New to this forum, would love to hear your comments on my photo - autumn leaves

[Kathy O]

would love to hear your comments on this photo, very new to photography and would love any suggestions on how to make my photos better. Thanks.

[Donald]

Kathy

I notice that all your threads have the same name apart from the image title that you're putting in at the end. Similarly you're putting the same text into the message and not individualising it in any way. I think this might be a bit confusing for members and might lead to people not actually going in to some of your threads in the belief that they've already looked at one with the same name.

I love the idea behind this image and what you tried to achieve. I think the problem is that the sky was so bright and got badly blown. It's the sort of shot on which I'd have wanted to user Graduated Neutral Density (GND) filters on the lens to balance out the dynamic range and keep detail in the sky.

[Geoff F]

This one, I'm afraid, doesn't work for me.

In this case, I would have exposed for the bright area, assuming you didn't have the filter which Donald advised. This would make the foreground very dark but you should be able to recover most of the shadow detail during editing.

However, I would also have liked the foreground to be uniformally sharp

[Kathy O]

I agree about the sky, unfortunatley I really don't know how to correct that problem, I am shooting with a nikon coolpix 120 camera everything is pretty automatic and the editing software that I use is Microsoft Picture it -- it came with my computer which is about 10 year old. Thanks so much for the suggestions.

[FrankMi]

Hi Kathy, this type of image usually produces a great sense of depth but only when the close-in items are sharp. In this case, using an wide-open aperture of f3.1 gives you a very shallow depth of field (DoF) where you need as much DoF as you can muster. You are using ISO 100 and 1/60 sec so I would try to increase the ISO (if the CoolPix will let you) allowing you to raise the f-stop. You could also back away from the foreground. The concept of what you are trying to do can be great but it is not an easy technique to do well and the subject matter will make or break the composition. In this case there really isn't a clearly defined 'point of interest' that can be used as a subject.

On your next post, tell us what you like and don't like about your image and choose a specific area you want help with. You'll learn much faster getting the concepts down one after another rahter than an anything approach. Hope this helps!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Kathy,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me great to have you join us.

I think you are trying to go beyond what your camera will allow you to achieve unfortunately - I had a look at a review or two of the Nikon CoolPix L120 and it does indeed seem to be auto only.

With a good fundamental knowledge of photographic principles, more could be got from it, because you'd know how to 'trick' the automatics into giving you what you need. If you don't yet have that and can't use manual, it is going to be an uphill struggle for a while. If you have a disciplined/scientific/engineering mind, and are willing to spend a few hours experimenting, it should be possible to gain the necessary experience, but that is sooooo easy for me to say

The shot above was taken just a fraction too low in my opinion, there's a wall of leaves that are blocking the view, or it could just be the lie of the land the leaves are on causing this.
It also looks (from the angle of the trees, not the leaves on the ground) slighty 'high on the right'.

Even allowing for the small physical size of sensor you have, giving an effective aperture nearer to f/11 (in DX/APS-C terms (due to crop factors)) than f/3.1, it is still a big ask for Depth of Field - scraping away or compacting down a few of the nearer leaves would have helped, as would a lsightly higher viewpoint.

As to controlling the exposure for the sky and choosing a shutter speed, that's tricky without the aforementioned experimentation. You may be limited to just using a different scene mode from the more obvious choice to achieve what you ned. Although, you do have an option called D-Lighting, which it would help to switch on for this kind of shot (if it isn't already).

Hope that wasn't overload and do ask more questions if anything I said needs more explanation.

Cheers,

[Kathy O]

Thanks for your comments. I was trying to capture the blanket of leaves that was on this path, I thought this would be a more interesting picture than just taking it from a standing position. I can change my ISO, I can go all the way up to 6400 on my ISO, what would you suggest? If I would go with a larger ISO what would have that changed about my photo (I know these may be dumb questions, but I really don't know much about the technical end of photography and would like to learn). Thanks for your help.

[Dave Humphries]

Thanks for your comments. I was trying to capture the blanket of leaves that was on this path, I thought this would be a more interesting picture than just taking it from a standing position. I can change my ISO, I can go all the way up to 6400 on my ISO, what would you suggest? If I would go with a larger ISO what would have that changed about my photo (I know these may be dumb questions, but I really don't know much about the technical end of photography and would like to learn). Thanks for your help.

Hi Kathy,

The iso on this was 100, which for a small sensor camera is a fairly good idea whenever you can, keep it low, I'd say unwise except in extreme circumstances to go all the way to 6400 - the results will probably be terrible.

On this shot, you could have increased the iso to 200, or even 400, and probably got a higher shutter speed (of no real advantage) and possibly a better aperture for more DoF (Depth of Field), but as the rest is auto, without playing with it, difficult for me to guess.

Learning is the key to better photography, knowing why things happen and how to change one thing to make another thing happen, like the three sided exposure triangle of; iso, aperture and shutter speed, for example.

Have you seen the Photography Tutorials here at CiC?

There's a good place to start, don't try to rush too many at once, pick one or two, read them and if anything doesn't 'click' in your mind, come back and ask us (before moving on).

Cheers,

[Kathy O]

Thank you very much!!