Introduce Yourself & Welcome Other Members (archive)

Hi! I am just starting to learn photography by myself and received as a gist from a friend a Canon EOS Dogital Rebel XT. I used to shoot with a point and shoot camera and the new one seems so complicated. i have a 50mm lens and would like to know what can i do with this lens and what other lens i have to purchase in order to have a variety of possibilities....

i am trying to study from the manual but i feel lost :(... any advices?

thanks!

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Originally Posted by vinat

Hi! I am just starting to learn photography by myself and received as a gist from a friend a Canon EOS Dogital Rebel XT. I used to shoot with a point and shoot camera and the new one seems so complicated. i have a 50mm lens and would like to know what can i do with this lens and what other lens i have to purchase in order to have a variety of possibilities....

i am trying to study from the manual but i feel lost :(... any advices?

thanks!

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Hi Vinat. Welcome to the club! As far as using your new camera goes, a lot of us felt intimidated by the manual that comes with it. They are often not written in the most helpful way.
For a start, I'd suggest you just set the camera to "Auto" mode and go out shooting for a bit. Get used to how the camera feels in your hands.
Make use of the tutorials on CiC, as they offer excellent advice to both the beginner and the more experienced. A good first step might be learning about how aperture, exposure etc affects your images.
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...a-exposure.htm
Let us know what type of photography you are most interested in, eg portrait, landscape, flowers, street photography etc and then we can give you better advice about what lenses you might want. Your 50mm will let you do all of these to a certain extent - you might need to "zoom with your feet" to fit more or less into the frame.
Above all, be patient with yourself. In no time at all, your camera and its workings will become familiar to you. :)

Hi everybody,
I am new ;) to this community and glad to have been offered the membership. I love photography. I would soon be sharing my photos that I have taken.

thanks kit! while waiting for an answer i played a little bit with the camera and read again the manual and found one the things i like a lot: how to shoot with a shallow depth of field. i set the camera in AV mode and made some shoots and it worked. if i put the camera in auto mode, how can i get the same effect?
i love street ohotography and photos portrait style and macro for flowers and abstracts. i realized that the zoom in i can get with this lens is almost zero. can i take good macro shots with lens i have now?

i have so many questions :(

Hello everybody,
I'm a retired woman living in the South of France. I bought my first DSLR Nikon D90 April 2010 and I am overjoyed with it!


PS I say hello to all the new and old members.

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Originally Posted by ebv775

Hello everybody,
I'm a retired woman living in the South of France. I bought my first DSLR Nikon D90 April 2010 and I am overjoyed with it!


PS I say hello to all the new and old members.

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Hi Erika,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have you join us.

Have you had a digital camera before the D90?
What sort of things do you want to photograph?

Best regards,

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Originally Posted by Mike in UK

Hi,
I'm new here as I just joined after being referred from a Facebook site (Oxford School of Photography).
I started with a Zenit B SLR and now have a Nikon D300s (favorite lens is the 105mm F2.8 Micro VRII), a Panasonic DMC-LX3 and a Samsung NV3 (not used much now).
Looking forward to reading the tutorials and seeing what the folks on here think of my photographs.
There's already a sample set on Flickr if anyone wishes to have a look.
I like this site for it's tutorials and forum though!
Will update my profile soon.

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Hi Mike,

Great to have you join us.

Haven't found the Flickr gallery yet (but I think there's a link in another thread somewhere), but I guess you are into macro photography.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ....

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Originally Posted by vinat

thanks kit! while waiting for an answer i played a little bit with the camera and read again the manual and found one the things i like a lot: how to shoot with a shallow depth of field. i set the camera in AV mode and made some shoots and it worked. if i put the camera in auto mode, how can i get the same effect?
i love street ohotography and photos portrait style and macro for flowers and abstracts. i realized that the zoom in i can get with this lens is almost zero. can i take good macro shots with lens i have now?

i have so many questions :(

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Hi Vinat,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me.

Av is just another form of Auto, so if you're comfortable using it, I would advise you to stick with it and practice lots.

Your lens is a fixed focal length (50mm), zoom lenses state two focal lengths, e.g. 18-55mm, the small amount of zoom you see is just due to focusing. You should be able to get some decent flower type shots with a 50mm, but not insect sized ones because it won't focus close enough to get sufficient magnification.

Best regards,

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Originally Posted by Jannat Khan

Hi everybody,
I am new ;) to this community and glad to have been offered the membership. I love photography. I would soon be sharing my photos that I have taken.

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Hi Jannat,

We'd love to see some of your pictures, so have a look around and decide whether you just want feedback and if so, just create a thread in the most appropriate forum, or enter one of the challenges or Mini competitions.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ...

Hello to all the new members. Looking forward to seeing your photos.

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Originally Posted by Shadowman

Hello to all the new members. Looking forward to seeing your photos.

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Despite being new myself I would like to say hello to everyone "newer" as well and also highly recommend taking part in the competitions. It's a lot of fun, you get to see the great work of the members here, and I think it ratchets up the intensity with which you approach your own photography - at least "I" think so. Just a great forum.

Steve :D

thanks dave!

i really want to know which are the basic lenses i need to buy. of course i want a good zoom, a wide angle lens and what else do i need?
some body talked to me yesterday about sigma lenses vs canon lenses. i have no idea about prices and names. what are your suggestions for the basic lenses and for the brand? all those lenses with letters and numbers confuse me ! and i dont want to go to the shop and ask because they will want to sell me whatever they want and not what i need.
thanks

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Originally Posted by vinat

thanks kit! while waiting for an answer i played a little bit with the camera and read again the manual and found one the things i like a lot: how to shoot with a shallow depth of field. i set the camera in AV mode and made some shoots and it worked. if i put the camera in auto mode, how can i get the same effect?

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Putting the camera in Auto mode means the camera controls everything about the settings. You can't control any effect such as depth of field. If you want to control depth of field, you need to be eithe in AV mode or in manual. AV is probably the best for a start. You then select the depth of field by choosing a bigger number (bigger depth of field) or a smaller number (smaller depth of field). But you have probably worked this out already. :)

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Originally Posted by vinat

i love street ohotography and photos portrait style and macro for flowers and abstracts. i realized that the zoom in i can get with this lens is almost zero. can i take good macro shots with lens i have now?

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The 50mm is a good all-rounder and a lens that many would describe as essential. As Dave has said, there is no zoom, but you can change position to get what you want in the frame.

I wouldn't be tempted to rush into getting a macro lens until you have a bit more experience with your camera as macro is more of a challenge. If you learn the basics with what you have now, you will find learning a new lens so much easier.

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Originally Posted by vinat

i have so many questions :(

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Questions are good. That is one of the ways we learn. Remember, to the person who doesn't know, there is no such thing as a silly question.

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Originally Posted by vinat

i really want to know which are the basic lenses i need to buy. of course i want a good zoom, a wide angle lens and what else do i need?
some body talked to me yesterday about sigma lenses vs canon lenses. i have no idea about prices and names. what are your suggestions for the basic lenses and for the brand? all those lenses with letters and numbers confuse me ! and i dont want to go to the shop and ask because they will want to sell me whatever they want and not what i need.
thanks

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Please - unless you have money to burn, don't rush into new lenses just yet, because you will make bad buys and waste momey. You NEED to know what all the numbers and letters mean before you can make an intelligent purchase. Go slowly, and you will be much more satisfied long term. And you are right about the shops - they will cause you to part with the biggest amount of money that they can wheedle out of you.

As far as Sigma versus Canon goes, both companies make good lenses and not so good.

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Originally Posted by vinat

all those lenses with letters and numbers confuse me !

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Here are a few websites that might help.

http://www.examiner.com/x-12676-Clev...clear-as-glass

http://www.rags-int-inc.com/PhotoTechStuff/Lens101/

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...+of+lens+terms

http://www.hypergurl.com/blog/photog...s-on-lens.html

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography..._acronyms.html

okay, if i want to shoot with zoom, what do you recomend?

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Originally Posted by vinat

okay, if i want to shoot with zoom, what do you recomend?

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Hi again Vinat,

I suggest you start a new thread in the DSLR forum which tells us more about what you want to photograph and asking this question again there. You will get a better spread of answers there and we need to know what you want to capture alongside the question, trying to scroll up and down this intro thread just takes a while.

My thanks to Kit (Klickit) for offering very good advice in my absence (overnight here) ... and now I'm off to work and probably won't be back for 12 hours.

Cheers,

Hi, I am a new member here. I live in the Netherlands, have been photographing for years and recently bought a Nikon D90 after thinking long and hard about micro 43 systems. Still too many disadvantages in my view (price, image quality), but I see myself buying into the system in the not too far removed future.
My other camera is a Ricoh GX200, which I find great for macro work.

Hi to all,

I have visited the CiC site on several occasions in the past and decided to join today in order to enjoy full access to this wonderful site. I live in the U.S.A., retired for 20 years, after a 25 year career in law enforcement. Prior to that I served in the U.S.A.F. for 4 years, and fortunately was assigned to RAF Alconbury, about 20 from Cambridge, for 3 years of that enlistment. During that time I became very interested in photography and learned to process B & W film that I exposed by using the photo lab on base. My equipment is primarily Nikon, and 90% of my photography is now digital, currently PP in PS CS5, also use Lightroom 3 and NX2 on occasion. My first name is Don.

Hello all, my name is Ian Major but I use BroXn_ReflXn as my screen name for all of my online activities. I've been into photography for about 12 years now, however I have just recently started taking it much more serious. I shoot portraits, landscapes and architechture mainly and I really enjoy the HDR process ritual. I hope to spend much time here at CIC and learn a lot.
You may check out some of my work at the following sites:
http://ianmajor.daportfolio.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/broxn_reflxn/