Looking in to ND filters now my tripod on its way to me, though I might end up with a grad filters first

In the meantime I've orders some welding glass to try out some 10 stop images, cheaper than a £100 Big Stopper

Thanks for advice beancounter

RAW obviously is better because joey is compressed 2005 Zambezi TDV6 - Gone but not forgotten
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Also well worth playing with filters in front of the lens rather than photoshop, a polarising filter for example might have got rid of reflections on the car's rear and side windows, something that would be tough to achieve in image editing unless you're an image manipulation god. 

"Roads ? Where we're going there are no roads." Back to the future.

Only just starting but here is a few of mine

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81554902@N06/

Very Annoyed wrote:

RAW obviously is better because joey is compressed

Best for two reasons:
-It's like a negative, it's exactly what the sensor captured with no processing.
-The computer inside the camera isn't a powerful as your laptop/desktop so will have inferior JPEG compression algorithms. The software shipped with the camera or a tool like photoshop will produce much better JPEGs than the camera ever will. 

"Roads ? Where we're going there are no roads." Back to the future.

I shoot RAW, shame I needed to join the library to get a book on how to use photoshop though

That stuff is hard to do

airwolf222helicopters wrote:

thinking on getting a canon 650d eos myself any comemnts on it ?

I started with a Sony slr for cost reasons, managed to get some good older Minolta lenses for it and because the image stability is in the camera body then all the lenses were stabilised.

When I was upgrading I decided to move to one of the big 2 manufacturers and the choice was based on the abilities of the camera bodies, how they felt in the hand along with the level of complexity of the menus. I preferred the Nikon and happily it seemed to also have better features along with a greater ISO range etc. The 'kit lens' is OK, but I mainly use a f1:1.8 50mm prime and am very pleased with a recently acquired 80-200 f1:2.8 (eBay special) lens.

The best thing is to play with both and find which feels best to you, essentially they all do the same thing -which is to capture a representation of the scene in front of the lens. Don't expect a better camera or lens to immediately take better pictures, it is a tool, you are the photographer and only your practice and improving skills and creativity will produce better images.

I am afraid it is an expensive slippery slope from here....

Very good advice simon1233, someone I know takes absolutely cracking images with a very low end dSLR, but creativity and an eye for detail makes for the camera's shortcomings. 

"Roads ? Where we're going there are no roads." Back to the future.

I went to see which camera I prefered to hold in my hand as both canon and Nikon felt ok, I opted for Nikon as a chap was selling one with a couple of lenses cheap enough for me, but I'm already looking at other lenses and each of these are nearly as much a the camera kits cost

NPinks, if you are shooting RAW then get apple aperture, much better than iPhoto and gives you some of the features for image correction that you need to lay a lot of money for with adobe software. Also you can get Nik softwares 'snapseed app' from the app store for about £7 which gives you some excellent editing effects.

I usually edit in aperture, use snapseed ( they also do an iOS version which I have on my iPhone and iPad) and sometimes will use photoshop express, this seems to give me most options in a cost effective way

I'm using Photoshop CS5, need to learn a bit more about it though

Editing is the darkest of dark arts, also quite addictive Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool. but I find that Aperture covers most of my needs, I only use photoshop for major editing works (like blending 2 or more images into one file).

In the spirit of sharing I attach some (admittedly mediocre) images, which have all been edited with Aperture and/or Snapseed.

First is a picture of the current car:

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Liking the feel of the low light photo

Tips taken on board - I shoot in RAW too have done on this and the last Nikon - get more out of PS5 and now 6 in RAW.

The sky has been tweaked to be washed out so that the new glass box stands out - a pressie for the wife who is currently on her hols and has no idea about it. It looked a bit cluttered with too much going on I thought.