A few Photography Tips, Things I try to remember

Hi Dani,

I guess no one out there has the secret settings Every camera, lens, and conditions are different so theres no set setting. I'm no expert but have some suggestions.

First try to take your photos of the moon when it's low in the horizon, it will not be as bright and with the sun going up or down the foreground and sky will have some light. Having stuff in the foreground makes the photos more fun to view. To have the moon as big in the photos as possible you need to use your biggest lens or zoom. With zooming a lot you need to use a tripod or set your camera on something. I have taken some nice shots hand held with my 75-300mm with IS but it's always better to use a tripod.

As for settings, use a low ISO of around 100, set your metering to center weighted instead of evaluative, and for your focus point selection use just the center one or use manual focusing, with it dark your camera may have trouble focusing. Then point your camera at the moon and press the shutter half way to set the exposure then re-compose and shoot.

With my 75-300mm lens I usually use the Aperture priority setting, I set it at F/6.3 up to F/16 or more. It all depends on what I want in focus or how bright or dark the sky is. If you want everything to be in focus you need to use a smaller aperture like F/16 or smaller. This will make your shutter speed much slower so a tripod must be used. If your taking the moon high in the sky it will be bright, try F/16 or 32 or more to cut the light down.

The main thing is to set your exposure on the moon, if you use evaluative the dark sky will tell the camera it's dark making the moon come out a bright white ball. Do a Google search for "how to take photos of the moon" theres lots of info on how to take the photos, and everyone has different ways and settings LOL. Also searching moon photos here at The Lens Flare helps. There are other things you can play with, after looking at a photo, you can adjust your exposure manually up or down, and theres bracketing where the camera takes three different exposures for ya. Oh different white balance settings will give you different effects.

This took this photo this morning hand held with my 75-300mm IS USM lens maxed out at 300mm ISO 200 F/6.3 and shutter speed 1/60, white balance on auto. I cropped this one down some. Oh the wind was blowing 30mph Arizona is not nice today, the birds are even having trouble flying around.

Thanks so much for the tips! I did get a decent shot of the full moon last night. I just kept fiddling with the knobs and the settings and finally got a shot where the moon didn't look like a glowing white ball. I will continue to experiment.

Dani

Hi Dani,

That's great about getting closer on your exposures, keep playing with different settings and taking lots of photos, practice makes perfect LOL.. With the moon not full now things have changed Maybe the next full moon there will be some clouds here and there.

http://www.thelensflare.com/gallery/p_planet_25272.php

Oh wow, that's just amazing BL! My pictures truly pale in comparison.

Thanks Dani... It's nice but a long ways from others I've seen. I had to crop it a lot to make it big and that messed it up some. You can see a black edge around it. I saw your photo, that's getting there... Taking it at night is the hardest. Someday I'm going to get a adapter so I can connect my camera to my telescope, now that would be a lens

Here is another tip about "White Balance" with lots of reading. My tip is to turn off the auto white balance and learn how to use your white balance settings for the lighting conditions your shooting in. Out here in Arizona the sun is bright and very harsh during the day, so when I'm taking scenery or desert shots I set my white balance to cloudy and somtimes shade to give it more blue. The cloudy warms up the photos and gives them more color. Here is a page on using your white balance. There will be a test on Monday...
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whitebalance.htm

Thank you Alan for giving us these tips via the internet. I will try them out.
Good tip!

Hi Ann,

Thanks..... I'm glad you are enjoying them. I'm starting to run out of ideas. I forgot to mention that using the auto white balance is still good but you can get different effects by playing with the settings. If you think about it the next time your out taking photos, take one on auto white balance, then shoot the same photo on Shade, Daylight, and Cloudy. Then you can see what the differences are. Most of my photo taking is in daylight, we get clouds maybe 30 days a year ROFL..

Alan could you give "me" TLF some tips on panning? I have yet to achieve any
good motion captures. Thanks.

Hi Ann,

Panning dose take some practicing, practice makes perfect LOL. The main idea is to follow your subject, take the photo, and keep following the subject after you take the photo. To pan pivot at your waist not just your head. If you know the direction your subject will be moving turn your body so you start panning from the side, then take the photo when they are close to straight in front of you. Oh remember to set your zoom for when your subject is in front of you before hand.
Also setting your autofocus to AI servo helps to "track" your moving subject, I use single shot focusing most of the time for cars.

For the speed of most things like cars I set my camera on shutter priority on 1/40 to 1/60 to get a really blurry background. You can also use any setting and with panning the camera the backgrounds will still have some blur to them unless you use a really fast shutter speed. Remember the distance you are from the subject effects the motion blur, if your subject is a long ways away your panning will be a lot slower so using a slower shutter speed will help blur the background. Also the distance from the subject to the background effects the blur. The closer your subject is to the background the blurrier the background will be.

Also setting your focus points to just the center helps, that way the camera is only focusing on your subject and not trying to focus on everything. Now if your taking birds flying with just them and the sky I set my focus points to all of them and use a fast shutter speed along with the constant focusing. Or I use aperture priority at around F/6.5. If you practice taking birds flying everything else will be easy

Here are some pages with information on taking panning shots.

http://digital-photography-school.com/mast...moving-subjects

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Camera-panning-4768

And if you don't feel like reading any more watch this. He has different ideas on taking the photos. He likes continuous shooting, I use single shooting but I have practiced a lot LOL.. In short the setting are sorta important, the main thing is following your subject smoothly while taking the shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQacE8z1T0

I found this tip today about "The Real Secret to Taking Spectacular Photos" also with ten ideas.... Read this page then go out and give it a try.

http://www.visualphotoguide.com/take-great-photos/

Thank you Alan for this web site and tips.
A.Lovely