Any photographers out there know of a good forum?

Exactly right Bill....congrats pillainp !

David I've already found DigitalRevCom and enjoy them, it's so great to have my hands on a real camera again and not that I haven't had great fun with my Powershot's and never see myself getting rid of a true point and shoot this new instrument will allow more shots and more proofs to play around with. It's the creative eye before even raising the camera to eye that I love and then seeing an affirmation in the lcd screen after or on the computer just cements the deal.

MrNeeds said:

NoN said:

You can give a try to 500px site and plus if you own a smartphone you could share and browse sometimes on their site with their dedicated App directly from your phone.

About: 500px is a photo community for discovering, sharing, buying and selling inspiring photography powered by creative people worldwide.

Edit:
For nature lovers: The Luminous Landscape
And for reviews and tips: Imaging Resource

https://500px.com/djbest

I was kidding a little since this site is more for smarphone users...I like the Blackpool Love and the pic of your Dad...impressive.

I still own 35mm analog camera and a digital compact-expert, though!

NoN said:

MrNeeds said:

NoN said:

You can give a try to 500px site and plus if you own a smartphone you could share and browse sometimes on their site with their dedicated App directly from your phone.



Edit:
For nature lovers: The Luminous Landscape
And for reviews and tips: Imaging Resource

https://500px.com/djbest

I was kidding a little since this site is more for smarphone users...I like the Blackpool Love and the pic of your Dad...impressive.

I still own 35mm analog camera and a digital compact-expert, though!

Some people use it for their portfolio, a lot of photos for sale on there as well, I used to use it for just my iPad as I had a camera connection kit for it, but it just wasn't practical, seems to make more sense on PC.

BTW the blackpool love photo was taken on an iPhone 4

Barman58 said:

I would advise anyone to set up a Flickr account, This is not the best for critique of work, as everyone seems to comment favourably so the constructive critique of your images that is needed to improve is lacking but you can find discussion groups for your camera brand and often the particular model, or even the Camera and Lens combination, also there are subject interest groups. Of course the free Terabyte of storage space for displaying & Sharing your images is useful

Best overall advice I can give for a beginner is to take as many images as you can - Switch off "Auto" mode and shoot RAW rather than jPegs

Hi there.

I love photography too -- I HATE mobile phone "Cameras" which I suppose are OK for recording say traffic accidents -- but even a small portable digital camera is streets ahead of a mobile phone one -- there's more to shooting pics than the number of mega pixels the camera has.

While switching off AUTO is great advice I would recommend that beginners especially choose Programed AE mode which gives the best compromise between fully automatic and more complex settings like fully manual or Aperture priority / Shutter priority.

Check what the camera has set and then play around with some settings -- unlike old Film cameras you can delete and with decent size storage cards there's no problem with "running out of film".

Avoid also mid-day as the sun is at the harshest and decent pictures are hard to obtain - and as Barman says shoot RAW if you camera has that setting - there's loads of post processing you can do afterwards.

There's a HUGE difference between a decently composed Photograph and a typical Snapshot. !!!

Have fun - and if you can get a proper DSLR you'll never regret it. Mobile phone pics can have uses for those one off situations like I mentioned (Traffic accidents - evidence for Police / Insurance claims etc) but a REAL camera will lead you into a life long (and quite healthy too) hobby which might even turn out to be profitable too.

In addition to the Fred Miranda site I've previously mentioned - THIS site (as others have posted too) is one of the best easily accessible places for photographers of whatever skill to learn from the basics to taking outstanding pictures.

There's also some interesting articles on the new "Mirrorless" gear - I'm going to look further into that as money starts burning a hole in my pocket again after a couple of years of "belt tightening".

The Luminous Landscape

As for Analog cameras I still have the old T90 whenever I can find some film for it --great fun though to do Black and white Infra Red !!

I also have one of the old Professional Pro Canon adapters to adapt the old FD (pre-EOS lenses) lenses to work on the EOS cameras. This is the original (and now quite rare and very expensive if you find one now) professional model with optics in it and a "conversion factor" of 1 X 1.26 aperture values reduced by 2/3 a stop.

AE mode can still be used on the camera - and it gives me access to some really HIGH QUALITY PRO 'L' grade Canon lenses which can be had for a song these days - only certain lenses can be used but iy's the nice big pro ones that I use like the FD 400 2.8 'L' and the FD 200 1.8 'L' - the EOS equivalents are HIDEOUSLY expensive. !! (Don't use the cheap "look-alites" for EOS=>FD - these Don't work. Only the pro version is of high quality and IT WORKS brilliantly with the lenses I've suggested.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo,

Great advice and you're so right about phone camera's, they are advancing in quality but one can only hope that just like the demise of the PC for handhelds as many speak to we will actually see the reverse with camera use as people want to explore higher quality and more creative uses. In another of my other passions of music/audio reproduction I can only hope people will take a greater interest in moving well beyond mp3's and grow into higher resolution formats.

Why do you think that this Canon adapter is so rare, have they stopped making it and have any other companies stepped in to fill the gap? Checking ebay I see now what the difference is..........glass it's always about the glass !

The new mirrorless are getting a lot of attention because of their high quality and small size. Some pros are using them and they appear great for traveling. I have an older Nikon D90 and was looking at the mirrorless Olympus E-M1 but they are still too expensive and not up to the Nikon DSLR D7100 at about the same price.

Many pro's and semi-pro's are seriously loving their mirrorless bodies. I considered them and being a Canon man I just waited to pounce on a 70D with a 18-135mm for a great deal. I would have had to spend at least 200-450 more for just a good body and the manufacturers are still limited but models and options are growing quickly. In the end the video, position-able lcd, live view, multiple focus options and touch screen won out and I couldn't be more happy.

I shoot Sony, which makes me a little unusual amongst serious photographers, but when deciding to return to the SLR fold a few years ago I had a list of parameters that I needed for my particular type of photography - Only Sony could tick all the boxes at an affordable price.

The great thing with the new CSC "mirrorless" systems is that, due to there design, they can utilise adaptors to fit most makes of glass. I know that there are full function adaptors available for the Sony CSC range to use Nikon. Canon & Leica lenses, so a change of body does not need to be limited to a particular manufacturer

Barman58 said:

I shoot Sony, which makes me a little unusual amongst serious photographers, but when deciding to return to the SLR fold a few years ago I had a list of parameters that I needed for my particular type of photography - Only Sony could tick all the boxes at an affordable price.

The great thing with the new CSC "mirrorless" systems is that, due to there design, they can utilise adaptors to fit most makes of glass. I know that there are full function adaptors available for the Sony CSC range to use Nikon. Canon & Leica lenses, so a change of body does not need to be limited to a particular manufacturer

Exactly what I read and tutorials I viewed, Sony is build some fine kit !