New to dslrs... tips please!

J

Jagged Edge

Suspended / Banned
Messages
7
Name
Julie
Edit My Images
Yes
Ok so I have been out for the day and taken some ok shots...

What do I do when I get home... how do I go about sorting the wheat from the chaff?

And... what basic editing do people recommend... i.e. adjustments etc?

Is it really in the eye of the beholder or is there a way to get a shot that looks perfect to everyone?

Do you keep all your shots... even the blurry ones OR do you have a favourites folder?
 
Go through and delete all the rubbish ones, no sense in filling drive space, then look at what's left, adjustments can vary from one person to the next it's all a matter of personal preference, the time you wan't to spend etc and yes it is in the eye of the beholder and you will NEVER get a shot that is perfect to everyone :lol:
 
Go through and delete all the out of focus/soft ones, and any you feel are bad in whatever way. Then decide whether any you took were worth trying to improve in post processing. That would be my suggestion. Keep it simple.
 
You'll be amazed how much crap you gather unless you get ruthless..
As per the advice above, happily delete anything you look at think 'nah'.. anything that looks like it might have a bit of potential, flag/mark or whatever in your software of choice.

Adjustments are completely personal.. you might like the shot in harsh B&W, or heavily processed HDRs.. whilst they make other people wretch. :)
 
Zukabak said:
You'll be amazed how much crap you gather unless you get ruthless..
Click to expand...

I can vouch for that and I only had my DSLR for a month. RAW pics take up a lot of space if you take more than a few shots.

Mind you I have a problem with deleting anything until forced to.....
 
latercomer2 said:
I can vouch for that and I only had my DSLR for a month. RAW pics take up a lot of space if you take more than a few shots.

Mind you I have a problem with deleting anything until forced to.....
Click to expand...



I still have thousands of files from personal work all the way back to 2003 backed up 3 times on separate multi terabyte drives along with my work files. Those drives need constant checking and I'm moving over to a RAID setup finally.Welcome to digital photography LOL. Negatives were never this much work and who said digital was free?

Seriously though just cull the obviously dud shots and don't bother keeping multiple almost identical frames if you want to save space. If you have images that are important to you, back them up. If you don't there is a good chance they will be lost in a drive failure in the future.

BTW who's going to keep all my files alive once I'm gone? Oh well nothing ever lasts forever LOL.
 
artyman said:
Go through and delete all the rubbish ones, no sense in filling drive space...:
Click to expand...

That is sound advice. I didn't do this an as a consequence I have around 300gbs of photographs that, in all likelihood, consist of a few megs of decent photographs.

Cheers and enjoy you new camera...:thumbs:
 
definatly id say deleate anything you dont look at and think 'i like that' i used to keep everything but looking back the large majority of it is rubbish.

definatly get rid of anything thats blurry or out of focus...if you end up deleting most of your shots, at least you will learn from it.

theres been a few times where i have got home and not liked a lot of what i have took, deleted it all and went back the next day!!

good luck anyway!
 
chri23 said:
definatly id say deleate anything you dont look at and think 'i like that' i used to keep everything but looking back the large majority of it is rubbish.

definatly get rid of anything thats blurry or out of focus...if you end up deleting most of your shots, at least you will learn from it.

theres been a few times where i have got home and not liked a lot of what i have took, deleted it all and went back the next day!!

good luck anyway!
Click to expand...


Don't delete the files in camera though, you miss shots while looking at the LCD and its best to look at your shots properly on the computer to see what could be done to improve.
 
Whenever you take a photograph in or around nature, it's useful to expose on any part of the scene that is green, then underexpose it by two thirds. Usually when you refocus on the subject you want to take a photo of, the camera will tell you the exposure is wrong. Ignore this and take the shot anyway. In most cases, it will result in a nicely exposed, detailed photograph.
 
Jagged Edge said:
Ok so I have been out for the day and taken some ok shots...

What do I do when I get home... how do I go about sorting the wheat from the chaff?

And... what basic editing do people recommend... i.e. adjustments etc?

Is it really in the eye of the beholder or is there a way to get a shot that looks perfect to everyone?

Do you keep all your shots... even the blurry ones OR do you have a favourites folder?
Click to expand...
Hi Julie and welcome, some good advice given about waiting till you view on the computer before deleting, unless the shot is totaly blown or underexposed. My advice would be to use any software that came with your camera for editing to start with, once you have built a bit of confidence up with that then you can move on to something more challenging for editing later on, get the feel your kit first and understand basic settings and technique and then worry later on about where you need to improve on editing. Try and be as self critical as you can about your pictures, once it is on the screen take a little time to study it yourself, sometimes it will hit you straight in the face that it is just a snapshot, it is blurred etc etc, that makes it easy to put it straight in the bin :) Others might take a little bit more in depth viewing, see if you can notice that part of the subject which has part of it chopped off or is obscured by some other object. Once you think you have a decent picture then that imo is the time to post it up for further C&C. I would also think about adopting a simple but effective structure for storing your shots. Each folder that is created once you have downloaded them onto the pc will usually be named by date. Once you have a good shot that you would like to keep then create a seperate folder and name it by anything that will enable you to find it quickly anytime you want to. Trying to get a shot that is perfect to everyone is a mission impossible imo, try to get one that would please a lot of people ;) there will always be room for improvement then :thumbs:
danielfrank said:
Whenever you take a photograph in or around nature, it's useful to expose on any part of the scene that is green, then underexpose it by two thirds. Usually when you refocus on the subject you want to take a photo of, the camera will tell you the exposure is wrong. Ignore this and take the shot anyway. In most cases, it will result in a nicely exposed, detailed photograph.
Click to expand...

If only everything was as simple as a Volkswagon eh? ;) Have a read through this thread danielfrank and the trouble people have gone to to explain things.
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=309317
 
Ive still got most of my images, i delete the really rubbish ones ie, focus issues and random ones when ive pressed the shutter by mistake, but i keep some of the ones that i dont like just as a reminder what to avoid, and how i could of taken the pic more to my liking.
 
My advice would be keep it simple. Don't be affraid to use the Auto mode/s!

No point keeping bad pics, just delete them when you view them on the PC.
 
Oh yeh deffo only del on pc saves time effort and you have to see the image firat lcd can distort images.. Sorry I didnt mke that clear lol
 
I use Fast Picture Viewer which is available on a 30 day trial basis.

It is an excellent piece of software which allows you to really zip through your photographs (Including RAW) ad decide which ones to keep or delete.

In my case I can check about 100 shots in 10 mins and delete them or transfer them to another folder to keep.

A simple click on the mouse can also give you a magnified version of a part of the image to see if it is sharp enough.

EDIT: this isn't an editing program but is so quick and easy to use I wouldn't be without it.

A good FREE editing program is Photoscape or SERIF do a free one (Photo Plus - part of which is disabled until you upgrade).

.
 
Last edited:
ash59uk said:
I delete everything that is poor with one exception and that is those of my Daughter and those special moments that may never happen again.

Guess I`m just a soft sentimental old git :lol:
Click to expand...

I was doing something similar until recently, but then thought it was making me 'accept' poor standards and wasn't helping me improve. So now I don't and it has the added benefit of freeing up space on my hard drive:cool:
 
Personally if I deleted everything that I wasn't 100% happy with then i'd delete most of the pictures I'm taking (or was). Given that this is a one off time as our baby grows I'm trying to capture then it leaves me with no option other than to accept slightly substandard photos or go back to the compact which is not something I want to do.

Mind you my hand was forced when someone nicked my DSLR but hopefully thats going to be resolved soon.
 
Try lightroom, you can rate you photos, make categories, delete them by groups, edit in same place and showcase as well. And when exporting you can choose date, folder name and datgs. So helps all the way in daly tasks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top