blonde Camera Club

[Kev B]

Took this one in our back garden about 3 years ago, looks like the snow flakes are lit up. Just a Kodak digital on either auto or night mode, can't remember.

Click to see full-size image.

[Woodsey]

Popped into curry's today and saw this deal, would be pretty good for someone starting out or wanting to upgrade from an older cam. couple of semi decent lenses included too.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/canon-eos-1100d-digital-slr-camera-with-18-55mm-f-3-5-5-6-and-75-300-mm-f4-5-6-iii-lenses-11099693-pdt.html?intcmp=currys_seg_s2_DigitalSLRCameras_Canon1100DSave%C2%A3100_369613_03_24-12-11

[Geo the Sarge]

Taken today

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[kinboshi]

Some cracking photos there.

These might provide some more inspiration:
 http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/07/10341356-a-frozen-waterfall-and-other-surreal-photos-from-an-iced-over-germany

[Geo the Sarge]

Some cracking photos there.

These might provide some more inspiration:
 http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/07/10341356-a-frozen-waterfall-and-other-surreal-photos-from-an-iced-over-germany

Brilliant stuff there Dan, unfortunately it feels like summer here so chances of me getting any similar this year are gone 

Geo

[Woodsey]

Gonna take my camera to the gym and see if I can find a subject on the way there or back to have a crack at.

[Graham C]

Some cracking photos there.

These might provide some more inspiration:
 http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/07/10341356-a-frozen-waterfall-and-other-surreal-photos-from-an-iced-over-germany

lol loads of stuff like that hanging around Bracknell

Nice photos tho

[rex008]

Sledging on Sunday. My younger little devil.

B&W cos it's poncier, innit.

Click to see full-size image.

[Geo the Sarge]

Sledging on Sunday. My younger little devil.

B&W cos it's poncier, innit.

Click to see full-size image.

Nice shot Rex.

I have been experimenting with black and white but most of my pics look really pale. Just a beginner so any tips on settings for b&w appreciated. I just set to b&w and fire away, haven't a clue about changing other settings

Geo

[rex008]

These days, I take all my shots in RAW and do all the post-processing work in Adobe Lightroom. So this came out the camera in colour, and I've converted it - you can fiddle about with settings a bit to get nice contrast, but generally B&W works much better if the shot is nicely contrasty, which is why I decided to go with it for this one.

So I can't really help you much with in-camera B&W to be honest; just a question of picking your subject I think, the rest will depend on what you can do in the camera. That said, if you've got an SLR that will take RAW, I'd HIGHLY recommend Lightroom, pricey though it is. I took about 80 shots that afternoon (held the button down during some sledging runs!), and I imported, keyworded, classified, removed the dross, tidied up, did some minor post-processing on the reasonable one, in about 30 minutes. Then used a plugin to export to picasa. Does mostly the same for jpeg shots as well, but you leave a lot of your options open in RAW.

[RED-DOG]

These days, I take all my shots in RAW and do all the post-processing work in Adobe Lightroom. So this came out the camera in colour, and I've converted it - you can fiddle about with settings a bit to get nice contrast, but generally B&W works much better if the shot is nicely contrasty, which is why I decided to go with it for this one.

So I can't really help you much with in-camera B&W to be honest; just a question of picking your subject I think, the rest will depend on what you can do in the camera. That said, if you've got an SLR that will take RAW, I'd HIGHLY recommend Lightroom, pricey though it is. I took about 80 shots that afternoon (held the button down during some sledging runs!), and I imported, keyworded, classified, removed the dross, tidied up, did some minor post-processing on the reasonable one, in about 30 minutes. Then used a plugin to export to picasa. Does mostly the same for jpeg shots as well, but you leave a lot of your options open in RAW.

(held the button down during some sledging runs!),


How did you keep it focused? Was it continuous AF or just like, depth of field? 

[Geo the Sarge]

These days, I take all my shots in RAW and do all the post-processing work in Adobe Lightroom. So this came out the camera in colour, and I've converted it - you can fiddle about with settings a bit to get nice contrast, but generally B&W works much better if the shot is nicely contrasty, which is why I decided to go with it for this one.

So I can't really help you much with in-camera B&W to be honest; just a question of picking your subject I think, the rest will depend on what you can do in the camera. That said, if you've got an SLR that will take RAW, I'd HIGHLY recommend Lightroom, pricey though it is. I took about 80 shots that afternoon (held the button down during some sledging runs!), and I imported, keyworded, classified, removed the dross, tidied up, did some minor post-processing on the reasonable one, in about 30 minutes. Then used a plugin to export to picasa. Does mostly the same for jpeg shots as well, but you leave a lot of your options open in RAW.

Phew!!

Sounds like hard work to me, think I'll just keep clicking and hope for the best - lol

Geo

[ruthless1]

Popped into curry's today and saw this deal, would be pretty good for someone starting out or wanting to upgrade from an older cam. couple of semi decent lenses included too.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/canon-eos-1100d-digital-slr-camera-with-18-55mm-f-3-5-5-6-and-75-300-mm-f4-5-6-iii-lenses-11099693-pdt.html?intcmp=currys_seg_s2_DigitalSLRCameras_Canon1100DSave%C2%A3100_369613_03_24-12-11

Nice camera esp for someone wanting to start out, i have one up the ESO 550, just started out a little more expensive and comes with standard lense to start with, but 18 mp is worth the extra pennies also you can record on the 550 but not sure on the 1100D.

[rex008]

These days, I take all my shots in RAW and do all the post-processing work in Adobe Lightroom. So this came out the camera in colour, and I've converted it - you can fiddle about with settings a bit to get nice contrast, but generally B&W works much better if the shot is nicely contrasty, which is why I decided to go with it for this one.

So I can't really help you much with in-camera B&W to be honest; just a question of picking your subject I think, the rest will depend on what you can do in the camera. That said, if you've got an SLR that will take RAW, I'd HIGHLY recommend Lightroom, pricey though it is. I took about 80 shots that afternoon (held the button down during some sledging runs!), and I imported, keyworded, classified, removed the dross, tidied up, did some minor post-processing on the reasonable one, in about 30 minutes. Then used a plugin to export to picasa. Does mostly the same for jpeg shots as well, but you leave a lot of your options open in RAW.

(held the button down during some sledging runs!),


How did you keep it focused? Was it continuous AF or just like, depth of field? 

Continuous AF. There are a couple of possible modes on Canon DSLRs; the AI AF ones basically track movement - so it anticipates where your subject is going to be when the shutter goes. Pretty impressive really, and does a good job in my experience. Sports shots and fast moving stuff works very well. You can of course set it to single-shot AF so it locks focus on half-press of shutter, but the continuous sports mode gets set to AI AF by default unless you change it.

Phew!!

Sounds like hard work to me, think I'll just keep clicking and hope for the best - lol

Geo

I was trying to say that it makes things very easy . Once you've done it, you can organise your photos very easily. If you spend a little time keywording shots (and you can set up keyword hierarchies), you can then go back and search very very easily. Even when you take a boatload of jpegs you've got to do something with them, and Lightroom makes organising and classifying them very easy. I've been very impressed with it, and with software, I'm generally very hard to please!

[rex008]

Popped into curry's today and saw this deal, would be pretty good for someone starting out or wanting to upgrade from an older cam. couple of semi decent lenses included too.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/canon-eos-1100d-digital-slr-camera-with-18-55mm-f-3-5-5-6-and-75-300-mm-f4-5-6-iii-lenses-11099693-pdt.html?intcmp=currys_seg_s2_DigitalSLRCameras_Canon1100DSave%C2%A3100_369613_03_24-12-11

Nice camera esp for someone wanting to start out, i have one up the ESO 550, just started out a little more expensive and comes with standard lense to start with, but 18 mp is worth the extra pennies also you can record on the 550 but not sure on the 1100D.

I'd agree 100% with this, I've got 550D as well. Problem with buying kits like that is that although they are perfectly usable lenses, you'll soon realise that you can do better (for a more money, obv!). I got the upgraditis bug very soon after buying mine. I now own 5 lenses, none of which are the original ones I got! If you are that type (and I should have known better, frankly, it's standard for me), then I'd look at simpler kit and buy/upgrade the lens after a while once you've sussed things out a bit.

Edit: Just noticed that kit is with the 75-300 lens - this gets generally poor reviews. If you want a 2 lens kit like this, I'd look for one with the 55-250; is much better regarded, although obviously you miss out a bit on the long end.