Comments for Stop Shooting Auto!

Comment on Call for interest: Photography Exercises Workshop by Brian W

Brian W — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:26:04 +0000

I’d be interested, especially if it happened somewhere reasonably accessible by BART or public transit and happened sometime before 18 January.

Comment on Call for interest: Photography Exercises Workshop by molly

molly — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:16:57 +0000

I would be interested if you held such a thing. Please keep me posted.

Comment on Call for interest: Photography Exercises Workshop by crayonbeam

crayonbeam — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:26:16 +0000

I would do it if it weren’t a full day and it weren’t too expensive and if I thought I’d remember enough to use it a month later / received a cheat sheet.

Dunno… 3 hours, $20?

Comment on How To Clean Your Sensor by stopshootingauto

stopshootingauto — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:47:05 +0000

Adam, before you send it in you might want to try cleaning it with a blower bulb. It’s really quite easy, and I find that a bulb gets rid of 90% of my dust. You aren’t touching the sensor or even coming anywhere near it when you use a blower bulb.

Comment on How To Clean Your Sensor by Adam Parker

Adam Parker — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:35:17 +0000

I’ve always been too scared to mess with my own sensor. Instead I’ve relied on a low f-stop and post processing with photoshop. More on those techniques here: http://blogs.adamparkerphotography.com/blog/Ive-got-sensor-dust-what-should-I-do/13/

I am looking forward to picking up a 5D mk ii so that I will have some additional protection from the Integrated Sensor Cleaning system and then I’ll probably send in my 30D to get cleaned by canon, but we’ll see.

Thanks again for the great posts.

Comment on Why are there spots on my picture? by Adam Parker

Adam Parker — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:29:02 +0000

Sensor dust is an huge annoyance, but once you realize your problem there are plenty of steps to adjust for the issue. Your sensor cleaning post is good and illustrates how you can remove the dust from your sensor to yield cleaner shots down the road.

More cautious photographers should know that being aware of backgrounds and aperture settings can help reduce dust impact until you are able to clean the sensor more thoroughly. Here are some further details for that approach as well as post processing fixes for dust spots.

http://blogs.adamparkerphotography.com/blog/Ive-got-sensor-dust-what-should-I-do/13/

Thanks again for both posts.

Comment on If you’re new here by stopshootingauto

stopshootingauto — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:47:32 +0000

Welcome, Niels!

My best suggestion is to practice before you go. You obviously won’t be able to practice shooting wildlife in Nambia, but you can think about the situations you’ll encounter and find ways to simulate them.

Are you shooting birds? That should be easy– there are birds everywhere. Try going to your local park or even your backyard and take pictures of birds.

For wildlife, you might want to go to… hmm, maybe a dog park? Figure out how far you might be from wildlife, and then get about that far away from the dogs that are running about. Decide that one of them is your wildlife, and try to take good pictures of him.

Do you have kids, or a kid you could borrow for a little bit? Go to a park with woods, and ask the kid to go just a little bit into the woods and then jump out at you from time to time. That will help you deal with animals making fast appearances.

Honestly, I’ve never done much wildlife photography, but I’d imagine that you care about shutter speed and focus more than anything. Prefocus the lens at approximately the distance where you expect to spot wildlife, maybe? I’ll do some research and see if I can come up with better suggestions.

Comment on If you’re new here by Niels

Niels — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:40:48 +0000

Although I’m shooting digitally for the past 5 years, and working with a DSLR (Canon 40D) for the last year, this site has taught me so much in such a short timespan. Since I’m browsing this site I must admit I’m a lot more playing with ISO settings, aperture settings (I have a 17-85 f/4.5-5.6 and a 100-400L f/4.5-6.3 lens), exposure time, …

At this time I still need the “security” of shooting in Aperture priority mode, but in the next couple of days, I’ll surely try to shoot in complete manual mode.

Can I make a suggestion? Or rather inquire about a certain topic? Next summer I’m off to Namibia. Most likely lots of wildlife will cross my path. Can you give any recommendations which will keep me from screwing my (probably 500+) photographs?

Anyway, thanks for this great site, your fluent style of writing, and please… keep up the good work!

Comment on Aperture: Why You Care by Natasha

Natasha — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:39:27 +0000

That was a great aperture/lens explanation, thank you!

Comment on Exposure Lessons, in order by d at qdm

d at qdm — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:54:04 +0000

Thank you for your site! I’m always so thrilled to come across a site like this, full of knowledge and willing to share. It seems disheartening a lot of the time searching the internet for understanding…only to find photographers who forget that they weren’t born with the knowledge. And it’s a shame how some of them forget about how the Artist Community functioned pre-AOL. Again, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge! I’ve sent this to all of my DSLR friends!