The things I learnt today...

[GorgeWalker]

So. Perhaps I should have checked with someone before starting this but while it was all in my mind I thought I'd bash it out. Feel free to nuke it if it's an issue, promise, I won't be offended.

I'm a complete novice in photography. I feel like I can determine what would make a nice photo upon seeing something out on my walks, the way the sun hits the side of a hill, the silhouette against a mob of roos, the way mist and fog rises behind a swan in water etc, but the technicalities behind using a DSLR are all new to me.

Now - while I'm quite a technical person, the help I have received here has been immense and invaluable, so I thought I would give back some. I thought I would start a thread to jot down anything I learnt that may not be the things we automatically find obvious which:

a. May just help another beginner
b. Raise a discussion with more experienced photographers who may even refine/correct anything I have learnt.

As I am a little way in my journey now, I will do my best to jot down a few of the things I feel I have learnt that weren't immediately obvious. I will add more as I go, and I welcome anyone else to either contribute or discussion what is raised here...

So here goes. I'll raise the top 5 "discoveries" I have made that have made the difference for me. The only caveat I will make is a lot of these will relate to the style of photography I often engage with, which is nature and birds.

1. Worry about composition later! Particularly for wildlife, which is a lot of what I do, use a single focus point and place it directly on the eye. Hold onto focus (See #2). Crop for composition later rather than grabbing focus then moving the frame! BIG discovery for me...

2. Back button focus (someone here told me about it...so I',m cheating a little). At least try it! Combine this with Continuous Servo focus and I feel you have the best of both worlds...

3. I'm starting to get the sense when in doubt, up the shutter, drop the ISO. I'm still battling with this, but feel it will give you a sharper image. Within reason of course - someone made the very true comment, birds never stop moving. With my 300mm lens I'm now doing my best to walk around with a shutter speed of around > 1/500. Given my experience, I think this gives me some buffer.

4. Try get the sun on your back and the subject out of shade. This one hit home today - have been struggling with sharp images as I have been taking photos of subjects in poor light resulting in soft images. I made a point of this today and felt I saw big improvements. Must thank the forum for pointing this out to me. Just passing it on

5. Go buy an external HDD!!!!!!!! You're going to run out of storage, real...bloody...quick....

So - that's it for now. Will add more as I learn more - but please, feel free to either add more or refine further. We're always learning, right?

Cheers,

Brendan