Flower Pics

[stixbaraca]

Hello everyone. After many years I finally shed the training wheels of my point and shoot, and picked up a DSLR! I purchased the Canon Digital Rebel XTi with kit lens (i know i know!)a few weeks before my honeymoon, and shot these pictures of some wild flowers down in St. Lucia! I am very eager for input and guidance to get the most out of this new camera! Thanks in advance. These shots were taken after just playing around with the settings and taking many shots.

This first shot was taken without a flash at 54mm, ISO of 100 and f/5.6 and
auto white balance. It has not been retouched at all...just resized.


http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z38/SteveRebeccaV/3.jpg


This second shot was taken without a flash at 42mm, ISO of 400 and f/5.0 and auto white balance. I used PS CS2 to auto adjust colors because they looked a little washed out.


http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z38/SteveRebeccaV/1-1.jpg

[stixbaraca]

...also forgot to mention that both were shot while hand holding, and in the cameras macro mode...still saving up for a nice tripod!

[chubasco]

Hi Stix, and welcome to the DSLR world! :) Both pics show promise, but are
both just this side of in focus. On the first pic, love the colors, but you might
have gone with a smaller aperture, say f8, to get more detail inside the flowers.
But the problem with that is longer shutter speeds as well, so a tripod would
have been a good choice. When you resized these in Irfanview, etc, did you
apply any sharpening?

[stixbaraca]

Thanks for the welcome and the tips. I just used the Windows Resizer that is built into XP. I also have a top of bad unusable shots that I think has a lot to do with the kit lens. Already have a couple nice ones picked out to help with the learning curve...in due time!

[chubasco]

Good luck, Stix, and don't hesitate to post your efforts! :) Also look into
getting some post-processing program besides Irfanview. There are free
downloads for RAW processing and you will want to be shooting in RAW.

[stixbaraca]

Thanks!