Photography advice? Update with Yellowstone Pics

[timberghost72]

I am taking the family to Yellowstone and I just purchased a new camera so I can get some great pics. I bought a Cannon Rebel XS with the EF-S 18-55 IS lens and also a Cannon EF-S 55-250 f/4-5.6 IS lens. I am just looking for some advice on the best way to take pics. Should I just keep the settings on Auto since I know next to nothing If anyone has some tips or tricks or some settings I should put the camera on, that would be awesome.  The book gives some instruction on picture taking but is there anything else?  Thanks


Thanks for all the advice. Here are some pics although not the best.

[wapiti hunter2]

Since you know almost nothing I will try to help.  For you daytime shots, leave your camera set on auto.  If you really want to get good you will learn to use a tripod.  It gives you the ability to use slower shutter speeds and therefor better control your depth of field through the use of your Av and Tv settings.  It will also allow you to shoot better pictures in the golden hours of best light, early morning and late evening.  For most of your shooting you will probably be OK with your ISO set on 400.  If you can, use the biggest memory card you can and shoot everything on RAW format.  Take several memory cards with you.  You can edit almost anything later with Photoshop or Lightroom if you want to make corrections.  Take spare batteries too.

For wildlife and landscapes use the rule of thirds.  Here is a link to Popeshawnpauls write ups about it on this site and another site.  It is probably the best thing you can ever learn for making your photos look great. 

http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,2223.0.html
http://www.huntfishnw.com/index.php?topic=1160.0
also
http://photo.net/learn/nature/ghopkins/comp3/
http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,5386.0.html

You can use it for landscape photos as well by offsetting your subjects.  Put people on one of the "third" lines, put the horizon on one of the horizontal "third lines"  etc.  Do everything possible to avoid centering your subject.

Do not be caught up in the technical aspects of photography.  Shoot tons of pictures ans cull them out later.  Be sure to have fun. 

[uplandhunter870]

i got a canon sx20 and used it in yellowstong ,its not quite a DSLR but the setting choices are similar, if you have a landscape setting use it for the landscape shots, i used the lanscape mode while we were in yellowstone in july and almost all of my lanscape shots came out good to great ( with some post processing) but it didnt work well on the animals i switch to full auto for animal shots and they came out good some not good, mostly the ones at the extreme zoom ranges kinda were blah

[ivarhusa]

My advice (maybe too late for your trip) is to regularly review the images you shoot via the display screen on the back of the camera. While you are shooting. You will see some of the more glaring problems and hopefully have the time to make adjustments to straighten things out.  I try to anticipate problems with back-lit situations that underexpose important parts of the scene, but sometimes I end up taking a sequence of images with different amounts of "over exposure" to get what I want.

I don't regularly use the auto-bracketing feature of my camera (T2i), but that can help you avoid missing good shots. As others have offered, "take lots of images", and be creative. Taking a few pictures while holding the camera well over your head may give you a different effect (background) that you like.

Many (probably most) cameras have several "automatic" modes. Use them as well.  I often find that when I use the landscape/outdoors setting, it gives  more saturated colors that I like. I will also take the same shot using several of the automatic modes, to see how they differ. One will possibly be distinctly better than the other.  There is no better way to learn, than by experience. (Well, training helps...)

Happy shooting.

(Hawk shot this month.)

[timberghost72]

I did try changing the settings for the same pictures and it seemed like the landscape mode came out more clear and better depth. Most of my animal shots were from a distance and I also hurried the shots so they didn't come out very well. Camera shake was bad. I was pretty disapointed because there were some great shots I could have had. I also had a tripod but again always in a hurry