Silvermeteor Loc: South Carolina, USA

Repetition I guess but my opinion:

1. Go alone! Allow yourself time without interruptions.

2. Shoot - Analyze the results - Change one thing - Shoot again.

I have read books, watched tutorials and I am getting better. But to really have the time to shoot, fail, change one thing & shoot again you need to be alone.

My wife and I go just about everywhere together since our retirement. She is supportive but will get impatient if I dawdle too long.

It's funny. We spent 2 hours walking in down town Charleston, SC yesterday while I took over 200 pictures and she did not express any impatience one time. Still, I found myself worrying about her and whether she was ok instead of solely taking pictures.

Go outside your house. Walk in your neighborhood but go alone whenever possible so you can take a picture; ponder what you did incorrectly; make a change and do it all again.

rthompson10

Again,

THanks all for the great advice!

RT

ddonlewis

This is my experience from 50 years of taking photos. Yes, cameras today are amazing at higher ISO's, but just like fighter pilots say speed is life, in photography light is life. You mention a baptism. Churches notoriously have terrible light. I always take probably 99% of my church and wedding photos with a flash. And I will tell you that 95% of wedding photos are taken with flash. And I will tell you that I've shot many weddings where every photo had perfect light/exposure. Now composition is another issue. I purchased a number of wedding photography books to get ideas for before, during, and after the weddings at receptions. These special events are to important to chance if your camera will take a good photo in terrible light at 12,800 iso at F2.8.

hamtrack Loc: Omaha NE

Check to see if you have an active camera club. If so I would bet someone would be willing to assist you.

Don Fischer Loc: Antelope, Ore

I have been fooling with the manual mode lately. To get a starting place, I click a frame in Priorty. what I'm looking for it the A and S speed. Once I get that That is where I start looking for an exposure to suit me. I also turn up the IOS setting as needed to get enough at f8. Then make sure you have a proper white balance. Out in the field, I start early and do the same thing from where I'm standing. I move one stop at a time till I get there. Keep the shutter speed fast enough so you don't blur the photo and move the aperture. It was a bit confusing at first but it worked. I don't have any fast lenses, I suspect they will encourage you to get what your getting, after all, isn't low light what fast lenses are for? Turn up the ISO, set the white balance, meter with a shot you can delete and go for it. If you can, use a flash.

Tom H Loc: St. Louis, MO

I didn't read all of the answers yu got but enough of them to see some really good advice. However, one thing was missing, (or that I missed): a local camera club. If their is one near you go to a few meetings. I've found mine to be most welcoming to a learner. Seeing what the others do and hearing the critiques has been extremely helpful.

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

There may be more than one approach to learning the correct setting fot different situations, but if a major portion of that learning process is not actual practice shooting it always come up short. Another project to help is a 365. I would recomend 365project.org. The basic plan is make and post one image every day. A more practical a way is to post an image for each day as it gets tought to shoot everyday.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

It is sort of like flying an airplane--you have to think about what you are doing--and the more you do it, the better you'll get--letting your camera do the thinking--for a beginner will go a long ways towards keeping you out of trouble.
Stna

Kuzano

The camera makes you stupid!!!

The minute you put your eye to the viewfinder, or look at an LCD full of information, the idiot lamp goes on!!!

Frankly that's what I finally came up with when I started shooting digital. I learned all the exposure stuff with film starting in the 60's.

Guess what... none of that has changed one iota. Light is light and determining exposure, composition, and creativity is quite the same as it was when you shot film for so many years.

What's changed is that now you are slapping a computer up to your face and snapping the shutter with a whole new system of controls.

And frankly, I can't images how the gearheads ever get anywhere. Always upgrading and looking for the "magic" camera. If you did that when you shot film, the playing field got a whole lot more complicated with "computerized" image capture.

Learn the camera you have .... and learn it and learn it.

Find out the style of learning that works for you. All that information on the internet, in books, in video is no good if you don't treat yourself to input that "works for you". Under what circumstances to you take input and incorporate it into your photography best?

And practice, practice, practice. and then do it again.

You said you were a film shooter, so the presumption would be that you know about the relationships of shutter speed, aperture openings and sensor speed (iso). Maybe not, but if you don't know those, then unless you learn them now, the digital era brought you nothing advanced over film, except automation. And yet everyone wants to shoot manual.

Well there are tricks to automation as well as there were tricks to exposure and manual film shooting.

So, while, with film, you could choose manual control and you had to know something about:

Exposure control under differing lighting conditions
Creativity-creating the style, mood and emotional considerations of good art.
Depth of Field and it's complexities, the moving relationship of shutter speed to aperture settings and the shift of that relationship for stopping action, or blurring/sharpening a shorter or deeper plane of the image.

Now you add to that, doing it with a computer.

Practice Practice Practice.

and Learn the information you need, but focus on what method of learning works for you and don't waste time on the other methods.

I had a stepson who was a bit AD&D and highschool was miserable for him... School quite literally did not teach him SHIT!

He joined the Army and they made a talented field nurse out of him.... HOW.... OJT (On the Job Training). He was so good, in fact, that the ARMY tried to send him to Medical School. He became to smart for that, and realized that the minute he hit the classroom, he would be "dead in the water".

And you can't teach brain surgery OJT. Or any other invasive surgery for that matter.

Things to try that are OJT are the field trips at your camera store, a local Camera Club, a shooting partner found at either one of these venues. Classes and field trips at a local institution of higher learning... College, community college, photography specific seminars and field trips.

Turn down the time you try to learn on the internet.

OJT and Practice, Practice, Practice.

And don't be deluded by the "digital is free, so I can shoot thousands of images" (it's not even called shooting any more, it's image capture). Don't use "spray and pray". Your keeper count will just go down.

Slow down and give every image the attention it deserves. Don't hold the shutter button down or just bounce up and down on it hoping for a "happy accident". You only get those in massage parlors.

You may even want to pick up a film camera now and then and shoot with limitations...like 24 images this roll.

One thing digital did not bring to the table... yet. The ability to shoot better images than film. Post processing may make that seem so, goofy crap like HDR, and stitching for Panorama, but not really better image quality. Digital is about after the shot. Not during for the most part, unless care is taken creating the image.

As a general aviation pilot, I like the analogy of thinking about flying an airplane. If most people flew an airplane, like they use a digital camera, the successful landing rate, which is supposed to be "one good landing for every good takeoff" would spiral downward drastically.

PhotosBySteve

[quote=
I think I'm trying too many things at once - shooting wide open, using center focus etc

I think I just need to shoot more and not do so much analysis paralysis...
JUst venting[/quote]


It sounds to me like your analysis is right on. I think you are attempting to do all the right things. Just slow down and take it one step at a time. Change and master one or two things at a time instead of everything at once. It all take lots of practice to obtain perfection!
Stay on top of your learning process.

NoSocks Loc: quonochontaug, rhode island

With no local photography store, how does one go about finding a local photography club?

jimmya Loc: Phoenix

Well first shooting wide open, as you know, will give you a deep DOF, the nature of the beast and can't be helped and that won't change.

I use center point focus and re-frame and it works much better than auto. The difference is, of course, with center focus you're telling the camera where to focus rather than letting the camera decide.

Perhaps you are over thinking it. Just relax, shoot what's there, trust your gear.

Best of luck

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Generally, local photography stores are far and few anywhere but in some larger cities. My answer to your question would be to first find something of interest on line, (like here). Ask the correct questions and that will probably lead you local people or your local schools.

You'll be surprised at what's out there. If necessary, start your own. :wink:

Japakomom Loc: Originally from the Last Frontier

MeetUp.Com

I have founds groups for just about everything one could imagine.

ldef Loc: Chicago

Try 'You Tube'. The categories are fairly straightforward which means you can navigate easily. I personally like to see what an expert is doing--as tho I were in class. Also, if its an event, especially set in a challenging environment, I try to take some shots ahead of time, to check my settings. Hard to adjust under pressure, at least for me.