Decided to take a quick photoshoot today with my new (to me) Nikon D90. I would still consider myself an amateur photographer, but hopefully I’m improving. Most of what I was doing today was playing around with different f-stops, and the macro mode. Let me know what you think; please leave comments/tips! [8-|]
Also, I just bought the lumber mill from an old lady at a train show the other day. She put on a new roof of wood splints. It looks like she used a glue gun… I’ll get around to cleaning up those glue strings!
I brought out my old GG1, too…fairly dusty. Sorry about that!
You are ahead of me on the camera front. Ours went kput and hasn’t been replaced yet. Keep fooling with the settings and who knows what will come out. (I don’t know an f stop from a _____, though I have heard of them.
I’m a bit ahead of you on scenery, as I have some grass and trees in place.
I would recommend, since you have invited comments, that you look into colour correction for the lighting, but also that you use the camera in manual mode. You can then control the dwell time of the shutter, for example, but leave the lens set at a much higher F-ratio, say f8 tof20 or so. As that number rises, you must either throw more light onto the scene or leave the shutter open longer. However, one thing the higher f numbers do is to keep much more of the range of depth in focus, right from close to the camera to the back of the scene.
Or, learn to do image stacking, which is a bit more involved.
Those comments aside, I like how you have understood to get the camera down to ‘eye leve’. This is really important for the sake of believability. I expect that nice camera to do wonders for your enthusiasm, and not just in the hobby. Enjoy!
I’m using a Nikon D40X for my pictures. I use it in full manual mode, including focus. My lens goes down to f22 and that is what I always use and adjust the shutter speed down sometimes over 2 seconds. If I don’t like the exposure it’s digital and taking multiple pictures doesn’t cost anything. I used a Minolta film camera years ago. In those days you took the pictures and hoped something came out until you got the basics down. If you haven’t gone to Bob’s page it’s a really good read.
I use a much lesser camera than your Nikon. Mine is a Kodak Z1485 point-n-shoot from back when Koday was still in business. Lighting for this shot was room fluorescents and an incandescent spot light which confused the camera’s automatic color balance. I use manual mode and alway select the largest available F-stop number for greatest depth of field.
Since taking this picture I have ballasted the track in this area. The freighthouse has stripwood covering the loading dock and a stair hand rail. Looking at my photo, I ought to go back and paint the stuff on the loading dock to kill the plasticy sheen.
