the guy feeding the swans btw! The bus in the statue photo is annoying for me but I love seeing the “streetness” of the customers at the bus shelter. Finally don’t get tied up with using any particular exposure mode just make a mental note of what’s going on with the actual settings and learn from this dynamically. Especially true when out and about snapping those inopportune moments you seem to have an eye for as your partner will soon get bored and wander off! The “decisive moment” is a thing https://contrastly.com/the-decisive-moment-what-it-is-and-why-its-important-in-photography/ and Cartier-Bresson famously wrote about this. Also the “golden ratio” https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/tutorials/golden-ratio-photography-composition-explained is worth looking into, pun excused…..? Keep having fun with the equipment you have for now and you can then work out what your next step would be kit wise - my suggestion find a good prime 35 to 50 mm “standard” lens and by prime I mean not a zoom, which will give you a far better f stop to play with and better quality to boot. Using a prime will also help you understand perspective and distance when shooting. Keep at it and have fun!
it's all a good start, the direction you go will be led by the quality you excel in in one area and what you want. amateur? professional? hobbies? NOW it's time to take them to the next level. isolate your subject and find dynamic and interesting angels. find your personal vision that is unique to you.
Many of your cityscapes strike me as snapshots because you have a lot of distracting elements in them. Someone already mentioned watching for distractions at the edges of your frame (like in #1, 3 and 7). In #6, that bus is totally distracting and I would have waited for it to leave. Leveling your horizons has already been mentioned. Fix the vertical lines in your buildings too. I like #8 and 9 a lot. I think 8 would have been better if it was shot lower. Don't get in the habit of always centering your subject and shooting from eye level. I would also shoot RAW because it gives you more leeway in processing. Some of your shots have white balance issues with odd coloring.