Okay I went on my walk again today. I decided to go a little later to work with less natural light. It’s easy to focus in full daylight. It takes a much steadier hand to focus in low light because you have to shoot at a lower shutter speed with a wider aperture. Truthfully I could have brought (and should have brought) my ISO higher. I forgot to fool with the ISO and White Balance and ended up shooting on yesterday’s (200 and “cloudy”). Dummy. The playback window on the D80 is smaller than some newer models so sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell if I’ve over or underexposed something. Honestly I don’t know where the light meter is on this camera. I have to look in the manual or you know, just look for it on the camera haha.
So I didn’t edit these pictures at all. Things I can recognize that I need to work on right away is this:
1) Straight lines. I never get them straight.
2) Rule of 3rds. I deleted some because the horizon was waaaaay lower than the bottom third. It was a choice I made at the time but it looked stupid on the monitor.
3) Under and over exposure. Working on it.
4) Focusing (obviously).
5) Planning F-stops and shutter speed. I’m flying blind half of the time. I want to know what combos work best for what rather than just constantly toying.
6) I’ve been playing with shallow depth of field but I need to work on entirely sharp pictures of landscapes.
7) Portraits.
8) Fast moving things. I can’t shoot fast.
9) Timing. There is a pretty picture of Sunset that is marred by a stupid pickup bumper in the lower left corner. I could have shot this a second later and gotten it out.
10) Composition. I’m not terrible at this but I think I tend to stick with safe compositions. It IS in my mind when I’m shooting but I always get home and wonder why I’d leave something in the frame. I guess because I’ve been working so hard on sharp focus that composition is taking a back seat.
So I shot like 40 pictures and deleted 20. I kept the best shot of each subject except for I think two circumstances where I couldn’t decide.
Any and all feedback is welcome! :)
Also these were shot on Sunset Boulevard at Sunset Junction in Silver Lake.
Buberella 
Bracket, bracket, bracket. Don’t use full fstops. I know it becomes a PIA but I go out and easily have 5-10 shots of the SAME img and almost ALWAYS get a well exposed shot.
Bracketing is one of those things that I have to work on using. I did know how to do it when I first got the camera but now I don’t haha. I have to relearn it. Thanks for reminding me!
err I meant shutter spds……not fstops … I is tiiiiiiiiiiiiired. also … I almost ALWAYS use my tripod for images that will dip to shutter speeds of 60/30/15/etc
Yeah I want to get into learning to use a tripod too. I have a good one that Kristyn’s Dad gave us but I haven’t used it yet. I need to maybe try to set up some posed shots. I also want to try to get into bulb photography like to capture stars, etc. I need a remote though.