People who take photos like yours are good photographers. People with big lenses are dentists.

Must be a Canon thing. D7000 let you do 2 or 3, D7100 is 2, 3, or 5.

Success. Pretty good photoshop, I'd say, though there is a problem with the white car to the left of the hotel. One can see that the facade behind it is duplicated (mirrored) from the one immediately to the right of the double pillars, but I only spotted it because of the repetition, not because of flaws in your work. I only saw the car problem after I found the duplicate facade. Haven't spotted the other(s) yet.

Thanks for the detailed info!

Hahaha I'd like to think so too. It always made me laugh when I was in China when I'd see bunches of rich Chinese dudes with top of the line everything take photos of the most boring crap.

Voyeur, nice. I actually just watched that movie for the first time in years a couple days ago and was pleasantly surprised at how many great parts I had forgotten about.

Like when Spottswoode is telling Gary that at some point he might be captured and have to take his own life... and then gives him a hammer. bahahaha

Yeah, I love that film.

best movie! (hence my username)

Okay now I have a couple of questions too! Mostly because it seems like so much more work than I've ever really cared to undertake, and I don't really know that much about panos.

What focal length were you shooting at? And if you were shooting at, lets say 17 mm, landscape, how many photos do you think it would take to get everything in?

Was the dynamic range really that great that it required so much autobracketing? These days I feel like I can get enough shadow and highlight detail out of a single RAW file on my 5d mk2 (especially at ISO 100) that I don't need to use HDR or blend photos manually too often.

How do you decide to use HDR vs blending manually? I haven't used HDR in years, because I almost always find blending manually to be the superior choice (I'm also a sucker for complex masking in PS)... but I haven't kept up with the progress of HDR software/workflows over the last couple of years.

And to be a bit of a critic, it bothers me how deep blue the sky is in that one patch as well as how dark the shadows are in the clouds in the top right hand side. I realize PP decisions are subjective, but I can't look at the photo and think it's not over processed.

**** YEAH!

I was shooting at 58mm, and I think that I might just about be able to get the whole thing in at 15-16mm.

You're probably right, I didn't need the extra dynamic range - I just tend to bracket out of habit in case I do. I've just gone back and checked the 0ev RAW files and after some brief tinkering in Lightroom I think I would have got enough dynamic range out of them. I can't get them to stitch into a pano though - not sure why.

With something like this (and assuming that you needed the additional dynamic range) I would be very likely to use the automated HDR software rather than consider blending by hand, simply because I would have had to hand blend 9 individual images prior to stitching. That's not necessarily a problem, but given the time involved I think I would have tried the automated way first, decided if I was happy with the results, and only moved on to manual blending if I wasn't.

With normal (non-pano) images I am often using manual blending for reasons other than dynamic range - for example to add motion into water - but where dynamic range is the only consideration, I would lean towards manual blending unless I think the masking is going to be overly difficult. I did, however, recently purchase a set of video tutorials on using luminosity masks in Photoshop, and one of the techniques demonstrated involved using these masks to blend images together even where the masks were incredibly complicated... I think I will definitely be trying this technique out next time I have an appropriate set of images to work with.

With that said, I think the HDR process I use (merging to a 32-bit file in Photoshop and then processing in Lightroom) can produce pretty natural looking results - usually if it ends up looking a bit over the top it's the stuff I did afterwards I definitely get more natural results using this method than I ever did using Photomatix to merge and tonemap, although other people seem to be able to get perfectly natural results using Photomatix so I guess that was probably my fault too.

Yeah, I agree - I don't like it either, but at the time I couldn't fix it quickly in Lightroom (the blue channel is already at -50% saturation to get it toned down that far!) and I had already spent far too long working on the image (removing the scaffolding) and decided that the image wasn't going to be good enough to display large, so... I kind of just gave up. At some point I may go back and rework it right from the start, but I think I'd rather just go back and shoot it properly, with a tripod, in better light, when there is no scaffolding.

So my cousin and his wife want me to shoot pictures of their newborn baby that is set to arrive in about 10 days or so. They've seen various pictures I have taken on my facebook profile and they love them, but I have two problems. I think my photography is second-rate at best (with the odd outstanding flukes) and I don't normally take pictures of people. I've certainly never setup shop to take profile photos or the like before.

Does anyone have any tips for helping ensure I get the best out of this? I am going to his house tomorrow morning to take a few sample shots. We are planning on using their dining room as it has a huge patio door that lets in lots of light with some shades that can act as diffusers. I know almost nothing about using lighting for a situation like this. I also have no outside influences aside from my camera and a tripod. I read some tips recently and they suggested using a reflector of some sort (I might make one as a diy project), but I don't really know how to use one to get the best shots.

I may also rent a macro lens for a few closeups.

Current gear:
Rebel T5i
50mm 1.8
24-70L 2.8
70-300mm
Tripod

btw, I'm not charging them any money as I'm not a pro nor would I ever take money from my family.. i've set the expectation with them already that I don't normally do stuff like this, so I can't promise studio-quality work.

Ha yea this is kinda what I was I thinking...it seems much better to reshoot with the right equipment and right lighting (assuming this isn't too far away from where you live) than go through all the trouble to turn your mid-day, super panorama into a work of art. Although the scaffolding part isn't really in your control. It's good practice though!

I routinely take shots I'm not happy at all with and photoshop the hell out of them just to see what I can actually pull off in post.

This won't be very helpful because I also know nothing about this type of photography but from what I've seen from baby photos it seems like they keys are soft lighting, cute fluffy outfits (and monotone, pillowy backdrops), highlighting of the eyes, and a shallow depth of field. Hopefully the parents are good at making their baby laugh or smile! If it was me (bc I know nothing about flashes) I would use the natural lighting of nearby window for at least a few of the shots.

Good luck. Definitely post the results!

I've had people I know request that I take their wedding photos because they know I take good landscapes/travel photos, but I turn down those requests every time because I honestly know **** about wedding photography. Being good at a certain type of photography doesn't not equal being good at all kinds!

are those the same people who bitch and moan on camera forums wanting unrealistic specs on new cameras for the price and post horribly boring pictures of bums, birds, and, cats? Lol

Btw, nice photos!

One thing you should probably be prepared for is that if you're doing this very soon after the kid is born, there is a good chance that it will be asleep throughout the whole thing, or at least won't have it's eyes open - not necessarily a problem, but just something you should plan for so you don't freak out when it happens

I think your idea of using the large patio windows and diffusing the light is good - try the blinds, or just a plain white sheet taped across the window. Obviously the problem with using natural light is that you're very dependent on the weather & the amount of light - I would suggest trying to time the shoot for when you think there will be the most light coming in through the large windows, on the theory that if it's too much you can always work to take some of it away, but without speedlights or similar its going to be hard to add light if there isn't enough naturally.

A reflector is used to provide fill lighting - basically, you just try to bounce the natural light off the reflector and back into the frame in a pleasing way. It's not rocket science, and you'll just have to try it and see what works. One suggestion would be to put the diffused light source (the windows) behind your subject, and use the reflector to bounce some of the light back into your subject's face - if you spot meter on the subjects face, you should (might) get a nicely exposed subject and a pleasingly blown out background. A reflector definitely isn't something you need to spend a lot of money on - a Lastolite one is probably around $100, but I bought one for less than a fifth of that which is perfectly fine (I don't remember exactly which one it was, but it was very similar to this. I would suggest using only the white or gold sides, as the silver can look a bit cold/harsh. Alternatively (and even more cheaply) a large piece of white cardboard will work just fine as well.

Another thing I would definitely suggest is to search 500px for photos of newborns and then just try to insert polite word for copy any shots you particularly like. If there are shots that you like but can't work out how they were done, post a link here and I'm sure people will try to help work out what the lighting looked like. Similarly, get your cousin and his wife to have a look at some of the shots and pick out any they particularly like - even if it's just to get an idea of the style they have in mind, rather than to specifically try to copy those shots.

One thing that I think is probably helpful to bear in mind if you don't shoot people very often is that ideally you want to separate them from the background - usually by blurring the background and keeping them in focus. You probably know this, and are intending to shoot at a wide aperture... but what might be less obvious is that you are also going to be better off shooting at a longer focal length and backing up, rather than getting in tight with a wide angle lens. This will also have the bonus of avoiding unpleasant distortion caused by wide angle lenses. On the rebel your 24-70 gives you an effective range of approximately 40-115mm, and I would say you'll find that you want to be closer to the 115 end than the 40 end - YMMV etc.

If you have specific shots that you're thinking of the macro lens for then great, but I don't think you'll get all that much use out of it - the minimum focus distance for the 24-70 f2.8L is 38cm, and at 70mm how often are you really going to need to be closer than that? Even for shots of hands/feet I think that's probably close enough, and you might find that you really want something in those shots - like a parent's hand/foot - to show scale.

If it was me, with your gear, and I was going to rent one thing it would probably be a speedlight of some sort with the intention of using it off camera, and diffusing the light through the "diffuser" part of the 5-in-1 reflector - given that you will have (at least) two relatives there, you can probably get away without lightstands, clamps, etc just by getting someone to hold the light and diffuser.

And most importantly, just make sure you have fun with it - and try to make sure your cousin and his wife are having fun too. The good thing about it being family is that if it doesn't work out on the day it's probably easier to go back and have another go.

Good luck

Now that was a good response. Sometimes in this thread I feel like a live poker reg trying to discuss advanced strat with a bunch of online gurus.

Well I don't really read camera forums much, but yes there are presumably lots bad photographers with too much money on their hands. And not enough good photographers with too much money on their hands!

Test shots in advance is a good idea, but you really want to use the same lighting arrangement you intend for the final shoot. However, scouting the location to get an idea of the lighting possibilities, shooting distances, etc, is still worthwhile.

Lots of good stuff in Voyeurism's response. Let me pick up on some of it and cover a couple of other issues.

If the baby has its eyes closed you can't focus on them so easily. You might be able to focus on the crease of their eyelids, and maybe eyelashes, though.

When you do a single-person portrait, you generally want a very shallow Depth-of-Field (DOF). This can be hard to achieve with older babies, toddlers and young children because they are almost always in motion, so it's hard to get the focus point on the eye. You are lucky if you can autofocus somewhere on the moving head. To compensate for this, one uses more DOF (a smaller aperture, bigger f-number). This means you need to have the subject physically separated from the background more, to get the background blurred out. With a sleeping baby, or a newborn, movement is not usually a problem.

While I'm sure your cousins' baby will be exceptional, I have noticed that many newborns have not quite mastered standing up or even sitting up on their own. In the unlikely event that this newborn hasn't perfected these skills, I don't advise tacking it to a wall. You can't really think of taking a picture of a newborn as being like taking a typical one-person portrait. Either the kid is lying down, or you are really taking a group portrait of mother and child, father and child or parents and child.

If the baby is lying down, you may or may not get a clear view of its face, depending on what Mom has been taught about putting the precious thing down. Luckily for the photographer, newborns can't roll over. This means you might be able to persuade Mom and Dad to lay the baby on a smooth flat surface, above ground level, for you to take a shot from nearly the same height off the ground as the baby. This gives you the best chance of isolating subject from background. Otherwise you'll have to take a photo from above, and to the side, or above and at the feet of the baby, which pretty much guarantees incorporating what it's lying on into the shot. (Above the head of the baby makes for a very unconventional shot.)

If it's a group portrait, the baby is pretty well guaranteed not to be on the same focal plane as the person holding it. You'll need more DOF, and again a greater physical separation from the background, or a neutral background which can be in focus without distracting.

Light coming through a window is almost always diffuse already. It only needs to be further diffused if it is travelling in a straight line from the sun through the window onto the subject, i.e. looking out the window blinds you. You might want to scout your location in advance, or better yet, get your cousin to notice which time of day the dining room is brightest. Window light is great for portraits, BTW, though a simple reflector helps with more even lighting. Unlike with outdoor portraits, you do not want to wait for the golden hour.

Best window light is from a north-facing window (In the northern hemisphere. In Australia you'd use a southern window but you'd have to stand on your head.) near noon an a sunny day. You could use a west window in the late morning or an east window in the early afternoon. If the patio door faces south, you want an overcast day that isn't too dark.

Rather than translucent drapes that diffuse the light even more, you might find opaque curtains that you can use to cut down the volume of light more useful on a bright day.

Portraits taken with window light, no reflector and the subject facing parallel to the wall have a high degree of contrast across the face. This can look very dramatic, but probably isn't what you want for a baby photo. Moving farther from the window reduces the contrast, but also reduces the total light on the subject. A white reflector held very close to the subject is the most effective way to come close to balancing the light from both sides. Side window lighting is not as effective for two people side by side. One adult with baby in front works better. When taking such a photo, don't make the camera-to-subject line parallel to the wall. Get the camera as close to the wall as possible.

The farther the subject is from the window, the closer you want them to the floor. Even if they are very close to the window, you don't want heads more than halfway up the glass. You want light coming down on the subject.

Having the subjects facing the window usually doesn't leave a location for the photographer except at shooting distances that are unflattering to adult subjects, and which tend to cast a shadow. You could try this approach for prone babies, though.

I think putting the window behind the subject and using even multiple reflectors will likely be inadequate - giving a silhouette effect. You'd need to use fill flash.

Don't point a flash unit at a young baby whose eyes are open. If you only have your camera's built-in flash, use it only if you cover it with a diffuser. On-camera or off-camera bounce flash, if pointed well away from the baby, should be OK. Bounce it off white ceilings or light, neutral tone walls. Off camera flash through a diffuser is probably OK.

If you want to use the pop-up flash to control an off-camera flash, remember to set it for commnader mode only, so it doesn't fire in a way that contributes to the exposure.

You don't have to get fancy with reflectors. You could use white foam board, or white coroplast. Be sure to get something big enough. None of these tiny 20"x30" sheets. Try to get something like 32"x40" or bigger. Foam board can be found at art supply stores and sometimes at stationers. Coroplast is sometimes found in hardware stores. I prefer foamboard to coroplast.

When using a reflector to fill-light a standing or sitting subject, place the top of the reflector even with the top of the subject's head, and angle the bottom up slightly so the reflector is pointing to the subject's face. With a baby lying on a surface, put the bottom of the sheet even with the lowest part of the baby and keep the sheet vertical. You might even use white foamboard as a neutral background for a baby-only shot.

You will need something to hold the reflector in place. Instead of buying a light stand, clips, brackets and gaffer's tape, you can use a music stand, or jury-rig something with chair-backs, sticks and tape. The classic accessory for holding reflectors is the "photographer's assistant", who doubles as a glamour model.

Photos of adults' faces tend to look best if taken from a bit of a distance, about 5 metres or more. That often means a longer focal length is required. Your 70-300mm lens might be too slow for really shallow depth of field at the distances you have indoors, so I'd suggest using the 24-70 at close to 70mm (assuming you have enough room) and close to wide open.

Babies, OTOH, look best to their parents from closer up, because that is how they (especially Moms) often see them. For baby-only shots, perhaps use your 50mm, stopped down or not, depending on DOF considerations.

IDK if you'll need the tripod. Probably depends on what shutter speeds you can get given the available light. Wiggling babies and slow speeds are not a good combo, but sleeping babies can be shot at speeds below what's safe for handholding.

Good luck, and don't forget to get a signed model release.

I'm considering a long term trip starting in a couple years. A major goal will be to take high quality photos, primarily in Africa and of nature/wildlife around the world. I'm tentatively naming the trip "MBA: Mammals, Birds, Animals" (and a play on the degree ).

I'll be dedicating an entire bag to cameras/equipment but fear that I might be "that guy" who has invested a lot in equipment but not in skill.

I've taken a few lessons and learned some from experience over the past 4 years, but would like to hear any advice on useful ways to improve. Given the investment in equipment and sacrifice of taking time off for the trip, it makes a lot of sense to spend time improving.

I think taking photos and posting here for advice may be one of the best ways.

I don't think I have a very good natural eye for good photos and am quite poor at composition. For example, I took a hot air balloon ride in Turkey and even though it seemed like a fantastic photographic opportunity, I didn't really end up with anything too great.

I tend to be better at photos that are a function of technical configuration, like action/wildlife, which is also where I've had more practice. Maybe it's normal/ok to be better at one type of photography, but I don't think I'm too great at it and not at a reasonable level in city/travel/landscape type at all.

As with most things I think the best way to improve is practice practice practice. The more photos you take the more you can analyze what exactly you like about each photo and what you can do differently to make it better. And get some good outside opinions. Although this is easier said than done. Almost anywhere I post my photos looking for some harsh critiques all I usually get is 'great photos!' 'cool!' which doesn't help me improve as a photographer at all. Be sure to look up some of the top wildlife photographers and try and pinpoint exactly what makes their photos so spectacular. Emulate that ****! Keep trying to make your photos look as good as theirs. Also you gotta learn how to post process. It really makes a huge difference in how your photos come out. It's a long, continual process, and it can be a bit overwhelming especially if you're new to it, but in my opinion its absolutely essential. I liked watching Serge Ramelli's videos a about a year ago to learn some new techniques and get some inspiration. I can't believe it took me that long to learn about dodging and burning! Well that's all I got.

When are you thinking about leaving? How long will the trip last? What countries do you want hit? Do you have any type of end goal in mind other than taking really cool wildlife photos? It sounds like it would be a really cool experience.

Great post and I love your pics. As an old film guy just getting into digital I know I have tons to learn. You talk about post processing which seems very important. I'm curious as to how much time you spend in the post process and what percentage of the overall end product it is. Can you save a less than perfect or even bad shot in post? And is overdoing it in post process a leak? It seems like it might be for me Do you ever get a shot so right it anything you do to it would be negative?

Well I'm always shooting in RAW, so I'll play around with the sliders in ACR (adobe camera raw) for a minute or two, and then usually work with it in photoshop for another 5-10 minutes. Of course this is totally photo dependent. Some photos need very little tweaking. But some photos I might spend lots of time manually blending exposures to bring out all the dynamic range, or do stuff like luminance masking or edge masking, dodging and burning, who knows. Some of the jargon might be going over your head, but lets just say there's tons of different ways to tweak your photos in post.

Umm depends on what you mean by a bad shot. Badly underexposed or overexposed shots you can often bring back to life in post when shooting in RAW. White balance problems can easily be fixed. But you can't fix a bad composition. Shots that are out of focus or have crappy lighting are going to remain bad no matter what you do to them. I guess you can make them better than they were, but its like putting paint on a turd.

Post processing is a largely an artistic decision, so it kinda depends on what you're hoping to achieve with your photo. I would say that overdoing it in post and deluding yourself into thinking that's what the composition looked like in reality would be a leak. I used to do this when I first started out and have to laugh at a couple of my overprocessed harry potter-esque landscapes from a few years ago. But when you get better at post processing you learn how to enhance your photos in a much more realistic way than just moving the contrast and saturation sliders.

When you shoot in RAW you get an uncompressed, unprocessed image on your computer, so there's really no such thing as getting it perfect without having to make some contrast and sharpening adjustments. That being said, I have failed to find a photo that I couldn't make better somehow in photoshop

cardsharkk04- Those pictures from Burma/Myanmar are truly amazing!

OOH! OOH! Tell me about your equipment! </gearhead>

I have some of the same issues, so I'll be tracking your progress with interest.

By all means, post here, and we'll try to help. If your photos are as good as cardsharkk04's, though, you might be beyond our capabilities, but then you need not worry.

A couple of books on composition, and thinking about how to take a photograph that might help are:
The Photographer's Eye and
The Photographer's Mind
Both by John Freeman.

Action and wildlife photography tends to be more documentary than artistic in nature. Getting unusual perspectives and non-boring compositions can be hard with uncooperative animals, or humans intent on their activity, especially ones at a distance. Where it is possible to get close, consider using a wider angle lens than you are used to, and put the subject right in the foreground, but not filling the frame. Obviously, don't compromise your safety or the animal's composure by doing so. You don't want to get closer than this when there is no barrier between you and a potentially dangerous subject:

(taken at 30-35 metres, 300mm EFL, f/5.6 @ 1/400)

cardsharkk04 has useful advice gleaned from personal experience:

If possible, try to practice on the sorts of subjects and in the sorts of settings you expect to encounter. You may have to do a few creative substitutions. If there are no herds of zebras near where you live, try to find a dairy farm.

Thinly veiled brag? You don't get a lot of constructive criticism here now because you are better than nearly all posters here (and you haven't posted much ridiculously overdone smoothed-out water recently ). I promise to try to be more of a constructive ******* when you post in the future.

I gotta learn that stuff too.

What do you do in Photoshop that can't be done in ACR/Lightroom?

What do you think of Adobe's decision to make Photoshop available only online and only by monthly subscription?

haha well I'm not just referring to here, but I think in general its hard to get good constructive criticism. What I really want is to show my photos to like a world class travel photographer and have him rip the hell out of some them! That would be a cool learning experience

I'm so familiar with PS that its basically habit. I could probably save myself quite a bit of time if I learned how to use lightroom properly, but i've been too lazy. But I'm a huge sucker for masking and making selective edits, which are things I kind of assumed I couldn't do as easily in LR. And I particularly love the soft light and multiply blend modes in PS.

Well, like most photographers, I'm not a big fan of Adobe's new subscription plan. I have CS6 and have no plans to join the cloud any time soon. Adobe's decision definitely screws over the average hobbyist photographer pretty hard (especially those with older versions of PS) and they know it. Pay us the money for this unproven cloud crap (and for updates even if you don't want or need them) or **** off and use lightroom! Seems like they could have come up with a more customer friendly solution...