A few pics (unfortunately not of surfing)

[Jimi]

Just got a new lense for my camera... tell me what you think.

[soops]

Really nice colours on that first one mate!
How far away were you when taking those?

[Bewilderbeast]

Nice pics man.

What camera are you using?

[Jimi]

In the 1st one, I was about 15ft away, but on the others I was about 20ft away from the birds... I was surprised at the colours too, as they were taken in low-ish light.

Using a Canon EOS 400D (Rebel XTi) with a 75-300mm Canon telephoto lense.

[thaya]

i really like that first one...like soops said, the colours are amazing.

[RJD]

Want me to be harsh?

Lotta CA on the 2/3rd, 1st is soft, got the exif data for it (shutter speed/apature)? Bokeh is nice & creamy though & colour/contrast is better than the 75-300 I borrowed a whole ago.

I'm guessing (due to the noise) you were shooting wide open at relativly long shutter speeds too. Have fun with it, should be great for surf photo's.

[Jimi]

I'm guessing (due to the noise) you were shooting wide open at relativly long shutter speeds too. Have fun with it, should be great for surf photo's.

Yeh, spot on, with iso 1600... fading light makes it very tricky to get good clean photos of subjects (especially without using the tripod).

In the 1st photo there was more light, and I got the iso to 800, aperture ~5 shutter ~ 1/200th, but the 2nd and 3rd photos were too dark for those settings, and I upped the ISO to 1600, and kept the rest similar.

Thanks for the comments, and I'll try to get some surf photos up soon

[tomcat360]

What did you have the metering set to?

Remember if your only two options are to either underexpose or have a blurry photo due to too much movement, go with under exposure, because you can rescue the photo in photoshop, but with a blurry photo nothing can be done.

What setting did you have the camera set to? I shoot almost everything on Av when the lighting is changing a lot on me. Isolates the focal point and allows for the fastest shutter speed.

[RJD]

Shoot raw and set the exposure compensation to -1 or -2 EV to 'fake' extra ISO speed if you cant get the shutter fast enough with ISO1600.

Its all the 30D does anyhow, and RAW allows you to claw back some of that dark area info.

[Jimi]

Center weighted metering, which is usually pretty good, shot in Av mode (I also like this because it allows you to keep the focal field constant).

I think the RAW format with underexposure option is a very good call RJD.

I haven't had much of a play with raw files, and I usually don't underexpose because in jpg format the shadows lose detail, even after photoshop's magic.

I'm gonna have to get used to shooting everything in RAW. Seems to be the way of the future.

[Dr Rev]

Woody who comes to my garden most mornings, photo taken with camera phone !