First shots with the new camera

It wasn't the best day to christen the new camera, a mixture of overcast skies, intermittent showers and some bright brief sunshine. Lens was Nikon 18-105mm AF-S DX Nikkor f/3.5-5.6 G ED VR.

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If you reach this point then thank you for looking and any comments, negative as well as positive, would be appreciated.

Hey Richard, at least you ventured out, I've nearly hibernated for the winter

I like shots 2 and 6, the first shot looks a little over sharpened though.

Many thanks Ken. I'll take a look at the original of the first shot.

Having now posted the original and comparing, I agree with your comment totally Ken. Constructive criticism like this I welcome.

Nice set Richard, agree with Ken with over sharpen images though no 6 is my Fav.

Thanks Sagar. Do you mean 1) oversharpened like Ken, or do you think I've 'over cooked' them all. I can see immediately what Ken meant re 1) when comparing both images.?

Hey Richard, that looks a lot better, there are some lovely colours and textures in that scene.

Now this is not so much CC, but now you have a DSLR you can start playing with your 'f' stops to see how it effects your depth of field to isolate subjects.

This isn't a criticism of the first shot, as I don't know what the surrounding are like, but if your able to re-visit it, try re-shooting the scene from a crouched position, camera in Av mode (Aperture priority), use your Nikon 70-300mm @ about 180mm and aperture set @ f4.5, then use your feet to move back and forth until your happy with the framing of your subject.

This should give you a limited amount of depth of field and some subject isolation, also a feel for how your lenses operate at the different 'f' stops.

Saw these last night and thought the same regarding the over-sharpening on the first image. To be fair though that particular shot contains elements (leaves, lines in the bark and blades of grass) that can easily end up looking over-sharpened because of how the process works.

2 looks OK to me - resembles my back garden after I went mad with the chainsaw last weekend

3 is perhaps a bit contrasty and saturated and whilst fungi make for a good subject I'm not sure the overall composition works. The two twigs are a bit distracting too.

4 looks spot on in terms of both the colour and exposure. My pick of the bunch.

5 is a very tricky shot to expose. If this is as you recorded it then you've done really well. Often you would expose for the sky and then bring out the shadow details at the editing stage.

6 is my favourite in terms of the composition and the focal length works well. Some of the greens (but not all) are perhaps a bit saturated though ?

Ken and Phil, many thanks. This is the sort of feedback I want from people who know what they are talking about. I want to learn so will take constructive comments like these all day long.

Ken if the weather is OK next weekend and the logs still there I will try again.

Phil I know what you mean aboout the twigs in the fungi shot. I did remove them but wasn't happy with the subsequent shot. Perhaps I need to look at the play backs more.

Thanks again.