Introduce Yourself & Welcome Other Members (archive)

[alohf]

Well here goes, I'm Amber from the United States, and have recently bought the Nikon
D80, which is a great camera, but I'm a newbie and am I learning, slowly, but learning. I am a mother of 3 boys and one final girl! I would love any responses that may be helpful in my learning experience. I bought the camera mainly for my children, and the lenses I have are fine, but I also love to take pictures of wildlife and the wldlife doesn't tend to be very cooperative, so what would your suggestion be for the type of lens to use for that use, I have a 70-300 but it doesn't get quite close enough. Thanks for any help, I will post something in a more appropiate area.
Amber

[Colin Southern]

Hi Amber,

Great to have you with us

If we can help in any way, you only have to ask (after having 4 kids, you've suffered enough!).

[Roxy]

Well here goes, I'm Amber from the United States, and have recently bought the Nikon
D80, which is a great camera, but I'm a newbie and am I learning, slowly, but learning. I am a mother of 3 boys and one final girl! I would love any responses that may be helpful in my learning experience. I bought the camera mainly for my children, and the lenses I have are fine, but I also love to take pictures of wildlife and the wldlife doesn't tend to be very cooperative, so what would your suggestion be for the type of lens to use for that use, I have a 70-300 but it doesn't get quite close enough. Thanks for any help, I will post something in a more appropiate area.
Amber

Welcome Amber and congratulations on your fine family, just like ours, 3 boys then a girl (our daughter still complains she doesn't have three brothers .. she's got four fathers!) Our four are all in their 40s now with 11 grandies.

good shooting!! roxy

[Boadicea]

Hi all,

I'm live in Brisbane, Australia and 25yrs ago as a very poor student I had to give up interest a burgeoning interest in photography due to cost issues. 5yrs ago I bought my first digital camera (a little 2mp p&S) and I was so impressed with the ability to shoot and learn that I was hooked again. Being a bit of an instant gratification girl I really liked the ability to see the shot I just took and then being able to make adjustments if required rather than getting prints back and stamping my foot cos I blew a shot that can't be re-shot.

Since then I have moved onto a Nikon D40x which is probably more camera than my skill level requires but I am having a lot of fun learning. Photography is very much a happy hobby for me and I have enjoy every moment.

As much as the taking of pics is enjoyable I also love the digital opportunities of Photoshop (currently CS2- What do people think of CS4 - is it worth the upgrade?) and spend many happy hours just playing around in front of the computer.

I found this forum by accident and after browsing around though that it would be an excellent one to join and learn from. The only other online photographic group I belong to is Red Bubble and that's where my screen name comes from.

[Dave Humphries]

Welcome Boadicea,

It would be good to have you taking an active role and posting some pics, I certainly get a lot out of CiC.

One minor point, if you're not too shy a girl , could we have a real first name, I'm sure you're not as formidable as your screen name suggests, but I may be wrong

Sorry I can't answer your CS2/4 question (I'm still on Elements 6), but we have plenty of people that no doubt can.

Look forward to seeing some pictures, best regards,

[Dave Humphries]

Welcome Amber,

I would agree with Roxy's advice about camera supports and holding off from buying more glass (given the 300mm you have). - and think of your poor little mights going without shoes too (I have 3; G, B, G)

I suspect with a D80, you have more then enough resolution to be able to do a significant crop in post processing and still have a decent image (certainly for web posting) and this has the benefit of being both free, and not losing another stop of light (as I believe teleconverters do).

Look forward to seeing a picture or three,

[crisscross]

Hi all,

I'm live in Brisbane, Australia and 25yrs ago as a very poor student I had to give up interest a burgeoning interest in photography due to cost issues....
Since then I have moved onto a Nikon D40x which is probably more camera than my skill level requires but I am having a lot of fun learning. Photography is very much a happy hobby for me and I have enjoy every moment.

As much as the taking of pics is enjoyable I also love the digital opportunities of Photoshop (currently CS2- What do people think of CS4 - is it worth the upgrade?) and spend many happy hours just playing around in front of the computer.

Welcome to the forum Boadicea (another spelling challenge!, but I hope you will tell us you are really Kate or Deb in due course!)

If you enjoy the digital opportunities, don't be afraid to shoot NEF (RAW to those other peasants) and give Nikon Capture NX2 a (free trial) whirl before lashing out on CS upgrade. See PP thread for link to my pbase intro to NX2.

[Pavonev]

Hi All
I live in Victoria, Australia and have dabbled in Photography and Photoshop for a few years. I finally purchased a Nikon D80 in 2008 (a early Xmas present and have been having a great time since.
I recently discovered HDR, (High Dynamic Range) a very interesting and the results can be fantastic.
This is my first forum, and I look forward to sharing with everyone. Where do you post pictures, I have several that I would appreciate some feed back?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Pavonev,

Good to have you join us, the more the merrier, as they say.

The best way to put pictures up here for critique is to open an account at an external hosting site, the 3 most popular amongst members seem to be PBase, flickr and Photobucket, but there are many others.
The best option is to have one that allows what is called direct linking to images, all the above can do it, but I know it costs a nominal $23 USD for PBase (their free account doesn't), not sure about flickr but I believe with Photobucket, it may be possible on the free account. I am sure other's will jump in with advice over the next 24 hours.

So welcome and we look forward to seeing the pics,

[Daniel Salazar]

Hi all the new ones, welcome to this excellent forum, in which we'll learn together more than you think.

Hi all the old ones, I was away almost one month, after being very busy with the fiscal year here in Switzerland and after a two weeks business trip to Mexico, I'm back. I hope I didn't miss too much, anyway......I'm back

[Colin Southern]

I hope I didn't miss too much, anyway......I'm back

Welcome back Daniel!

[Nelepl]

Hi, My name is Nele and I am a newbie. I always had a passion for photography but didn't know much about it. I am still film user (little bit old fashioned), but I am planing on buying a Pentax K20D in the near future to extend my photography imagination in a digital way. I own a Ricoh 35 mm SLR camera and some lenses for many years already but I was never able to make something really great (because I didn't know how). Now I got laid off from work in January and I had so much time sitting at home so I decided to learn much more about photography. To be honest in those 2 months I really did learn so many different things which made my passion for photography much greater and I want to learn even more. Anyway I found about this website recently from another forum on www.cameralabs.com and I decided to join here to. I read already all tutorials and techniques which helped me to understand so many different things. Anyway there are some of the photos that I made if you want to see, and all of them were made long before I started actually learning about photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nelepl/

[Dave Humphries]

Welcome Nele and welcome back Daniel,

Good to have you both with us.

Daniel,

You might find the site a lot busier now, things are really taking off

Nele,

You have come to the right place to learn and if you've already read the tutorials, you off to a good start (and probably know more than I do).

Regards,

[The Blue Boy]

This may be a long one (for me!) as I'm finding it hard to find free time at the minute as work is being an absolute PITA. I'm having to juggle figures to pay peter to lend paul, so to speak. Basically I'm trying to keep blokes in work. Anyway I've managed to steal a half hour, so as penance;

@Wally, yes we would like to see your contributions, mate. (This also goes for everybody else!)

@Rob. Wow nice website and some stunning photography there mate. I hope you'll be answering some questions on wildlife and such!

@Bill44, Yeah, tell me about it mate!

@Amber, Welcome to the site. I have the lens you're talking about and I'm familiar with it's limitations so I'll try and get to you via PM!

@Boadicea, (Bloody Hell!) ,yeah, I've even put mine through a wall once! I kid you not. As for learning digital I'll say as I always do, you've come to the right place. It's a very steep learning curve. Luckily for us there are people at the top holding the ropes.

@Pavonev, Daves advice is, as usual, sound. A welcome from me anyway!

@Nelepl, Another flickerererer. Sorry to hear about the job mate. Hope you find something soon!

To anybody else who's on flickr and you feel you need any help, I can always be found here. BTW ignore the recent uploads, as we've just been having alot of light relief [COLOR=magenta]here!

Which spawned a new group, here.

That didn't take as long as I thought. Anyway a belated welcome to everybody.

Mark

[SteveF]

Hi Folks,

Having visited the tutorials for many moons I've got around to posting here.

I shoot semi-professional in that I charge for my work but it's not a full-time profession for me. Cycle racing, Dance Studios, Weddings and Portraiture forms the bulk of my work. The latter two catagories a smaller amount than the first.

A Canon shooter with far too much equipment to be honest. A 100% jpeg shooter who believes in getting it right and attempting to totally dispense with Photoshop. I enjoy shooting but hate PP work.

[Dave Humphries]

Welcome Steve,

I have done a bit of (road) cycle race coverage, just for fun, but I couldn't live without RAW and PP.

Do you have a website?

Regards,

[SteveF]

Welcome Steve,

I have done a bit of (road) cycle race coverage, just for fun, but I couldn't live without RAW and PP.

Do you have a website?

Regards,

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the welcome. My website is www.lincsracephotos.co.uk a bit of a homespun site purely for our cycling boys and girls.

RAW and PP? I've been there and thankfully saw the light early on and reverted to 100% jpegs. I'm a stubborn old so and so, using 1-series Canons and enjoying fiddling with tone curves, parameters and grey cards. Each to their own as they say.

Regards.

Steve.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steve,

It is a case of use the format that suits best, and for cycling I do use jpg, if only because my camera can't cope with taking more than one RAW every few seconds, which is kinda hopeless when they're whizzing past! Since then, I have taken to other subjects where I find RAW is helpful, but as you say, each to his own.

If you're interested, my cycling shots are mainly on the older Picasa site linked in my signature below. Obviously my aim wasn't to get the face of every rider as you need to, just get some half decent pics as best I could. It was fun, I made some new contacts and it got me out in the fresh air! May pick some up again this season.

Thanks for the link, you've got some good pics and nice simple to administer terms of trade there.

Regards,

[SteveF]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the comments.

I'm struggling to come to terms with the signature issue on this site but I'll keep working on it :-)

I shoot maybe 1500-2500 a week which is not many in the professional world of sport but as a part-timer that's a lot of jpegs to sort. I'll have a look at yours when my browser starts to co-operate sometime Unfortunately I signed a 'no distribution by electronic means' contract with the Dance Schools so I cannot distribute their images to advertise myself.

Regards.

Steve.

[SteveF]

Hi Steve,

It is a case of use the format that suits best, and for cycling I do use jpg, if only because my camera can't cope with taking more than one RAW every few seconds, which is kinda hopeless when they're whizzing past! Since then, I have taken to other subjects where I find RAW is helpful, but as you say, each to his own.

If you're interested, my cycling shots are mainly on the older Picasa site linked in my signature below. Obviously my aim wasn't to get the face of every rider as you need to, just get some half decent pics as best I could. It was fun, I made some new contacts and it got me out in the fresh air! May pick some up again this season.

Thanks for the link, you've got some good pics and nice simple to administer terms of trade there.

Regards,

Good stuff there, Dave.

Regards.

Steve.