For anyone interested, I've put up a post on White Balance

I agree with Thorsten although surely allowance has to be made for those who, like me, are trying to learn and improve. Having said that I hope none of my images are 'offenders'. Sure I have loads of disasters but they stay quietly hidden on my hard drive or get deleted.  Personally I think Photoshop has a lot to answer for. I try not to do too much post production fixing other than cropping.  I try hard to get the lighting right and if I don't succeed I won't use the image.
If anyone wants to critique any of mine please feel free and I won't take it personally !
I noted Tim's point about an 8MP SLR for £200, I bought a 10MP Fuji compact (just to stick in my pocket you understand) for £59 on my last visit to the UK and it takes great images within its limitations.
Jim

hi Brendan, thanks, though I do know this way, as I have changed it many times before, my old 1d always looked better set to cloudy, give nice tones, in the studio I have changed the setting to flash and also manually to different K settings, but I always seem to get better results from Auto, but wot I really want to know is how we can measure the lighting and get the true white balance reading without using an expensive hand held meter,

Hi Thorsten,

 What a great post, it seems that anyone can pick up a camera and call themselves a photographer, When I started all those years ago, it was film and the joy I got out of learning about film and manual exposure was great, I went to night classes and took a city and guilds in 5 subjects and also an 'A' Level course one night a week. I have seen the change from working in the darkroom, scanning of Negs and now we have Digital, each of these have there on merits, when shooting film, it was very costly, so we shot less and slower, everything had to be perfect and cloning wasn't an option,

passing by the scanning stage as this was a real pain in the bum, because the scanners were pretty poor at that stage with lots of computer linking problem and it was slow, but it was the dawn of a new age, where some Photoshop skills were learnt.

The past few years has seen an explosion of the digital age, now you can pick up an 8 megapixel SLR for £200 I did lol, and it’s great!! this is part of the problem, as there are no costs of taking pics now, everyone can, and many never take the camera of program mode, we know how easy the camera metering system can be fooled, giving how easy it is to upload a pic from their computer we end up with lots of different sub standard images, but thats a personal view as what I think is good doesn’t mean it is the same for everyone else, 

I will hold up my hands and say that I don't have a clue when it comes to White Balance, Having tried setting the camera manually I always found that the camera's auto white balance looked best, so I think if someone could post how to set it correctly it would be a great help.

I also think that skin treatment is a personal taste, something that can change from model to model and depend on makeup, I model with perfect makeup shouldn't really need that much softening, but most of the time it is needed, as we are working with models who apply their own, (a lot of the model are very good at it) but its never as good as a professional job. I feel because we are working in the glamour industry, it seems to be expected as when we lift a mag in the shops, most have been retouched, as said before its a personal  view, I would much rather apply some treatment if it makes the model look better, some may think its too much, personal taste again

For those of you who aren't bored by now and are still reading, I think that training is one of the most important things a new tog can do, after all you need to take lessons for driving, training for a new job and these are usually given by an expert. So if you are new, find a course in the local college, join a camera club, take the camera of program and if you are lucky enough to have a pro as a friend ask for help or pay him for lessons, 

Tim  

Thorsten

I have to agree with your sentiments exactly, I have been learning as much as I can over the last 2 years and am reading everything I can get my hand on about photography, magazines 2-3 per month countless DVDs ,Photoshop tutorials etc etc etc, and I would still class myself as a beginner!  

The only good thing to maybe to come from substandard images is the individuals concerned will maybe become a little more interested in the art and maybe learn the fundamentals and gain a real passion for it!!   

Unfortunately this practice is not exclusive to photography the digital age has allot to answer to , in my field it is the same young engineers rely on computers for everything and what the computer says is correct without knowing a logical method of checking what they are doing ie longhand.

I think is has raised a very important question that has we are losing many skills that have devolved over many decades, in the modern era with the thinking that the computer will work it out for me! Or the camera in this case!!

Maybe I am a little old fashioned in my late 20’s lol   

Martin

Good comment Thorsten,

I fully understand where you coming from. And I do understand your frustration to the fact that some people might not take the time to really focus and see what they doing before processing the image onto this site. It is true that most cameras have gone cheaper and easier to use so people with very little knowledge about photography "rules" can start shooting. Although as you mentioned the quality of the images might not be at a very high standard I am sure people are trying (the majority of people obviously) including me and I am the first one to raise my hand and say that yes I am trying to produce above average quality pictures but I have still a lot to learn. So if people send these images to this site its not to show off their bad details but in a way to be able to increase their knowledge on the areas that needs improving.

That is what I am using this site for too to get ideas and feedback from people with more experience than me. So maybe it would be a good idea to arrange a meeting with members and why not try to arrange classes as a camera club here people could join up and benefit from experience and learn new skills in order to further improve their photography techniques. 

So Thorsten since you had a bloody good MOAN maybe we could arrange something in order to the members to meet up and improve :)

An old chinese proverb: " actions speak better than words.." :)

All the best.