Beginner Point in the right direction...

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Orbeaboy

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Hello All...

Looking for advice, as a newbie, on where to start with my photography journey!


I have a Nikon D3300 with the standard kit lens. I'd like to photograph landscapes/wildlife rather than people and sports etc, and maybe a bit of astro - I'll come that in a bit!


I've got books and magazines and read up, but there's so much to take in it's quite bamboozling! Also,. the lens I use doesn't seem to capture what I want it to - hard to explain, but they just look a bit meh! I'd be happy to buy another lens, but not sure what to look at.

I'm travelling to the Maldives later in the year and obviously want to take 'breathtaking' pictures but need practice and advice on where to start...and the 'astro/night sky' advice, as I'd like to take advantage of the low light pollution.


I'm guessing I'd need a polarising filter to stop glare from sea..but anything else?


I did buy a 70-300mm lens for long range wildlife (it was an impulse buy), but that went back as it didn't have image stabilisation...


Any advice would be gratefully accepted.

Simon



 
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You can buy the most expensive and best gear possible but if you don't know how to use it you won't find any improvement in your photography. I would recommend a longer lens though and not just for wildlife, it can be very useful for landscape - don't believe it when magazines insist you need an ultra wide lens for that. I used to have the 55-300mm VR which was ok, I imagine they can be bought fairly cheaply. Photography is more than just kit though, it's about composition, light, weather and knowing what to shoot in different conditions (well the last point relates to landscape and wildlife). It is complicated but all you can do is keep practicing and hopefully one day it'll click, and I think it would certainly help if you just concentrate on one area to start with. If you like landscape and wildlife I'd definitely recommend you subscribe to Outdoor Photography magazine, and you could try buying their competition books for some additional inspiration - https://www.opoty.co.uk/pages/book/ . I'd recommend getting some of the Landscape Photographer of the Year books as well for that purpose. It definitely helps to see award winning shots and aim for that kind of standard
 
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The RFM strategy is among the better ways to master your camera.
Get to know it intimately so you'll always be in a position to solve a
bit of issues without help.

From there, go for it. Always keep an eye on the histogram and you
will increase you chances for good shots. Have a good time!
 
The 70-300 went back because it didn't have image stabilization?!?!?!.... [heavy sigh[

Yeah... this sounds oh-so-familiar, and I'm sorry, but it's Oyrsh-Wisdom.... I can't give you directions, because you are starting from the wrong place...

Good Technique beats Expensive Technology, time after time, after time.... you cant 'buy' better photo's unless you pay a better photographer to take them for you...

However, did we manage to take photographs for all those decades before electrickery gave the marketing-men so much opportunity to flog is stuff they soooo want us to believe is absolutely 'essential' to the task...... [shrug]..... I don't know what to tell you, really...... other than, yeah, we ALL aspire to take 'breathtaking' photo's.... few ever achieve it! But, when they happen, it's not because of the camera, it's because the photographer's good, or lucky, or both!

Yeah, there's a lot to 'take in'... best start-place though is actually the camera's user manual, & if the D3300 is like the D3200 it's even got one of them in it! After, and probably during, that. Keep-It-Simple-Silly! Modern DSLR's can be so point-and-press friendly, you can give one to a five year-old and they'll get good photo's with it.... Actually, tried & tested when my daughter, then doing her GCSE Photo-Course, 'borrowed' my O/H's pre-school granddaughter, to be a model... discovered pre-school children don't 'model'. they take over... which come to think of it, is how my daughter 'won' her first camera, I think! However......

Point is, don't over-think it, and dial down your aspirations a few notches. You see the 'Stunning' Photo's taken by the old-hands.... you DON'T see their duffers!! And there'll be many more of them, believe me! Like I said, good-luck and good-judgement count for most. The camera? The Lens? Filters? Are but a tiny tiny TINY part of the job.And even where they may make a difference, its a tiny tiny fraction of a fraction that they might 'help'

If you want these 'stunning' pictures you imagine.... put technique over technology, and practice, practice, practice. And good Composition, taking the time to look at what you can see in the viewfinder; identifying what's interesting and what's distracting; finding the 'angle' to include interest, and exclude distraction, to draw the viewer's attention on the 'subject', finding the 'perspective'... its 99% looking THROUGH the camera, NOT, looking AT the camera... buttons and settings, wont 'make' a stunning picture... LOOKING will. "North-South-East-West, Check the Corner's Then the Rest".. take the time to LOOK, through the camera, not at the camera..that's where 'better' photo's start.

Like I said, ts Oyrsh-Directions.... I wudna-be-wann-tu-start-frum-ere! So find another start-point, you don't need to change your lens or your camera or you 'other-kit', you need to change your approach, and your expectations.
 
Veni said:
Also,. the lens I use doesn't seem to capture what I want it to - hard to explain, but they just look a bit meh!
Click to expand...

Unless it's not including enough, it's capturing what you've chosen to point it at, so it's down to you, not the lens!

Teflon-Mike said:
If you want these 'stunning' pictures you imagine.... put technique over technology, and practice, practice, practice. And good Composition, taking the time to look at what you can see in the viewfinder; identifying what's interesting and what's distracting; finding the 'angle' to include interest, and exclude distraction, to draw the viewer's attention on the 'subject', finding the 'perspective'... its 99% looking THROUGH the camera, NOT, looking AT the camera... buttons and settings, wont 'make' a stunning picture... LOOKING will. "North-South-East-West, Check the Corner's Then the Rest".. take the time to LOOK, through the camera, not at the camera..that's where 'better' photo's start.
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I'll agree with the above, but I'd start earlier. Before you even put the camera to your eye, decide what you want to photograph. And I don't mean "I want to photograph this stunning landscape" I mean "I want to photograph this particular aspect of the landscape that makes it stunning". Every landscape you ever see will be made up of land, sky, trees, hedges, bushes grass etc. Something must set one apart from another, and that's what you need to identify first.

After that, it's finding the best viewpoint to reveal the aspect of the scene that appeals, and then choosing the lens to include all you want and exclude the rest. Under "viewpoint" I don't just mean side to side, but forwards and backwards as well; side to side will alter the spatial relationships and backwards/forwards the perspective.
 
A big thanks to everyone for your contributions. It was a bit of a rambling opening thread, I should have thought about what I wanted to say before typing!

I think I have realised that I need to 'learn to walk before trying to run' and as has been said, decide what I want to to achieve from my pictures.
 
FWIW, I have a D3300 (purchased mid last year) and have also struggled with this question, is it me or do I need some expensive lens to take better pictures, especially when you look on sites like Flickr and those great pictures always seem to have been taken with better and more expensive kit!

I also had a 70-300mm zoom, and also tried to take pictures of birds in flight, and also failed miserably for the most part. The problem is not the lens however, I've taken some perfectly good pictures of less demanding subjects with it. A faster shutter speed and better technique would've helped more than image stabilisation I'm sure.

What I did buy however is a 18-200mm so-called super-zoom, (and I believe there's a 18-300mm version), and it has VR (Nikon's image stabilisation), but it doesn't take better pictures, it just saves me having to swap lens as often as I might otherwise and I find it a better everyday walk-around lens, although invest in a shoulder strap rather than neck strap, as it weighs a fair bit more than the kit lens!

Though I'll be honest, I've saved myself the joys of gear acquisition in the hope of improving my pictures simply through lack of funds, God knows what I would've bought if I could afford it. Lack of money has forced me to work with what I have more than that being the right way to go about things!
 
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mark.roper said:
FWIW, I have a D3300 (purchased mid last year) and have also struggled with this question, is it me or do I need some expensive lens to take better pictures, especially when you look on sites like Flickr and those great pictures always seem to have been taken with better and more expensive kit!

...
Click to expand...
As do millions of crap pictures.

Like any hobby, it’s never about the gear, but always about how you use it. Some images will be better taken with ‘better’ gear, or easier to take with better gear, but you can’t buy your way into getting better shots, you need to practice.

Millions of kids round the world will be kicking a ball about today, because they enjoy it, and they’d all like to be a bit better, if they get better, they might buy some decent boots, and maybe they’ll become professional, and then they’ll get the best boots money can buy. So the pro footballers have the best boots, but that doesn’t mean that if I buy those same boots I’ll instantly be as good as a pro. ;)
 
Separate things out. First it's visualising what you want in the frame, and how it fits into that rectangle. Intuition might play a part in this. Some people seem to like compositional 'rules' (that's not my style). A photo also has 'depth', or we could say the illusion of depth, since it's only in two planes on screen or paper. This depth can be influenced by composition, focal length, depth (or often better, shallowness!) of focus, and the lighting.

Then it's exposure - learning how to measure it (or how to help the camera to measure it) - to be able to judge light itself, the way it lights things, and the way it gets recorded by your sensor / camera processing engine (or film). Because some things are hard or even impossible to make work, so you have to find the limits and this takes some experience. And how for a given quantity of light, altering the three settings (iso, aperture, shutterspeed) can achieve the most appropriate result.

The last thing being what you focus on. Which these days is mostly autofocus, but again you really want to know how it works and what it's up to so that you're in control.

All these things are crucial, and connect to various degrees, but to begin with as I said, separate them out in your mind.

Take lots (easy in these digital days), analyse what you've done, look at lots of others' pics and try to work out what's gone on as far as you can and why you like their pics. Have fun! Good luck.
 
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As above - start with the end in mind. How are the breathtaking images you want going to look? Do you know how to achieve that image (very likely nothing or little to do with gear as others have said)? If you do great you’re set. If not, research, ask here, experiment and discover. Hope you enjoy the journey!
 
Phil V said:
As do millions of crap pictures.

Like any hobby, it’s never about the gear, but always about how you use it. Some images will be better taken with ‘better’ gear, or easier to take with better gear, but you can’t buy your way into getting better shots, you need to practice.

Millions of kids round the world will be kicking a ball about today, because they enjoy it, and they’d all like to be a bit better, if they get better, they might buy some decent boots, and maybe they’ll become professional, and then they’ll get the best boots money can buy. So the pro footballers have the best boots, but that doesn’t mean that if I buy those same boots I’ll instantly be as good as a pro. ;)
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This is true. Most of us get our expensive gear as we like shiny new toys and realise it isn't about that. As Phil says it might make it slightly easier in the technical sense (sensor able to handle wide dynamic range etc) and you will probably get slightly more detailed images, but it won't ever improve your eye for composition or knowing what kind of scenes photograph well in certain weather. The composition and mood of a picture is far more important than technicalities in my opinion.
 
Phil V said:
As do millions of crap pictures ...
Click to expand...

Indeed, I guess from my point of view, as my camera is / was the cheapest Nikon DSLR at the time, by law of averages pretty much everyone has better gear than me! :)
 
It's seriously not about the gear though. I have a D3300 and I've taken some images I'm really proud of. I've had my camera since 2013 I think now and I still find myself learning new things with it (Astrophotography being one recently). Seriously take time to learn how to use your camera and find out what it is you want to get out of it.
 
mark.roper said:
Indeed, I guess from my point of view, as my camera is / was the cheapest Nikon DSLR at the time, by law of averages pretty much everyone has better gear than me! :)
Click to expand...
your sensor is one of the better crop frame ones, not much better till you include FF so no excuse there :)
 
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