A test pic...

[Scales]

This is my first attempt at taking pics with my new camera of anything other then cars and girls. The quality lost some shrinking it to fit this post, but what do ya think? (puts flamesuit on)

http://www.brewcitymuscle.com/~scales/Park%20pics%20033.jpg

[Pantera99GS]

Doesnt look bad at all to me- but im not exactly a photo expert or anything. And is that taken in root river parkway?

[Scales]

Thanks. That was taken at the Wher (sp) Nature Center...

[SMS 1]

My personal preference for this shot would be a long exposure (around 20-30 seconds or so) with a 2-3 stop graduated ND for the sky :goof However I assume you are somewhat limited with your shutter speed. In that case I would just take whatever the longest shutter the camera would give me is. (prob 15 sec?)

Anyway a couple other questions . . .

1. Are you using "In Camera" sharpening, sharpening in PS, or no sharpen at all?

2. Did you shoot this in a fully automatic mode or a program/manual mode?

3. Is this the full size pic or did you crop it (I know it has been resized, but is this only a section of the entire photo?)

4. BTW this is digital right?

Anyway this isn't a bad shot. Personally I like it in B+W better because the texture of the water is pretty strong. The only real problem is that other than the water itself there isn't much of a subject and the sky is really blown out (not much you could do about that though other than an ND filter or wait till the sun changed position).

Hope you don't mind me futzin with it a bit but below is what I get with a quick conversion . . .

Hit-up yellow wagon on this one though he has some skillz and might have some input.

[jbiscuit]

this is almost an impossible shot to shoot correctly exposed. Your camera is going to meter off the sky (the brighest portion of the shot) to properly expose the rocks....what happens then is the rocks look decent along with the water but the sky gets blown out altogether. Shots with a dark shadow as well as the bright sky ARE VERY HARD to shoot correctly

here is what I would suggest. Set your camera to shutter-priority mode (the mode where you pick the shutter speed and it pics the aperature: whatever that might be called on your camera I don't know....maybe an "S" on the wheel?) Do like what SMS said and run like a 15 second shutter and the camera will pick the aperature for that to properly expose the shot. The 15 second shutter will blur the water and make for a nice interesting shot...which might overpower the fact that the sky is overexposed...who knows.

Also try a few of the different ISO settings (read: "film" speed) on the camera to see what looks best. I know when I had my Nikon 885 digital, there wasn't much noticable difference between the 100 and 200 but the 400 was much grainier (is that a word?)

The beauty of digital is that you can play around with a bunch of different settings to see what works. And remember, its FUN!

Nice work though Mike...post more if you have them!

[SMS 1]

grainier (is that a word?)

Is there any other term to properly explain the crap you get in the 400-3200 ISO range? :goof

[Cryptic]

Is there any other term to properly explain the crap you get in the 400-3200 ISO range? :goof

another term is "noise"

in jpeg compression it is refered to as "artifacts"

[SMS 1]

another term is "noise"

in jpeg compression it is refered to as "artifacts"

No really? I was being a smartass.

[Cryptic]

No really? I was being a smartass.

ohh :goof

[Scales]

Thanks for the tips and comments guys, but I'm shooting with a Sony digital 5.1 MP "point-n-shoot" so I'm pretty limited on the settings. I did shoot this one in Program with spot metering and center focus. I had to play around with the expoure values to even get any results cuz of that blasted sun. All the shots were taken "freehand" since I don't have a tripod... for the camera :goof