I deal with this issue regularly.

In another thread, I posted a photo of my grey card.
I made that by taking a solid black peice of mattboard, a solid peice of white mattboard, a kodak greycard, and a strip of (my favorite photo paper, printed on MY printer) black to grey to white (16 tones) paper.

taking a tightly cropped photo of that card:

Your in-camera meter if it gets a perfect exposure (seldom does):
is to get three spikes, on the histogram, one for the blacks, one for the greys, one for the whites.
black at the left edge, grey just left of center, white at the right edge, with no clipping......

exposing to the right:
is to adjust your exposure to get the blacks just a bit more to the right of the edge, your greys a bit over to the right of center WITHOUT pushing the whites past the edge on the right of your histogram.

This really helps to get midtones, and shadows without noise or colorcasts in your final image after processing the RAW file.

you did check onyour watch and wallet didn't you? they steal.

Hey some fun news in my mailbox this morning!
A young fella in a jam a while back needed some shots on short notice for a competition. the photog he had cancelled on him last minute.
I took the job (you all may remember the before/after shot I posted was a derrivative work from that shoot.
He did quite well, I'm happy for him!



http://www.chatters.ca/html/makeover_challenge.html

eactly what were your camera settings when that happened?
ChrisA discovered a glitch, when testing in a different thread last week...

A photograph posted without a specific question is fair game. Not out of line for anybody to think that you would be interested in whatever reaction people may have to the image. Even if that happens to be some jovial banter.

The first one (for reasons already stated) is a nice shot.
the second two (esp the last), appear to me, as a little overexposed. trying to bring out detial in the fur, where the lighting was too harsh. (or the camera was on auto, and the dark tones tricked the meter into overexposure).

I'd sooner bring along a slow-moving friend...

at some point ending a debate becomes the only logical course of action.

I'm glad to hear you're taking the advice.
So I'll give you some more....
after practicing shooting from different angles, and with different lenses, and different exposures, aperture/shutter combinations...

you'll want to learn to "See the light".

for available light shooting (no flash) try this:
get a small block (anything as long as it is a cube and (you can make it) white.

hold the cube up in the palm of your hand. turn in a circle until you can see three sides of your cube are all different shades of white. (sometimes helps to squint, and look through your eyelashes).

that is the direction your camera should be shooting at to get the best natural light. (I often see buildings that way, and place my subjects on the shady side of buildings where the light has that 3 dimensional quality).
now look for a subject that is sitting in that light.

(start by using this tip in shade or overcast conditions, in bright sun, you'll need scrims, diffusers and reflectors to control contrast...same idea but more complicated).

there are complete threads on landscape photography here.
you could get a shot like that with your kits lens.
I use the 10-17 mm often. a shot like that would require having the horizon dead center of the frame. My 16-45 is the lens of choice for wide angle landscapes. but my 50 mm prime gets used more often.

if I were you, I'd grab a cir polarizer, a graduated nd filter or two, a cable release, tripod, and decide on a lens a little later...

if after you start getting the hdr shots down, and you find yourself in the feild wishing you had a wider lens, then you'll know for sure what you need.
the pentax 12-24, or sigma 10-20 or whatever fits that range, don't go fish-eye unless you really like the effect! While harder to use, I personally love it!

for the original poster, not the lens for you....
the other suggestions are good