What's all this "shoot a duck" talk? New 40D owner...

Well I didn't find any ducks, but my first daytime outing provided me with some Canadian Geese.

Unfortunately, I'm a beginner to DSLR photography, and my Exposure Compensation was somehow set to "-2".

Please give me some beginner's critique... I'm a first time DSLR owner, and I think I did decent for screwing up the exposure (all dark and underexposed and mostly corrected in Canon Digital Photo Professional)...


Things I KNOW I did wrong after giving it some thought: had sun at my front, wrong metering mode (was set at center weighted and should have been spot), had my camera set at -2 exposure, didn't select focus points at all so things were too soft, and was fumbling with aperture settings. Also my compositional skills probably leave a bit to be desired... Oh yeah, and lest I forget to add my creative over-use of photoshop... but fwiw, I'm looking more for artsy-emotional than National Geographic.


These were shot at ISO 200 at in Aperture Priority mode at various focal lengths and aperture settings...

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m-bartelt wrote in post #5456277
I just can't wait till I actually start getting good at this!

~michael

Photography, from my experience, has a huge learning curve and takes tons of time and patience to really get good at it. Good luck, and keep patient!

Canon Soldier wrote in post #5456292
Photography, from my experience, has a huge learning curve and takes tons of time and patience to really get good at it. Good luck, and keep patient!

lol... what a polite way of saying "seek professional help immediately! Thanks! I have plenty of patience


Here's an unprocessed one for guys that like that sort of thing...

Beautiful! My first shoot with my 10D produced some horrifically overexposed images - I remember using AE lock to meter the sky and then recompose and shoot to get a good image. I browsed the photos on my computer later and bingo - EXIF data shows they were all taken at +1.00 EV *smacks forehead*

Great use of DOF

Sorry, but a goose ain't gonna' hack it -- you need a duck to be shown the secret handshake.

I like the unprocessed goose.

Do you use auto AF point selection? Focusing is haphazard if you let the camera select the AF point.

Thanks DDW!

Bill, I thought someone would say I actually had to have a duck... Better luck next time I guess and thanks! Oh, and I wish I could have had a more appealing background for the goslings, but that was the only real angle I could get that was pleasing without disturbing them.

Smorter... yes, I did use auto AF, and I know that's why some of them came out rather horrid. I also forgot about the DOF preview button, and couldn't remember how to select the AF points and ended up manual focusing a lot of the shots. I was having a little too much fun just taking the pictures, however I learned quite a bit on my first phototrip.

Here's another one without processing... well except for removing my negative exposure compensation... I think the flash might have helped this one:

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By the way - which lens did you use for these shots?

I used the EF 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 US USM kit lens.

Welcome to an insane world...I've had my 40d for less than 2 weeks and I'm over 3,000 clicks.....soccer games will do that to you....have fun!!!

Thanks wayovrpar! I just love this camera! It's actually been pretty easy to learn all the buttons and wheels, I just seem to have so much fun I forget some of it when I'm in the middle of shooting!