[Curious]

thank you both. these are the first decent moon shots i’ve ever taken. while i’m happy with them compared to all the earlier ones i still am not fond of the contrast. NoBigDeal‘s is really nice in that respect. i’ll play with that in the RAW file some and see if i can fix it.

[Curious]

let do this.

want to see my moon shot? go here

[Curious]

Yeay! Don’t we get to see one?

no, not until i can get flickr to give me a url that will post the picture. tried hosting it myself and at 1078 pixels wide it make the thread scroll sideways way too much.

[Curious]

i like the handmade theme but that starting photo is pretty impressive. i’ll look into doing this. thanks

[Curious]

i was counting the observatories in one of your shots. pretty impressive collection. especially to a guy who has only seen the one in rebel without a cause*.

*Griffith Observatory

[Curious]

Also if you have Live View on your camera use it at full magnification to manually focus.

yeah that would have helped. but viewed at full frame mine are ok with either auto or manual focus.

[Curious]

good lord but i’m a dumbass sometimes. reading ravnostic‘s post and something clicked. i’d been using area metering and seriously overexposing the moon. changing to spot made soooooo much difference.

so now i have 30 decent exposures and won’t have to wait 19 years for this to happen again.

[Curious]

I fooled around in the front yard and this is the best I could do. Hazy night and suburban lights don’t make for good shots of the moon.

much better than mine. it’s behind the tree line here. and my few exposures through a hole in the branches were crap. i was hand holding and resting on my truck hood but even the faster ones had motion blur.

if it clears the tree line before i go to bed i’ll try again. with the tripod and remote release.

[Curious]

Isn’t there a +/- button that will let (both of) you adjust the EV with the command dial? That’s fairly standard Nikon practice, anyways.

why yes there is. and you have pointed that out before but my mind is a sieve sometimes. like Kestrana there are a raft of features i semi know about but don’t use often enough to be able to rely on muscle memory when the time comes.

what i need to do is just take the camera and the manual and spend a few hours exploring both. and then concentrate on using those tools as i shoot.

otoh i’ve been off work for a week now and won’t go back until next tuesday. two days of that were surgery for skin cancer but the rest of the time has been wasted spent on other things. i keep meaning to do a day trip for photography but just don’t get that far. what with one thing and another it’s been two months since i took a photo excursion.

but enough of that 🙂 thanks for the input you all.

[Curious]

Hmm… I should probably re-read the Canon manual again. Too many functions to remember them all these days – I probably utilize 1/10th of my 40D (and that’s because I’m shooting a lot in manual these days)

i keep the manual in the camera big. guess i should take it out and read it. with this entry level camera you have to go through the software interface to change the exposure value. with a higher level camera you just twist the knob on the top. when i got this one i thought that wouldn’t be a problem but it does slow down the shot to shot time. plus it makes bracketing much harder.

overall i’m happy with the D3000 but the trade offs from the Maxxum 7D are noticeable. and if i get serious about my photography again they will become more so. but hey, blaming the tools is an old cop out. 🙂

[Curious]

olavf some/most/all (i don’t know) nikons have “active D lighting” which is really a nice feature for blending high and low light areas. instead of having to expose for the high and then take another for the shadow areas it does some computer magic and fixes both. not perfect but way faster than other film tricks i learned.

Kestrana while i shoot a lot it isn’t that high. usually 🙂 i just need to give photography a higher priority in my list of stuff to do. i got a large (13 x 19) format printer but have yet to really utilize it.

today for example i have two outdoor and three indoor projects. and i’m here. time to go outside and complete at least one thing.

[Curious]

With DPP, at least, you can bulk edit the RAW files – tweak one shot, and then copy, select all, paste the recipe to all the shots in the set. I’ll generally look at each shot individually still, but it gets things a lot closer out of the gate.

nikon’s viewer may do that. i tend to shoot a lot of very similar shots with slight changes in composition so i’ll try that next time.

a few years back when i went digital i got lazy and started using multiple exposures of the same subject instead of really looking at, and thinking about, each shot. i need to learn all the camera can do then slow down and apply exposure controls, white balance, etc as i go.

[Curious]

thanks, orionid . Actually knowing what you’re doing must be the difference between your multiple wins and my zero wins 😀
beyond the odd crop or border, I never post-process my shots. If it ain’t right, I do it over….

I don’t care how good you are, post work will make a good picture great, an average picture good and a crappy picture slightly less crappy. 😀

while you are right for me i only do that on photos i’m going to print. or perhaps ones i’m sharing on the web that i want to be extra nice. the total number of frames/exposures/images that i shoot precludes doing post to all of them.

as far as contest entries go they get crop maybe beside the resize. frankly bumping my # 56 to # 43 isn’t worth the time. that could be due to not being good at post processing however.

[Curious]

the flash/no flash thing really depends on ambient lighting. some weddings are better at no flash and some aren’t — duh. IMO no flash wins hands down it if can be done.

the over reliance on flash to force attention on the subject ruins so many wedding shots.

[Curious]

i’m saving for a D7000. it’s difficult enough without a price surge due to lowered output.

the magnitude of this just boggles my mind. even living within 30 miles of new orelans and the MS coast i can’t get my head around it. katrina is dwarfed by this and it was pretty damned bad.

[Author]

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