New user pitcures

[skyva]

Hi all. Let me start by thanking others for the useful information offered on this forum. I hope the positive atmosphere continues.
I have included three shots (of the many hundreds so far), all taken from the balcony of my appartment. Hopefully some of you will find them worthy of your time. I am grateful for any constructive critisism, but to be honest, I am just posting a few of my better shots and realise I have a long way to go. I am figuring a tripod, better lenses and some talent would go a long way. The kit lens (used in all three) is great, but a bit more zoom and aperture would be good. The teatowel tripod might be retired soon too. I think I will be contacting Birddog soon for my lens lust fix.
Lastly, I am happy to have a meeting of Mexicans here if any of you are keen to try to the view for a few shots. I think the possibilities of the view exceed my current talent, but it does inspire me to keep shooting.

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/ ... kyline.JPG

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/ ... eworks.JPG

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/10056/storm.JPG

[Geoff]

Hi all. Let me start by thanking others for the useful information offered on this forum. I hope the positive atmosphere continues.
I have included three shots (of the many hundreds so far), all taken from the balcony of my appartment. Hopefully some of you will find them worthy of your time. I am grateful for any constructive critisism, but to be honest, I am just posting a few of my better shots and realise I have a long way to go. I am figuring a tripod, better lenses and some talent would go a long way. The kit lens (used in all three) is great, but a bit more zoom and aperture would be good. The teatowel tripod might be retired soon too. I think I will be contacting Birddog soon for my lens lust fix.
Lastly, I am happy to have a meeting of Mexicans here if any of you are keen to try to the view for a few shots. I think the possibilities of the view exceed my current talent, but it does inspire me to keep shooting.

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/ ... kyline.JPG

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/ ... eworks.JPG

http://www.pixspot.com/albums/userpics/10056/storm.JPG

Hello Skyva and welcome to the forum. I like all your pics but the last one especially, it captures both nature and man man all in one very well. The time that you shot it too helps to create a beautiful calmness too. Can you tell us a bit about the camera settings for this last shot?

As for contacting Birddog, you could not find a nicer guy with a genuine enthusiasm for making this 'community' (forum) work as well as it does, I take my hat off to him! Good luck with your shooting and dont' stop posting your images! It's all a huge learning curve for many of us and it's great to find such a great array of people all with the one interest (and camera!). Cheers,

Geoff.

[skyva]

The details are:
kit lens 18mm zoom
Night landscape mode
1/15 sec f6.3
0 ev
iso 200
auto white balance
Mode iiia
NR off

Everything pretty standard out of the box I guess.
The shot was pretty sharp, shot in RAW, converted to jpg in Nikon Capture, then cropped in MS Paint. I really need a photoshop program.

Hope that helps.

Sorry for the typo in the heading. I checked the body of the text, but I guess I am not that attentive to detail.

[Greg B]

Good photos skyva, thanks for sharing. You have a great vista to work with there! The storm is good as Geoff said, and I like the chaotic nature of the fireworks shot too. Most of the other fireworks shots I have seen have caught the relatively orderly explosions (and they have been sensational), you have caught one where everything goes a bit crazy resulting in an almost lightning like appearance. Very good.

As one of said mexicans, I'll be in a meet sometime, no worries whatsoever.

[Raydar]

Great stuff

& welcome!!!!

I love the last shot, Awesome gust front well done

Cheers
Ray

[sirhc55]

Welcome

I like all three shots - the first for the clarity in the stadium light stands, the second coz it is just like multiple lightning and the last as per others comments. Being a bit of a purist I have never used the P&S modes but your shots show what is possible and what you and the D70 are capable of.

Chris

[Onyx]

Woah, you used MS Paint in your workflow!?

The storm pic looked as if it was shot wider than the kit lens was capable of - 18mm.

[ajax]

Welcome mate.

I liked all the three shots. Especially last one, as said earlier.

cheers,
ajax

[AlistairF]

Hi Skyva, I like the last shot... I'm a fan of the BIG SKY pics.

I wish I had access to a rooftop in Richmond with a city view Imagine the lightning shot's you could get from there?

Alistair

[MattC]

Hello Skyva

I liked all three. Were those fireworks really that crazy? That cloud front is awesome.

Cheers

Matt

[coolpix]

Welcome. The shots are great...i really like the last one of the storm...keep up the good work and i look forward to see more from you.

[skyva]

ThankThanks for the compliments. The balcony would be a good place for lightning shots, but I need a proper tripod. At the moment I rest the camera on the BBQ and try to aim it, using anything from 6-30 second exposures. I just keep clicking and waiting. With long exposures you can capture a fair proportion of the lightning, but I have found that luck plays a good part in getting the shots. I use a 512mb sandisk UII, and just keep clicking until it is full.
Last time I tried to capture lightning shots, I didn't get anything decent because it was evening, and without a ND filter the longest I could leave the shutter open was about 6 seconds. I am sure there are other techniques to increase the shutter open time (and therefore increase the chance of getting a strike) but I don't know them yet. I was using f22 which is the limit of the lens.
I do use manual mode when I can, but it takes longer to set up and I have had some good results with shutter priority selected.
I witnessed a spectacular storm in WA recently, but it was too far away to shoot it properly, and without a tripod I could not get the camera steady enough.
All this shooting is showing me the limitations of myself and my gear, which is good, as at least I am learning.
Yes MS paint was used to resize, as I couldn't work out how to do it in Nikon Capture and it was late. More learning required.

[skyva]

Matt, in the lightning shot I suspect there may have been some movement of the camera whilst it was propped on a teatowel mounted on the wheelie bbq. I will upgrade to a gitzo teatowel and bbq set (4 burner) for more steady shots, although I like the quick release feature of my present set up.

[MattC]

Skyva,

Gitzo tea towel and 4burner bbq??? Gotta get me one of those!!! Birddog?

Resizing in NC is fairly straight forward. Select all (image), Go to tool pallete 1 then size/resolution, select "keep output size", enter values that you prefer, check the image, save as, choose jpeg, select quality then save.

Cheers

Matt

[birddog114]

Matt, in the lightning shot I suspect there may have been some movement of the camera whilst it was propped on a teatowel mounted on the wheelie bbq. I will upgrade to a gitzo teatowel and bbq set (4 burner) for more steady shots, although I like the quick release feature of my present set up.

skyva,
A big sale of Beefeater BBQ 5 burners and all stainless steel is now on.

[mudder]

G'day Skyva,
Wow, storm.jpg is great! The moody, brooding sky against the skyline is terrific... Very nice, thanks for posting...

The BBQ tripod sounds great, especially with stubby-holder leg-warmers

Cheers,
Mudder

[meicw]

Hi Skyva. Thanks for sharing the pics. Loved all 3, but the first is my favourite. Love the idea of the bbq as a support for the camera!! You inner city guys are very resourceful.

Regards
Meic

[skyva]

Thanks all. On a serious note I will get a tripod and retire the teatowel and bbq to Sunday afternoon cook-ups.
Thanks for the tip on the resizing. I did type in "resize" into the help function, but Nikon must use other terminology.