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BuonRotto
Not sayin', just sayin'
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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2009-10-28, 12:04

Quote:
Originally Posted by GSpotter View Post
Some additional advice:
- regarding point 5: You have to take diffraction into account, so the best aperture is in most cases somewhere between f11 and f16.

- regarding point 6: Old landscape photographer's rule: "If you don't know how to take a picture of a boring landscape scene: Take a super wide angle and it will suddenly look interesting..." On the other hand, you can also make nice landscape shots with longer focal lengths. The following picture was shot with a 400mm lens:
Absolutely. These were more, "use these settings to begin" since creative photography in any sub-discipline means not taking rules so strictly. For point 5, I wasn't thinking minimize your aperture in absolute terms as much as stop down a bit from what P or Auto might tell you to. Hyperfocal distance isn't always what you want either. Learning to control depth of field to contain what you want and what you don't want is a really important skill to learn but for landscape photos (unlike portrait or macro, etc.), you're safer getting more in focus at first than less. The point about getting wide is more to do with having plenty to crop down to if needed. Your goal with wide angle is to capture the breadth of what you see, not to distort things into more interesting/unexpected shapes like I think a lot of folks do, especially with architectural photography. One point I didn't write down but might be most important is to move your feet and try recomposing by using different vantage points than relying on your current position and your zoom to simply "capture" the thing. Zooms are notorious for making a lot of folks lazy about composition. I feel more free and creative playing with a 25mm (50mm equiv.) fixed lens and having to walk around to get a shot than with a zoom. Really, I still encourage anyone wanting to get into photography to get a fixed lens around this focal length if possible. It's pretty much what your eye sees and helps you think about what you're framing and how -- not too wide, not too telephoto either. I still think the best pics I ever took were with a 50mm f1.8 prime lens on an old film Nikon. not nearly the focal length flexibility, not nearly the flexibility of control with film back then but simply the best compositions and exposures.

Another you point out that's important is that you can't expect to take a picture and it always turns out great. Those amazing National Geographic photographers take literally thousands of pictures on a month-long assignment and they publish maybe 6 to 12 of them for the magazine. In photography, you don't want to be lazy and go simply for quantity and hope some turn out well, but you have tremendous freedom to take a ton of photos and your chances of that great shot are that much better so long as you are paying attention to what you're doing, trying to improve and get what you want out of them.
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