Hello!

[rex008]

Hi
Just joined. Been into photography for a few months now. Got a 550D with the 18-135 kit lens then got an old 75-300 IS of ebay. Oh, and a nifty fifty for peanuts (superb lens for the money). Just bought a Tamron 18-270 PZD superzoom (arrived today, yay!) as a holiday/walkabout lens. Read a few books (Scott Kielby, etc). Mainly done a whole mix of snapshot type photos of people, places, urban, flowers, etc etc plus a couple of staged sets of food for kids cookery book contribution. Really enjoying it so far.

I think my next task to set myself is to learn more about post-processing. Despite programming computers for a living (long-time hardcore C++ engineering stuff), seems like the learning curve could be steep, and the software potentially expensive. Recommendations for books & software welcome. Oh, and as a software developer, I'm a Windows guy. Rather throw myself in an acid lake before buying an Apple product (where's the pot stirrer smiley? ).

Edit: I notice the auto linker has added an Apple shop link to my "I hate Apple" comment. Oh the irony .

 

[arclight]

Hi Andrew and welcome to TP.

Certainly throwing yourself into the kit acqisition and why not.

As for pp, it does get complex. Recommending books depends on what software you use.
If Photoshop Elements then "The photoshop elements 8 for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby & Matt Koskowski is a good buy.

Dougie

 

[rex008]

Thanks for the welcome Dougie.

Tried the Tamron last night and liking it so far, which is good. The range is absolutely incredible, and the VC is pretty good too, at least as good as the IS on the 18-135 Canon. Just seems to lock on even at full zoom handheld. I was getting sharp pictures all the way up to about 1/20 at 270mm, which I'm pretty impressed by. I can see how this can get expensive though... £500 for a lens seems pretty cheap compared to most. I'm thinking I'm probably going to sell the 2 zooms I've got, but not decided what to get. Given I'm doing a Baltic cruise in the summer, there will be a fair few dim buildings and museums I'll be shooting in, so a wide-ish, fast-ish lens would be useful. But then the Tamron is f3.5 at 18mm, and to get any faster at that angle looks pretty tricky/expensive. Seems like I go wider, or faster, but not both without spending a fortune. Possibly a slightly wider prime to go with the 50mm, a 24 or 28 maybe. They seem to be reasonably priced, ish.

As to software, I'm wondering whether it's worth starting with Lightroom, which I've heard good things about, vs the full kaboodle of Photoshop. I'm not entirely sure I know enough of the functionality split to make that a sensible statement though! I've not even shot in RAW yet, tbh, mostly out of fear . But be nice to do some off-camera processing I think, without getting into the full depths of fixing up spotty faces and stuff like that . But, like I said, I'm shamefully ignorant of this part, given my profession.

I have the advantage of my other half being a permanent student (masters in law currently), so I should be able to get student licence pricing on Adobe stuff, which seems to save a fair bit, having looked up their products on Amazon.