joshuainjapan

David, your original post reads:

 

"if several of your friends are hobbyists, you will get decent shots of all of your guests at your party. "

 

and you have now moved the bar to:

 

"However if your friend has experience from event photography, uses a flash diffuser..."

 

I believe that you have tried to make a point only to realise that you have overlooked many things in your statement.

 

Lastly, is it fair to ask a 'guest' to take photos as the main photographer? Then possibly have to post process and

print the photos? I personally think that the bride, groom and guests are at the wedding celebration to 'celebrate'. In

my opinion, if the couple want a pro, good on them... if they don't... good on them (see how my response to both

decisions is the same? As in, its not up to me, its up to each couple to make their own decision?).

Hey guys, I agree with Josh about "moments", photography has many different aspects, catching 3 shots when there are fast moving subjects is not possible. I don't know about everyone else but when I saw my first HDR photo I thought it was really cool, but now when I am looking at the ctitique forum I find myself thinking 'ah, another HDR photo...' for some reason now I am finding the lack of shadows and contrast in HDR photos not so appealing. I must admit though that clouds in HDR photos are pretty cool. I guess its once again a case of being diverse and not simply relying on HDRing (have I just created a new verb?) every subject you shoot after all, no amount of special software can make a poorly framed photo look brilliant :)

Hey guys,

I have been using various programs to crop images for the last 4 months since

joning PN and I have a question. Sometimes I look at an image from my camera

and like it, sometimes I think it would look better if I cropped it. When I

crop these images, sometimes I can do it straight away, it looks good and I am

happy with the end result. Every now and again I come across a picture while I

am editing that stumps me, like the one that I will attempt to upload. I look

at the original, crop it, then look at the original again and can decide which

looks better. Can you please let me know if the crop I have uploaded looks

better than the original and if not, where I could improve it? (or do you like

the original better than my crop?) I would appriciate any advice and/or

comments that could help me out with my cropping problem. Thanks in advance

guys, Joshua

Hey Crystal,

 

You know what, I recently bought a D40X (about 1 month ago or so) and had the exact same problem! I started taking photos and then compared them to the ones I I took with my Canon Power Shot.. to my dissapointment the Canon shots looked better :( Since then I have experimented with a couple of things and have drawn a few conclusions which may help you. Firstly, the kit lenses (both the 18-55 and 55-200) are not exactly brilliant. The 18-55 especially when compared to a new lense I bought recently (a Tamron 90mm macro lense) is quite average (the coulours, light and sharpness I get from the Tamron lense are awesome). This is of course expected as are cheap(ish) lenses and we should not expect too much of them. Secondly, the D40X over exposes photos so an adjustment to the exposure compensation is needed. Lastly, when using Auto mode (which I assume you have had problems with, I know I have) the camera tends to favour very using an Aperture setting which slightly blurs everything which the camera doesnt focus on. An example of this is a group photo I took a couple of days after I bought the camera. The front row of people were overexposed.... skin tones messed up, and the people in the back row were fuzzy (very frustrating.... I feel your pain).

So, my advice, albeit long winded is this:

1 - Buy a new lense if possible.

2 - Adjust the exposure compensation to -1 or -1.3 and use Aperture priority mode or Manual mode where you can.

3 - In the 'Shooting Menu' under 'Optimize Image' adjust the Image Sharpening to +1 (medium)

4 - Use Nikon Capture (expensive!) to post process photos.

 

I know two of the options involve spending more money, sorry about that, I am new to Digital SLRs at the moment so if there are any other people with advice (Im sure there are), I would also like to know what you have to say.

 

Hope that helps you somewhat,

 

Joshua