A lot of "photographers" I know hate flash. This photographer probably is one of them. It's easy to hate flash if you don't know what you're doing - you'd get the overexposed, harsh look that's horrible. The secret in using flash is to bounce or get it off the camera (and bounce) AND not to use too much flash. The preferred mix between ambient light and flash light should be no more than 75/25%. To keep it simple, under expose the shot maximum 2 stops then use flash to fill in that 2 stops...Doing this, one can't tell whether flash has been used...You would have succeeded if without exif they can't tell you have used flash...Incidentally the Gary Fong that you have is a great bouncer - you waste a lot of light but then rechargeable batteries last all night and they're cheap. I have a number of flash diffusers including Gary Fong...it's silly looking but it works better than most others. When people give me a hard time for using it, I often joked that it doubles as my salad bowl...

The OP's camera is full frame. 1/FL applies.

You can go to Help section for instructions. Basically reply to a post but don't use quick reply and you will see at the bottom a choice "Choose File", click on that, choose your picture then press "Add Attachment". It's pretty simple. I'd really like to see your before and after pictures.

Great shots. I do shoot ospreys like you do. If I may suggest...try aperture at wide open...@400mm there's practically no difference in DOF between 5.6 and 11, you're just paying for the low Tv and higher ISO for little DOF gain. Also you'd be better off shooting at 1/2000 to get sharper pictures.

There are a lot of DOF calculator online. Here is one:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

I tried your scenario - @400mm and 150 feet away, I had to use 5DIII because 5DSR is not listed. I don't think the difference is that much between the two cameras.

1. @ f/5.6 DOF is from 143 ft to 158 ft so you have 7ft in front and 7.5 ft behind your focus point in focus.
2. @ f/11 DOF is from 137 ft to 166 ft so you have 13 ft in front and 16 ft behind your focus point in focus.

The osprey is at most 5 feet across so either f/stop will have the bird in total focus - you don't need to use f/11.

Vietnam is not that big of a country but it's still pretty big (the size of California). Where do you plan to be? Hanoi, Saigon, Hue? There are tours that will take you to all of these places but they are generally not photography-friendly (not able to do dawn and dusk). There are also photography tours but I haven't been on one...I guess you can look it up on the internet.

In Hanoi, Hoan Kiem lake and Hanoi Hilton are "must photograph" places. A few hours from Hanoi, there's the famous Ha Long bay that one should not miss. In central Vietnam, you have the citadel city of Hue, made famous by the movie "Full Metal Jacket"...visiting the citadel, you can still see pockmarks made by the bullets made in the 1968 fighting depicted in that movie. Hoi An and Danang are fairly touristy but offers many photography opportunities. At the beach resort town of Mui Ne, giant sand dunes offer quite a bit of photographic possibilities. When you are in Saigon, you must get a taxi across the river and take a night shot of the Saigon skyline...it's pretty cool. Here are a few that I took a few years back...

Hoi An At Night


Da Nang Dragon Bridge


Saigon Skyline

You must have a lot of storage space...I found TIFF file so large compared to RAW so why not store RAW files?

Not sure you want to listen to that knowledgeable photographer any longer - my guess was maybe you didn't hear his/her entire advice in the proper context. There is nothing wrong with using flashes as long as you know how to do it properly. Most wedding photographers use flashes - think about it. But let's not get into that discussion here.

Your pictures blurriness are probably caused by 3 things:

1. Too low of shutter speed - I only looked at the exif for a few of your pictures and one was at 1/15sec, one was at 1/30sec and one was at 1/60. All 3 were shot at 35mm FL
2. People were moving around...
3. Too wide of an aperture


The rule of thumb to avoid camera shake (unsteady hands) is to shoot at 1/FL or faster so the optimum safe speed should have been 1/60. The one picture at 1/60 that was blurry, unless you really have unsteady hands, was caused by people moving around. I'm a bit surprised that your camera anti-shake feature didn't save the day here - maybe it did but it can't do anything against fidgeting people...


In a couple of pictures with multiple people...some are clear and some are blurry...that might have to do with your aperture being set to 2.8 and it didn't have enough depth of field to make sure all people - staggered front to back - are in focus.

So when you shoot indoors where you know the light is low, you need to make sure you have high enough shutter speed and that means you need to use S (shutter speed) mode and set the speed yourself...in this case I'd set it at 1/100 if people are not moving or fidgeting and even faster if they move. Also, in cases of group picture, you want to set the aperture A to something like f/4 or f/5.6 instead of letting the camera pick for you - it always goes widest which is 2.8 for your lens.

In this case, you need to set both shutter speed and aperture, I'd recommend go to Manual mode with Auto ISO so the end result still is automatic except you get to control the speed and depth of field.

I think people are just being nice...also liking a picture is highly personal...you seem to think you can take great photos but that's just your own opinion. Enough said.

Many of us got into photography because of something - a trigger of sort. Mine was during a walk in a local wild life reserve and I tried to take a picture of a bird with my point and shoot...I got hooked so in my case, I started out with birds and birds in flight...after a few years, I started trying other genres and now I'm a lot more rounded out but still gravitate towards BIF...

I think it's better to have an area of interest otherwise you may never get past being just a casual photographer. But the bottom line is shoot something that will give you reasonable quick rewards and that keeps you going...be careful though, it might get expensive :). I went from a point and shoot to 2 cameras, a dozen lenses including a 600mm f/4L...

The 9001-1001 appears to be the ISO designation which screams "made in China". This tripod is sold on ebay for about $60 so you've got a good deal. Personally, I think the tripod is one of the most important pieces of photography equipment and I don't scrimp so personally I would not be trying to use something like this...but then again if it works, it works...

That is standard Facebook, you get to see everything from your friends. You have a couple of choices...
1. Go to the News Feed option and select the ones you want to see first.
2. As you get the news feed, click on the down arrow on the upper right and either Hide the post or to Unfollow the person. When you unfollow a person, you still remain friends but you won't see their activities on your news feed. You will have to come to their pages to read about them and their activities. I unfollow a few friends who are over-active and overwhelm my news feed with their news...

This is even better...great catch!

Awesome capture!

An alternative is not use a filter at all. Use the hood for protection.

Based on the picture, there is only one color cast - the yellow part of the tent. Should be able to correct for it without issues.