Museums, Robots, & a Friend

Hello all, here are some of the pictures that I liked out of my first "batch" of photos. This essentially means when I had no idea what I was doing with my camera (Hahaha like I have any clue still) and did what I could.

For some reason I realized after shooting my first rail and bench, that I pretty much really love shooting them. Here I show only one of them though.

Other than cropping some and doing a curves/saturation to one, these are out of the camera and compressed to JPG.

These are all shot with a stock XSi. No filter or hood for that matter were used, just the stock body and kit lens. I seriously got the camera and began shooting for a few days. I had no idea what modes were so I used Shutter Speed/Tv. That's about the second to last time I used that mode since.

Please let me know what you think!

1.

The farther down I go the better they get,...
#1 is ready to be thrown away. Out of focus and nothing interesting.
#2 is better focussed but still not worth very much,
#3? Do not touch is in focus and the rest is a mystery.... another one for the bin, I think.
#4 is sharp, symmetrical and a nice photo to keep and use as some sort of illustration....
#5 is a reasonalby nice portrait with a lot of distracting clutter to the left and they eyes not quite sharp, but... nice enough.

I suggest you read a few books or tutorials about exposure, shutter speed, aperture. depth of field, composition and the likes.... But: keep shooting!

That's exactly what I was looking for.

Thank you very much!

I concur with Henk, 4 is by far the best and no5 has an interesting allure.

ditto!

Thank you all for the insight.

The rail/bar... That is actually on purpose. I wasn't sure if anybody else cared for the look, but for myself I really like the look of it hahaha. However, the criticism is well noted and understood.

As for the robots, it was also intended that you cannot see the robots in hopes that you are wondering what you are not to touch, yet maybe that is more annoying that mysterious.

Perhaps this one is better:

Tekkaman wrote in post #9615845
Thank you all for the insight.
.............
I'm not sure if everyone wanted the entire scene in focus or what, but considering I had nothing to rest the camera on and with what equipment I had, I am unaware of how I would have been able to get to say f/8-16 or so to get more of the picture in focus.

Usually you put the focus on the part of the scene where you want the attention to go. So with the "Do not Touch" that was correct - the only thing is that viewers can have a different perception than you...

The only way to keep the shutter speed high enough to avoid shake and still have a small enough aperture to get some depth of field is to increase the ISO value to say 1600 or 3200 or higher. The only thing is that - unless you got one of the more high end models like the 1D or 5D2 - you will get a lot of noise... So if you do not want to use flash (with all the drawbacks of reflections and shadows) the solution is a tripod and cable/remote release...

I wondered where the robots were ! It's easy to give your images a hard time but I doubt that I would have come back with anything better.

Yup these pictures were taken back in October. I understand now what I could have done to sharpen the images, however with what I had available I wasn't sure if it was possible without a decent amount of experience. Also the perception thing is important to me because it lets me see what others see or wanted to see, in the case of the robots.

Even so I really appreciate the feedback. It only helps! I wasn't expecting you folks to tell me you've never seen better images hahaha.

Hey, you're out there and you're trying... I think you are on the right track. One thing I learned is I had to train myself to see everything when I took shots like these... is there anything distracting or overstimulating? That can be hard to determine if you aren't consciously aware of it, especially when you are so preoccupied with basics like exposure, focus, etc. When those things come more naturally to you then your mind's eye will shift to those 'other' things and you'll catch things like a hair out of place or a leaf that looks like it is stick out of someone's ear #4 didn't come up for me, so I can't say anything about it (my PC connection, not your pic I'm sure). I like 5 definitely... did you try it BW? Keep shooting, you are heading in the right direction I'd say!