Apart from camera settings, the best thing to help your photography is to know and understand composition. Start with the Rule of Thirds and work your way up from there. Basically, avoid the compulsion to put your subject in the middle of the picture; put it to the left of right of centre. Easy fix, you'll find most of your pictures improve straight away just by remembering the RoT. Another compositional guideline is to always have a point of interest in your photo - there should always be something for the viewer to look at. Just as bad as not having anything to look at is having too much to look at - but Depth of Field (AKA Aperture setting) can help here. My final tip is to always THINK before you press the shutter button. The difference between a photograph and a snapshot is only a couple of seconds, but stopping to think about composition, points of interest and so on is essential to good photography. I may be biased, but as a photography tutor, I'd highly recommend attending an adult learning class to help with your photography. I find it's easier to learn with somebody showing you than it is to learn from a book.
Thanks for all the posts folks. Took the camera out Sunday on the Doggie walk and grabbed a couple of shots. Unfortunately the cable from camera to pc is missing and I dont appear to have a cable or card reader in the office. Will route around tonight if not will amazon something tonight.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-50mm-1...3855778&sr=8-2&keywords=sony+50mm&tag=av0c-21 Appears to be quite a deal with the cash back. Worthwhile investment? I currently have the standard lens that came with the camera.
Forum member Pookeyhead posted a pretty detailed introductory guide to photography over in the Photography and Art sub-forum. It has a lot of really good information, with lots of examples to show how the effects of the various settings. It's a good read for the beginner. Once you go through the information, go out and take a million pictures. Experiment with the settings until you are comfortable changing them to get a desired effect. Learn the rules, then go break them.
I find that taking the time to fine tune photos in Adobe Lightroom makes a big difference. I shoot everything in RAW which means that you have the maximum amount of information stored in the file. Editing JPEGs is not ideal as you are throwing away detail in the highlights and shadows (not to mention compression artifacts). My usual workflow in LR is something like this: Correct the exposure (even on auto settings the camera can get the exposure wrong if the photo has a lot of white or black in it) Correct the white balance (the white balance is wrong if a photo looks to blue or too red). Tweak the highlights and shadows so that more detail can be seen in the brightest and darkest parts of the photo (this is called the dynamic range) (if necessary) Crop the photos to improve framing, straighten up any shots that weren't perfectly horizontal and usually make them 16:9 aspect ratio (or something close) for better viewing on a TV Sometimes I add a sneaky vignette to portrait shots Obviously the quality of the camera and the way it is used is the most important part but spending about 60 seconds on each shot in Lightroom can make a set of good photos look great.
If you want to be even more basic about it, it's surprising how much difference a little tweak can improve photos. I shoot with JPEG more often than not (I'm not yet that fussy, give it time) and fiddle with contrast, saturation, brightness etc. and crop them to get the form right on Photos on OSX just to improve them a little bit.
