Nice one, whilst out for a walk with the family I managed to bag this one which I was quite happy with:




Only niggle I've got is managing to cut off the left hand side of the swan.

Another one of swans from me:




Focus is slightly too deep I think - on the neck rather than the head. I was having a play with an old manual 70-150 f3.6 zoom lens at the time.

I really like it, great shots.

The only thing I'd change is the sky in the central shot. Given that it's effectively framed by the arch I wouldn't think you can have such a moody sky as in the left picture as it would mean an overpoweringly grey shot, but the lack of any detail in the sky is a distraction for me. Looking at the photo, my eye is drawn to the area devoid of interest, rather than the area of great interest around it.

I don't know if it's possible to recover something from the sky in the centre picture, but just a little bit more would (in my opinion) be very beneficial.

Maybe it's just me, i don't know, but it's a great triptych as it is.

Thanks for the comments (I don't envy you having that number to judge!). It's still early days for me and photography.


Regarding the "40% of the highlight area of Level is empty" - the original photo was quite different to the end result. I wanted a very dark background, so there wasn't any distraction from the subjects - similar to the comp winning entry.

I would have like to have had an increased DOF, so that's another black mark I'd put against the photo.

Given the low number of photos I've taken, this is one of the more striking ones I've taken, so I thought I'd submit it (I'll never learn otherwise ).

I'm in awe at some of the photos, some truly beautiful shots in there.

Thanks for the broad subject - I've been really struggling to get out and shoot for far too long.

This one was a capture from Christmas, taken using natural light, and then tweaked the levels in Lightroom.

Glad I'm not the only one that couldn't find anything about it!!

AF illuminator? Trying to find something in the pdf of the manual.

It makes sense if that's what it was all about - but it sounded awful.


Thinking about it now though, I think it was the first time I used the flash on AF..... i'd only used it breifly with an old 50mm lens. This time it did fire, and it was pretty gloomy.


So that might be that sorted then! Thanks for helping put that concern to rest.

Was taking a photo the other day, popped up the internal flash, half pressed the shutter release .... and then the flash went mental. It was a very very rapid strobe effect, didn't sound healthy.

Is the camera dodgy or have I just missed something?

The camera was set on AF-S with the kit lens. Bit concerned that it might be knackered.

Cheers for the input, I might just go with the Sigma 70-300 APO Macro ... that was one of the lenses I was already thinking about.

The Sigma 135-400mm APO DG is tempting ..... but given the price difference between the two I'd be tempted to to save the cash and grab another bit of kit with it.

As it says in the title.

I'm looking to get a longish lense - I know there's a number of xx-300mm zooms out there but I was wondering what you lot thought.

I've got in the region of £400 to spend. Ideally I'd like upwards of 200mm and the quicker the better (strictly speaking ideally I'd like the Sigma 300mm f/2.8 EX DG ..... but that ain't gonna happen!), as I intend to use the lens for motorsport/rugby etc.

At the moment the 28-300mm Tamron looks alright, just looking for some input....

Cheers.