War Memorial

Hi, this is a good first attempt, but it's neither a shot of the memorial nor of the sky. If you want to get the idea of space around the memorial you'll need to use a wider angle lens. What you've used is a fairly long lens even at its shortest focal length. I would suggest maybe about 30mm to give more sense of where the memorial is placed and also to show more of the sky and that lovely cloud. Alan

Hi, this is a good first attempt, but it's neither a shot of the memorial nor of the sky. If you want to get the idea of space around the memorial you'll need to use a wider angle lens. What you've used is a fairly long lens even at its shortest focal length. I would suggest maybe about 30mm to give more sense of where the memorial is placed and also to show more of the sky and that lovely cloud.
Alan

Aha! A landscape! And not a bad effort either. You asked for suggestions, so here goes. It's a little bit dark, looking about half a stop underexposed. That can be cured very easily in processing, just by moving the Brightness slider a touch (increasing the contrast slightly might also help). Also the foreground is a bit too cropped because it makes the trees and the monument look as if they are on different land masses, which - presumably - they are not. If it can be reframed, I would drop the bottom of the picture just a little. Other than that, though, no problems. The sky is excellent. I wouldn't worry too much about a tripod. The days when cameras were made of brass and weighed a ton are long past. As a general rule of thumb, as long as you keep the shutter speed numerically greater than the focal length (which would be 1/250sec on a 200mm lens) you should not suffer from camera shake. If your lens is an 'IS' (Image Stabilization) type, you can safely drop that speed to about 1/60sec. I believe that yours is. If you are still in doubt, I suggest investing in a monopod. This is, essentially, a tripod with two of its legs missing. The idea is that between it and your own two legs, you effectively make a tripod. Actually a monopod is much more suited to an autofocus camera than a tripod is. You will know how you half-depress the shutter release, to establish focus, and then hurriedly recompose before tripping the shutter. That is easy with a monopod, just a quick adjustment of your body. With a tripod, it's a much more complex operation. You can pick up a perfectly good monopod for about thirty quid, although you may need to add a tripod head to that before you can bolt your camera to it. Worth checking out. Dave

Aha! A landscape! And not a bad effort either. You asked for suggestions, so here goes. It's a little bit dark, looking about half a stop underexposed. That can be cured very easily in processing, just by moving the Brightness slider a touch (increasing the contrast slightly might also help). Also the foreground is a bit too cropped because it makes the trees and the monument look as if they are on different land masses, which - presumably - they are not. If it can be reframed, I would drop the bottom of the picture just a little. Other than that, though, no problems. The sky is excellent.

I wouldn't worry too much about a tripod. The days when cameras were made of brass and weighed a ton are long past. As a general rule of thumb, as long as you keep the shutter speed numerically greater than the focal length (which would be 1/250sec on a 200mm lens) you should not suffer from camera shake. If your lens is an 'IS' (Image Stabilization) type, you can safely drop that speed to about 1/60sec. I believe that yours is. If you are still in doubt, I suggest investing in a monopod. This is, essentially, a tripod with two of its legs missing. The idea is that between it and your own two legs, you effectively make a tripod. Actually a monopod is much more suited to an autofocus camera than a tripod is. You will know how you half-depress the shutter release, to establish focus, and then hurriedly recompose before tripping the shutter. That is easy with a monopod, just a quick adjustment of your body. With a tripod, it's a much more complex operation. You can pick up a perfectly good monopod for about thirty quid, although you may need to add a tripod head to that before you can bolt your camera to it. Worth checking out.

Dave