>> (cut) The more I use our new digital camera the more I realize
>> how different it is than traditional photography. Here's just two
>> tips; even if it says "auto-focus" doesn't mean your picture will be in
>> focus, and the real key is it's all about the light.
>
>With all due respect Brandon, digital photography is all about Adobe
Photoshop!
>
Not quite... PS is like darkroom work; great to augment/correct, but not for major rescue. Important thing is to see to it that the shot is well within the ballpark (for focus and exposure) when it gets taken. No Photoshop expert can rescue an out of focus digital photo or one with blown out highlights (this is from experience; I'm Art Director at a TV station and I spend 10 hours or better a week in PS and do a LOT of rescue work).
Best thing to remember about digital cameras (aside from good focus, but that's the same w/ any camera) is that you don't expose the same way as you do with negative film... with negs, most folks expose for the shadow detail and let the highlights take care of themselves, since it's usually possible to rescue highlight detail in the darkroom (you can pump more light through a dense area of silver and usually find some detail there, but it's way harder to get detail from a clear (underexposed) area). But digital exposure is more like shooting slides... you can often rescue detail from the shadow areas (though granted, they'll usually be noisy), but once a highlight gets blown out, it's gone. Kind of like the clear area in an overexposed slide... so try to expose for highlight detail and pull detail out of the shadows later with PS.
Classic content: Besides out of focus shots, the biggest thing that bugs me about shots of bikes for sale is that most folks don't know what bike addicts like to see... How many times have you seen a closeup of a downtube decal (yeah, bro, we already know what kind of bike it is) or handlebar tape when we'd much rather see unusual components, lugwork detail, or (rare is the seller who includes this) a shot of the underside of the BB so we can see cutout, serial #, etc.
Bob Hovey
Columbus GA