Still working on my pic taking skills

[Henry C]

Took a couple of pics today and thought I would share. My camera is a canon pwershot a450. Takes decent pictures but not great. A new camerea is on my to do list for this year. I can't really capture what my eyes see vs what the camera sees. Anyway here's a couple I took today...

Anyway thanks for looking and as always comments are welcome:bigsmile:.

 

[Poseidon]

Those look ok. Are you using a high ISO? ( I see noise in there.)

Also, do you know where that YELLOW is coming from? Does it appear in the original files, or after you edit them? I looks like the yellow comes from areas of the picture that are very over exposed, usually that is WHITE, the yellow is quite strange...

(Oh, please don't take offense to my critique, I prefer to be helpful over "nice".)

 

[Henry C]

The ISO was set to 400. The yellow on the edges of some of the pics I think is due to the leds not sure though. The only thing I did was crop the pictures, no auto adjust or anything. I appreciate the critiuqe no offense taken.

 

[Poseidon]

Hmmm... I have not seen that yellow before. Admittedly I have not done much photo work under LED though. I'll have to do some poking around and see what I find. Maybe I'll stop by the LFS and snap a few pictures this week, they have LED on a couple of tanks.

Do you have a tripod, and does your camera offer an Aperture Priority mode?

 

[Henry C]

No tripod. I'll have to get the book out and see.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Henry looking good but bro you will be surprised at how much better things will look using a tripod!

 

[BigJohnWoody]

Not trying to thread hijack, but my question pertains to the OP I think. How do you take top down pics with a tripod?

 

[Henry C]

Henry looking good but bro you will be surprised at how much better things will look using a tripod!

Thanks Rev, i'll check around the local stores to see if they have any and how much.

 

[Henry C]

Ok so I read through the book and there's no AP mode. I did find out a couple of things though. So I took a couple of shots this afternoon after making a few tweaks to the camera settings. I set the ISO down to 80, adjusted the overall picture size and adjusted the picture from normal to fine. I adjusted a few other things as well.So here's another attempt:

 

[BigJohnWoody]

That looks awesome. Wish I could take pics close to that. I need photography lessons.

 

[Henry C]

Thanks BigJohnWoody, Im still gonna buy a better camera this year....

 

[Poseidon]

Your second set is MUCH better! A big thing that can cause distortion is the glass, always make sure you are shooting with the camera sensor parallel, or the lens front perpendicular to the glass. If you shoot at an angle, the refraction will cause a blurry image.

Still have to figure out that yellow from the over exposure. That bugs me!

 

[Henry C]

Thanks Poseidon, for the compliment. I was looking at some of the older pictures in my photobucket account. I never had the yellow before the leds so i'm thinking it has something to do with them or maybe shooting at an angle and getting some kind of reflection from the sand or something.

 

[Poseidon]

It very well could be the LEDs causing it, but it sure seems like it should be white not yellow.

Does you camera have a EV slider? it would look like -2 -1 0 +1 +2 with an indicator below it. We can work on an experiment to determine that yellow if you do.

 

[BarbH]

Second set of photos look great, I think it was rev that mentioned using a tripod and I definitly would second that. When trying to do macro photography you will get better results with the tripod, less chance of having camera shake and distorting your image. Other than that I would suggest playing around with the settings available with your camera and experiementing with what it is capable of.

 

[Henry C]

It very well could be the LEDs causing it, but it sure seems like it should be white not yellow.

Does you camera have a EV slider? it would look like -2 -1 0 +1 +2 with an indicator below it. We can work on an experiment to determine that yellow if you do.

I have +/_ exposure that goes from -2 to 2+
and then if I go to menu on that setting it takes me to where I can adjust shutter from 1"- 15". I have the shutter set at 1".
I changed the +/_ exposure to 0 on the second set of pics,that's one of the settings I changed.

 

[Poseidon]

Try to move that to -1 and then -2.... When using an auto mode, this gives you a little control of the exposure. When you do this, take the SAME image then load it up to your computer, so you can see how it works.

 

[cparka23]

I believe the yellowish hue is the result of auto-white balance. The camera is dialing down the blue in the most intense areas, and highlighter yellow is close to opposite of deep blue.

(Long time no see, Poseidon!)

 

[Poseidon]

Ya, it's been a while!

That does make sense about the yellow, it has never come up with fluorescent actinic or blue before, but the LED is WAY more intense I suppose.

 

[Henry C]

So my wife bought a new p&s camera. It's a Samsung ST66. So far it looks to take pretty good pictures. Anyway I took a few pics looking for some feedback. :tongue:

A couple with just the blues on.

Thanks for looking...