my second attempt at photograpy

[simon180399]

as per title, these were taken with iso 200 and shutter speed 1/320 but despite them appearing sharp in the viewfinder they still came out blurred, the scope had been outside for over an hour to acclimatise but im still not happy with the shots.

i used canons zoombrowser ex to reduce the brightness and increase the saturation and contrast to give better detail and colours.

i tried to use a borrowed copy of photoshop CS6 but its just far too complicated for me.

any advice?

[simon180399]

helps if i upload the photos - doh!

[contrailwatcherUK]

Kwl pics, but there is still room for improvement. Here are some more tips that might help.

1. Check on your camera that the wheel to the top right of the viewfinder is set all the way to - and not +

2. Try to get a higher shutter speed, for a beginner it can be hard to keep track of the aircraft steadily. To do this you can also adjust the exposure compensation. I normally use -1, but have lowered it to -2 with desirable results.

3. Remember to have a steady hand and follow the aircraft as it passes over. Try to keep the aircraft in the middle of the frame. Take as many snaps as possible, even for just one aircraft. Make slight adjustments to the focus as it passes as you can never be sure that the focus is perfect.

4. Post Processing helps an awful lot. I would recccommend using Canon Digital Photo Professional (it should be on a CD that came with your camera) to edit the photos. You could also try something like Picasa from google (free). Some essential tools that you should use are crop, brightness/contrast, sharpen, resize.

5. You might need to check the collimation of the mirrors incase the primary mirror has been knocked out of alignment.

I will try to think of some more problems you might be having, but in the mean time just keep practising, and youll get there eventually.

Regards,
James.

[simon180399]

thanks James,

im getting there and there's a lot of sound advice.
i bought the camera from LCE s/h and it didn't come with any software but ive just downloaded a program called 'gimp' and have just been practising on a photo of the moon that i took with very good results.

i will persevere , well when the cloud disappears anyway.

thanks for your help it really is appreciated.
atb
simon

[DC10MD11]

Hi
You should be able to download Canon Digital Photo Professional from the cannon web site.

give it a try.


All the best
DC10MD11