It's the main home page image on my website at the moment

http://www.jmhare.com

I also have a gallery page with an album of the images I took that night. Check the left-most link button on the top of the page, and look for the Delaware Memorial Bridge album.

While I tend to agree with sinatraman insofar as finding a good, reliable source of information, you can't always put blind trust in a local camera store either. They may or may not have a knowledgeable person behind the counter, they may also be pushing a particular brand of camera due to promotions, etc. What you may want to do is go to a camera store and test out their knowledge - for example, ask the counter help if s/he can tell you the difference between a GND and a Neutral Density filter. (It helps tremendously if you KNOW the answer ahead of time..lol)

Or ask them if "Image Stabilization" will help to freeze action. (Hint: NO. Image stabilization helps keep the camera/lens steady, not the subject. A wrong answer here is a big red flag, because it means the person is not especially knowledgeable about lenses.)

Buying local is of no use if you get bad or incorrect information. All you do then is perpetuate the ignorance.

I had a nice pano printed by a place called Ookiimage.com out in Hollywood - they do a 30" wide print for about $20.

http://www.ookiimage.com/order/home.php

+1 on the flash - generally, on-camera flashes are horrible, especially for close in, shiny subjects like babys' foreheads! :) I've probably taken 20,000 pictures in the last three years, and used the on-camera flash about 10 times.

The flower picture is good, but could benefit from a more out of focus background,e.g. what they call 'bokeh'. Open up the lens to shorten your depth of field.

The lower picture looks slightly out of focus to me. It could just be the way HedgeHog reduces the images for for posting.

No, everything seems fine. Not bad at all. The one with the gulls on the pier might have benefited from using a different aperture to increase your depth of field. See how the foreground bird on the right side is out of focus? Other than that, they aren't bad at all. Here's one of mine with a similar scene, also taken soon after Irene passed by. This is the old ferry dock pilings in Pennsville, NJ

Gulls on the pilings, Pennsville NJ

As has been noted, protector sheets for LCDs are available all over, from Ebay to your local Ritz.

For the FRONT of the camera, there are a lot of options. However, here's what I, and many others, would recommend.

1) A good quality UV filter may PROTECT the lens from flying dust, grit, etc, or even a small drop on the floor. However, it is not needed for UV filtering, since digital sensors already have a UV filter over them. So if you get one, you want one that is as optically 'pure' as possible, so as not to degrade the light passing through. Thus, a $3.99 filter from Walmart is NOT the way to go. Expect to pay from $40 to $100 for a decent one. And remember, you're buying it for protection as much as anything. You need to determine if it's worth putting a $60 filter on a $100 lens.

A Circular Polarizer, commonly abbreviated CPL is a good idea if you do a lot of outdoor landscape type shots. It rotates on the end of the lens barrel, and allows you to get a polarized scene, with deeper blues in your sky and fewer reflections from water and other shiny surfaces. Very easy to use, highly recommended, and again, you get what you pay for - Hoya, B+W, Tiffen etc all make good CPLs. Expect to pay $50 or more for a good one.

A Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filter has a dark half and a light half. They're used when you are shooting a scene with a very BRIGHT top half, and a DARK bottom half, such as a sunset or similar scene, and they allow you to adjust the exposure so that your (dark) foreground is exposed enough to see, while keeping your (light) background from overexposing the image. It's kind of hard to explain, just remember that a GND filter allows you to balance the bright and dark parts of a particular kind of scene to get the proper exposure. They come in two flavors - Hard and Soft. A HARD GND filter has a very definite borderline between the dark top and the light bottom. A SOFT GND has a more gradual gradient between the dark top and the light bottom. Most people use a SOFT GND, as it simply gives a better transition.

One last type that many people find useful is a filter similar to the GND, but it's not "graduated" - e.g., it's just a dark piece of glass. Abbreviated ND or "Neutral Density", they come in ranges. A "2", for example, is slightly dark, a "4" is darker than a "2", and an "8" is darker still. It's Neutral Density filters that people use when they're photographing things like waterfalls and streams to give that 'milky' flowing look to the water. An ND filter on your lens allows you to set a longer shutter speed, without over exposing the image. You can even stack them, for example, threading a "2" and a "4" gives you what amounts to "6".

Again, you get what you pay for. If you want to, buy a cheapy filter and play with it and then if you decide you understand what it does, and feel that one would be useful for YOUR kind of photography, get a good one.

The other type of filters, such as COKIN and LEE, that fit in a frame that screws onto the front of your lens, are also useful for special effects. They are generally SQUARE pieces of glass (or plastic) that you can slide in and out of the filter holder quickly. They're not that expensive, and can offer a particular effect if you so desire.

Hope this helps.

There could be two different problems here. If the LCD is dark on the bottom, but the PICTURE ITSELF is OK, then the LCD screen is bad. If the LCD is dark, and the picture is dark as well, as you say, you have a sensor problem. Or there's a whacking big piece of dust on the mirror. Or you had your thumb in front of the lens. Suggestion? Take your camera to a camera shop and ask them to take a look at it. (Resist their efforts to sell you a replacement 1DS, however...:)

Greetings, gang. New here, but been behind the lens for several decades. Here a few recent samples. Hope you enjoy.

First image is some horses on a ridge line on a farm near Havre De Grace, Md.

Second is a bald eagle catching his dinner on the river behind my house.

Third is a night pano of the Delaware Memorial Bridge near Pennsville, NJ.

+1 Exactly! The PROPER lens hood might have eliminated this. Also, a good circular polarizer may reduce solar flare as well.

See how white and washed out the sky is above the tree line? That's because your camera exposed for the dark stone and trees, leaving the sky overexposed. It's very hard to get a good balanced exposure when there's such a wide difference between the dark and light areas of your subject.

Something is causing a shadow to fall across much of the flower girl's face. I know it's hard sometimes when you're snapping away in a candid mode to make sure the light is right, but a quick glance to your left might have shown someone blocking the light. Other than that, it's a nice pic.

Most flash units are of negligible impact if your subject is more than 15 or 20 feet away. If you find one able to light up a basketball game from up in the stands, it is liable to A) use about a dozen "D" batteries, and 2) blind anyone sitting within five feet of it.

The best way to get good indoor sport pictures is with an appropriate lens. (Note : there's no "E" in "LENS".) You need a piece of glass that can open wide, e.g. below f/3, that allows you to use a fast enough shutter speed to both freeze action, and eliminate camera shake. A monopod MAY help with the latter.

You need to understand the relationship between aperture opening, shutter speed, and also, to a certain extent, depth of field. A wide open aperture, with a LOW number like f/1.2 or f/2 lets in a lot of light. You can also use a fast shutter speed at that aperture - generally anything faster than 1/60th of a second will eliminate camera shake.

However, the downside to a wide aperture is a shallow depth of field - meaning that the objects in focus will occupy a very narrow band. A larger aperture (smaller opening) like f/8 or f/11 will have more things in focus, but will require a longer shutter speed. For example, at f/2, maybe only object between 10 and 12 feet will be in focus - everything else in the frame (0 to 10, and 12 to infinity) will be out of focus. At f/11, your band of focus might be everything from 6 feet to 30 feet. Shooting a basketball game, I'd assume you probably want a fairly wide depth of field to get all the players in focus.

You need to balance shutter speed, aperture and depth of field to get a good picture of indoor action. Your best bet is to experiment with different settings and see what combination gives you the best result.

Your lens is not the best choice for indoor sports. It may not be bad for an outdoor, good light, walk-around lens since it has such a wide zoom range, but indoors it's necessarily compromised. If you can find a lens that ranges from 20mm up to about 85mm, with a good wide angle aperture, you might be better served. Remember with your 60D, you can crop a good portion of an image away and still retain your subject and a large enough file to print on 8.5 x 11 paper, should you desire. Shoot in large JPG mode to start. You might even try out the "nifty fifty", a cheap, 50mm lens from Canon that opens up to f/1.8, and has excellent optical qualities for under a hundred bucks. It's not a zoom, but again, you can crop a lot and still retain a perfectly adequate image.

For the most part, in a public place, you are free to take pictures of anything that is in "public view". Exceptions such as most nuclear plants, some Dept of Energy sites and a very few others are well posted. Thus, it is NOT illegal to take photographs of bridges, railroads, other infrastructure, homes, office buildings, etc etc. If you are in public, and you can SEE it, you can PHOTOGRAPH it. However, that does not mean you can sit in your car with a 600mm lens and take pictures into a person's bedroom. If the SUBJECT of the photo would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, then you can not photograph them without permission. This also covers things like hospitals and other "private", but open to the public areas - like hotel swimming pools, etc. (an open air beach is different)

However, once you are on private property, you must ABIDE by the owners wishes. For example, if a museum prohibits photography, that means you can't take pictures there. Even if you DID pay admission.

Discretion is always the better part of valor. If you sit there and snap a hundred photos of some babe on a park bench, she just might call her BF and he'll come and beat the snot out of you. Yeah, you could charge him with assault & battery afterwards, but is it worth it?

Just use some intelligence.