>>2731984
>- how do I get gud?
Practice, and shoot mindfully. Learn to open your eyes, and seek out interesting scenes, and THEN bring out your camera, rather than saying "I want to take a photo" and trying to force some boring shot of a center piece on your mom's diningroom table.
Ask yourself "is this a photo that anyone is going to want to look at?" and be honest with yourself about the answer.
>- is manual the best way to make unique-good looking shots?
No. Manual is a tool, and has it's uses. None of the modes are objectively better than the others. Manual is useful in strange lighting situations, or when you're using strobes. In general, you should spend most of your time in P, Av or Tv.
>- when is autofocus approriate?
At all times where your AF system is able to lock reliably. You get no bonus points for manually focusing, and the risk of missing the shot is much higher.
>- is everything Photoshopped to make things look good these days?
Yes. As it should be. Capturing the photo in-camera is only half of the job. A complete photo has been corrected and polished up for presentation.

>>2731984
- how do I get gud?
learning the technicalities from someone or online and going out and shooting the shit out of everything but with thought and consideration and not just snapshitting like you would with an iPhone

- is manual the best way to make unique-good looking shots?
no, manual is useful for those situations where the camera isn't automatically doing what you want it to do, it's not an artistic tool
understanding when manual is appropriate came to me after lots of shooting, initially I did it for the artsies and then I realized all my shots are grainy as fuck and underexposed
usually the camera will know better than you, and manual is for those few times when it doesn't


- when is autofocus approriate?
literally always

- is everything Photoshopped to make things look good these days?
yes and you should embrace it, every photo can be enhanced if you know what you're doing, even so subtly that most won't be able to tell

Enjoy you cam, I had the 350D for a long time and I was completely satisfied (until I updated when I knew what I wanted).

>- how do I get gud?
practice, read, rinse & repeat. The sticky is a good place to start, also I'd recommend reading Understand Exposure by Bryan Peterson to get down the basics of Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.
>- is manual the best way to make unique-good looking shots?
it depends.
>- when is autofocus approriate?
always, unless you're in a situation where your autofocus system fails
>- is everything Photoshopped to make things look good these days?
most things are yes

>>2731989
>>2731991
>>2732000

Thanks boys.

Being mindful bout my shot? Good stuff..

Any cool technical blogs or even just photoblogs to follow? Do any /p/ have any photo blogs?

Also, do I take pics in RAW or Jpeg?

>>2732059
JPEG processes the photo for presentation for you in camera. It's quick and dirty, and your editing options are very sparse.
Think of it like a pizza

shooting JPEG is like ordering a pizza from pizza hut. It's pretty good, ish, but if you get it, and you don't want so many pepperonis, you have to pick them off and it messes up the cheese. You can put it in the oven if it isn't done enough, but if it's over cooked, you just have to deal with it. It's easy.

shooting raw is like cooking your own pizza. You go to the store you get the exact ingredients you want, in the exact quantity and quality you want. You take it home, you arrange it all exactly how you want it, and then bake it. It takes a lot more time and a lot more energy, but the results CAN be a lot better. However, if you have no idea what you're doing, the pizza you make yourself will be a lot more gross than what you'd get from pizza hut, so you're better off just letting someone else do it.

TLDNR: If you know what you're doing, raw can be a lot better than JPEG. If you don't, raw will be a lot worse than JPEG.

>>2732066
I hear you edit RAWS and export to Jpg for final...

is this true? Do I lost quality if I shoot straight jpegs

>>2732066
>what do i need to know to know when to use RAW or JPEG

>>2732067
Any image you're seeing online is a JPEG, yes, so you shoot raw, then process it, then export it in JPEG form.

If you shoot JPEG, you're bypassing the ability to make major changes to the image because the camera is throwing away most of the "changeable" information before you can get to it. This is why raw files are much much larger than jpeg files.

Hence the:
RAW = ingredients to make a pizza
JPEG = buying a pre-made pizza

>>2732067
You don't lost quality, eventually you'll have to turn the RAW file into a JPEG anyway. But you lost in customization options, because JPEGs are more limited in how much you can edit them to your liking.

RAW is the digital equivalent of a film negative, it's not an actual picture, rather it is the information with which you make the picture. Shooting JPEG is like shooting paper. You can't go back to your film negative and play with it however you want.

Don't let this convince you that RAW is superior, it's only better if you get into editing and if you just want to hobby around and don't want to convert everything before you upload it, JPEG is fine. I started shooting raw because I noticed shots I shot in JPEG being lost forever to overexposure and the like, which is much more easily repairable with RAW.

>>2732072
>>2732070

Okay I get the analogy...

So I need to be acquainted with editing to even utilize the benefits of RAW

>>2732073
yes but editing isn't hard at all
those sliders are scary at first but really it's very simple stuff once you get used to it

Lightroom is the most convenient software for editing, and it is very user-friendly if you watch a few tutorials first

>>2732074
Ive some experience with Photoshop.

Will Lightroom 2013 be good or do you usuallly get the latest versions?

>>2732073
Absolutely.
When your camera is shooting in JPEG mode, it's taking all the information from the scene, adding contrast, boosting color, adding sharpness, and reducing noise for you.

When you shoot raw, it isn't doing that. You're getting as much of the information from the scene as your camera is physically capable of giving you. So when you look at it on your computer, there is no contrast, the color is flat and drab, there is no sharpening done, and there is no noise reduction. This is a lot of the reason that people coming from film dislike digital, because the results look so drab to start with. But when you know what you're doing, you add your own contrast, add your own saturation, add your own sharpening, and do your own noise reduction, and you are able to do it with a lot more finesse and focus than your in-camera jpeg engine is capable of.

But if you just shoot raw, and then export the results to jpeg yourself without knowing what you're doing, your images won't look as good as they would have had you just shot in JPEG in the first place.

>>2732076
I use 5.6 because Lightroom 6 takes up all my ~6GB of RAM just sitting idly in the background, it's all the same software. Newer iterations are just refinements and additional features, if it doesn't make your PC shit its pants then the latest version is probably best

>>2732077
It's worth noting that shooting JPEG is, quite literally, shooting RAW and then deleting it. So you're already shooting RAW, it just gets deleted as soon as the JPEG is done processing.

>>2732080
>It's worth noting
Why is it worth noting? What difference does that make?

>>2732077
Gotcha

Shoot raw --> cook and make your own pizza
Shoot jpeg --> here's your pizza