hey kisskiss girl.. i liked ur shots of the chimp hope u dont mind me trying to adjust the exposure... looks a little noisy but if i had the original non resized one i could make it look good..

 

Thanks. PM me your e-mail & I can send you the hi-res ones.

 

thank you...

 

yeah ur pics make me wanna hit the zoo up soon

pm'd

 

2 ft empty wave fun

 

thats true... i guess post editing isnt so bad.. so you use bridge to adjust the raws?

 

adobe camera raw technically, but it can be opened via bridge or photoshop...

are you shooting in RAW or jpeg, though jpg's can be opened in the Raw editor, its never as good as opening a RAW image in the RAW editor

 

you have a waterproof case?

 

my guess is that you were shooting at the end 250mm and the problem is that the f stop narrows too much. possibly lowering the shutter speed may help. I wouldn't recommend increasing the ISO past what you were using because there seems to be grain that's becoming present in the zoo photos. Since the lens will automatically narrow aperture as you zoom, how about trying shots around 200mm and smaller f-stop number aka wider aperture. that would help too.

im not familiar with the xti, but it should have a meter that looks like this "IIIIIIIIII"
that be a helpful tool in telling you whether your shot will come out under or overexposed.

what helped me a lot was I was forced to shoot in poor lighting environments without flash. After viewing them on the computer, you learn the limitations of the camera and figure out tricks on how to get the most out of the equipment you're using.

I really like the shy gazelle pic, fantastic photo btw [/i]

 

yeah...looks something like this



but mine's yellow

 

x2

 

Thanks for all your input. I was definitely zoomed in almost all the way. I'm excited to take my class, too. I start in about 3 weeks so hopefully in a month or so I'll see lots of improvement.

I try to shoot only in 100 ISO cuz I know the higher the ISO, the grainier the picture. I never use flash, & most of the pics were taken in low lighting & I didn't have a tripod which I'm assuming is one of the reasons why the pics aren't as crisp as I'd like them to be.

The shy gazelle was definitely one of my favs!

 

camera shake doesnt seem to be a problem for you in the zoo pics, it looks more like the lens' focusing at the end. I have a 70-300 f4 and at the 300mm mark it softens up the photo significantly. my lens is sharpest at 200mm or so. So I'm willing guess that with your lens, you're pics should increase in sharpness if you shoot somewhere in the middle of the focal length, this should also allow you to widen the aperture and not have to increase iso.

not sure how your reacts to the different iso's

but I use 100-160 for outside daytime shots and for poorly lit areas I dont go above 640 iso if possible. Ill sometimes be forced to use 800 iso, but than that gets into bad noise territory for my camera.

 

what was the shutter speed on the shots.. i learned that changing the speed can lead to brighter shots as well.. i was shoot at like 1/500th all the time for some reason.. slowed it down to 1/125 - 1/80 came out lots better..

 

funny how its called noise but u cant hear it.

 

# Exposure Time (1 / Shutter Speed) = 1/50 second = 0.02 second
# Lens F-Number/F-Stop = 56/10 = F5.6
# Exposure Program = manual control (1)
# ISO Speed Ratings = 100

 

I shoot most of my photos at about 25-40th of a second. I go higher than that if its outside and super sunny or if im trying to stop action.

 

Finally posting some pics. Shot with my Nikon D90

 

Im open for lessons! I could use someone to shoot with!

 

To be honest, I always changed it. I know the lower the brighter.