doesn't look like you need any help to me

nice photos

Those are the OKish ones.  Hit rate is rubbish, but thanks for the compliment!

 look great to me, i would buy one!

Those pics are looking good. Remember that the AF setting affects the depth of field. Try setting to AF mode then the camera will sort out the shutter speed. Take a note of the results and settings.  From there you can switch to full manual replicate the settings and adjust to suit. For example faster shutter speed but adjust AF for more light, or change ISO. 

A lot of my pics are indoors in poor light, so I tend to shoot at 400.  It was nice in Cornwall to get to outside  and shoot at 100 for a change. Just wish I had remembered to change it back.

Don't worry about the hit rate, most pics are personal.

Plenty of info here but it does take a bit of sifting through  http://digital-photography-school.com - http://digital-photography-school.com

I am more of a film camera than a digital camera so technqiues such as holding back the exposure of part of a picture while over exposing another part in the dark room are kind of obsolete. But other technqiues are not such as composition are skills that you can transfer. The best think to do is to get yourself on a course where you can learn about the operations of the camera, not just the intereface but what happens inside and deals with composition. Then get out and practice lots. Also good books are a must. I have usually found that the oldest books are the best. the ones you pick up form a second hand shop that were published 30 years ago are great. This is because they talk about the fundermental basics and once you have those you can build on them. Also look at proffessional books and ask yourself "Why do I like this shot? Where's the subject? What is the foreground doing?" and so on.

Traditionally one of the best tips is that you can never be close enough to you subject. Since this wil mean using a simple lens. Once you start using telescopic lens the picture quality does go down becasue the light is having to be refracted through more optics.

If you are taking portraits use a lens that is the same photo length as the human eye. This is will give a much better looking /human result when you look at it (it fools the brain as to thinking it is real face). The human eye comes in around 58mm. So in any keen photograper arsenal is a fixed focal length lens of 55mm.

Remember shots that are not personal are the easiest to do. eg landscapes, then action/sport shots are pretty easy becuase the human subject is busy and it just a matter of positoning yourself, but the hardest are natural human shots.

The more you practice the better. soon you will be looking at the light and you will be able to judge yourself the EV of the shot. Oh yes I have always used spot metering as all the other types will only produce a compromise picture and if you are taking action shots you can always crop off what you do not want, so you want to be very specific on your metering.

With film I would never use anything more than a 200ISO film as the results are too grainy (unless you want it for effect in which case infra red film is great). You can "push" an ISO 100 up to 400 and a 200 up to 800. so there is no need for any faster fims. You do this by underexposing the shots and thnen you can over expose in the dark room.

Controll your breathing. It is like shooting a rifle. take two breaths, hold your brettah for five seconds and the take the shot. That way you will be still you you take the shot.

Use the heavest tripod you can find. This will reduce the shake of the camera. Reducing the physical camera shake before taking the shot will be a million times better than the shake reduction systems many cameras now have.

Use the timer - even to take landscapes. This will stop you from moving the camera when pressing the shutter release.

Just a few tips but get yourself on a good course or join a camera club.

Thanks for the tips all.  Jack, some of what you are talking about is a bit beyond me but thanks all the same!  When you say "hit rate is always high" do you mean most of your shots are good?  When I said my hit rate is low I mean most shots are fit only for deletion...or am I confusing my terminology here?  I've heard good things about shooting in RAW but I've yet to fully understand it or try it.

Mossman, I'm aware of the rule of 1/3s, and believe it or not I thought I was doing it!  But you are absolutely right, nearly every shot is centred!  Thanks for highlighting that to me!

Something I have noticed is that if I quite like a shot but it looks a bit dull light wise, it can look very effective if I convert it to B&W...but perhaps this is cheating?  Can I use the camera or GIMP to compensate?

I guess what I was really after with this thread are perhaps some basic dos and donts...especially if shooting from another boat rather than on the land.  For example, if it's dull should I be on ISO400 or 800, is there a focal length that I really should not be going beyond or a minimum shutter speed to reduce shake, and if I'm on a moving yacht am I better off crouching down and trying to "lock" my body or am I better off standig up with an arm around the shroud and staying "fluid" if that makes sense.  Do I even bother about trying to keep the horizon level or do I just concentrate on the rest of the composition and sort the horizon out later in GIMP?

Thanks again!

OK cool, I see what you mean.

You know, I do wonder how people managed in the days before digital photography...I mean software power compared to darkroom technique is one thing, however with every shot I take it captures all the exposure data so I can learn from it, and you usually see all the shots that day, as soon as you upload to your computer.  I know that people used to write down thier settings, but sureley that's easier said than done...there must have been a lot of people who simply gave up on film SLRs as they never thought thay were getting anywhere and did not want to spend so much on developing poor pictures!

M_liddell looks like I need to learn about RAW then and give that a go.  Jim, fair point!

Anyway, I took my camera down to the 12' Skiff event at Torbay at the weekend (not sailing as I broke my collarbone mountain biking...gutted!) and got some shots.  Camera boat was a Fairline 42 so a bit big to get close to the action but the height of it made some interesting shots I think.

Sadly not much sunshine so they are a bit dull, but again I'd welcome your comments!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23284229@N05/ - http://www.flickr.com/photos/23284229@N05/

Good stuff Tom, thanks for that.  I don't think I have ISO 320,  I have 100, 200, then 400 then silly numbers.

I do tend to shoot aperture priority at wide settings, however I have struggled with depth of field a bit and have had better results at bigger f numbers.  However as if I do get out on the water I'm usually on a committee boat or similar or shooting from the shore on max zoom, that might be my problem as I guess you pros are right in the thick of it in a RIB.

I can feel a new lens calling me!

Just practice. After a year of shooting every day you'll know what to use before you meter the shot and you'll know when you look at the print too. Also, not using in auto modes will help loads. I mainly used apperture priotry but that is only to meter and then I change the shutter/apperture to suit what I want.

Bracketing is a very good way of getting the same shoot with different EV's but you will need at least 2/3 of a stop bewteen each exposure to get any signifcant difference.

Don't bother with a red eye reduction system. They never work. Instead under expose the flash unit by 1 stop. This will also give smooth tones to the subjct rather than blasting it with light.

The small f numbers will give you a narrower depth of field so will be harder if you are moving around in a rib. Also the more focal length with give you a narrower depth of field. That is a f8 on a 50mm lens with have a larger depth of feild than a f8 on a 200mm lense. However, most telescopic lens are automatic and compensate for this. This can be perceived as an advantage but it is becuase the lenses are not good enough to retain the difference unless you pay loads of dosh.

One thing to remeber is that when you focus on your subject, your subject is NEVER in the centre of the depth of feild. It is 1/3 of the way in to the depth of filed. That will mean more background will be in focus immediatly behind your subject than forground. This can be very usful when manually setting up the camera and getting desired effects. 

Another tip when taking landscape is never to set your focus to infinity otherwise your shoot will never be sharp. This is becuase there is not one shot in the world that exists at that focussing. Even if you do a seascape and can see 20 miles out to sea, 20 miles is not the same as infinity miles. The tip here is to focuss to infinity and then just crack the focuss back by the width of a hair. You you'll be surprised the difference this makes to the whole shot. If you take a shot at an easily defined object 1 mile away and do this you'll see what I mean.

Your best bet is to jet yourself along to a camera club where there will be better people an me to point out good habits to have.

I have never thought like that. Simply beacuse you must always get a close to your subject as possible. So I would not use a 400mm lens when I can get away with a 50mm. This is becuase there are more opics in a 400mm lens with means more light refraction which means poorer picture quality.

Sorry but this is what your telephoto lens does. It you want a really narrow depth of field, set the aperture to 3.5, zoom right in with a 400mm lens and that will give you a much norrower depth of field than 3.5 close up at 28mm. Your telephoto lens will automatcially change the aperture as you zomm in and out. So you set it at f3.5 and as you zoom in the f number will automatcally incrrease.

If you bought a good lens at around £5k like a fixed 400mm focal length lens then you would have the option to shoot at f4 and f4 is what it would be. Why do you think there is a difference in the price between amature lenses and top quality professional? It is because the opics are better and the lenses can be calibrated to give you this type of range. Also you would need to be blooming good to use it.

That is my understanding of it, but I like your point on the distance to the subject. I will look into this as it has never really occurred to me. This is what I really like about photography, you can get so set in your ways about it when someone mentions something so elementary it is like a big revelation!

Yep agreed.

You don't always have to get as close to your subject as possible, it depends on the perspective that you want. For a given compostion, a telephoto lens shot from futher away flattens perspective (makes near/far objects look closer together) while a wide lens shot much closer will accentuate the distance between them.

This is why the favourite pictures thread often has "omg that is close!" comments on yacht racing photographs because the long lens has made the boats appear closer together (flattened perspective) than they really were. This argument was used in an Americas Cup protest hearing in the 80s over a photograph used as evidence.

Thanks for the tip. I don't shoot this kind of stuff usually but well worth knowing when I do. Amazing how my interest in sailing has made me a better photgrapher.