[joker]

Dunno what he taught you, but in any case your histogram is your friend. It is well worth learning to read it and to appropriately adjust exposure based on what you are hoping to capture in the scene. But seems like you generally do just dandy on exposures, at least on the images that you share here.

[Kim Brown]

Yessir, he has tried to get me used to utilizing the histogram, but I get too distracted with all the cool stuff surrounding me, and pressing all those buttons to get to the histogram takes me away from my surroundings. Plus, the guy has dimples when he smiles. I can't possibly absorb photo lessons from a guy with dimples. Maybe I can kick him in the 'nads when we talk photography - he won't be smiling then..* Most of the photos I post are those that need little post-processing; I crop, lighten and/or darken - that's about it. When I sharpen and saturate, the photos look dead (my Burroughs trip a couple of weeks ago is memorialized with murdered photos). Who has time to process 350 + photos after each trip? If I used the histogram, I'd probably take better photos of neater and cooler stuff. I'll concentrate on that the next trip out. *I wouldn't do that for anything

[joker]

Hmm, I have a dimple. I will remember not to give you any photo tips if we ever hike together Maybe learn about the histogram at home so it's second nature when you're out there. Upon a quick skim, this seems like a good basic primer on histogram usage, though I disagree with his comment about it being dangerously misleading to use just a single histogram (yes, color histograms help in the sorts of situations he describes in his "color histogram" chapter, but a single histogram is better than nothing when you are out in bright sun trying to see what you have on your eentsy little camera's monitor screen). Try shooting some of the types of scenes that tend to fool the exposure meter - e.g. scenes with lots of white or bright stuff that you want to have rendered bright, and vice versa. As for sharpening, I wonder if you have your camera set to do some sharpening at time of capture (read the manual...). If you are re-sizing images once you get them in the computer, you'll be better off not sharpening in-camera, and then learning to sharpen well in your editing program, which can be tricky and it's easy to overdo or do weirdly. I bought Nik's Sharpener, a Photoshop plug-in, as it seems to do a good job of simplifying the sharpening process a little. Sorry for the bit of gearhead thread drift, but your photos have struck me for a while now. You seem to do a good job of following your own eye, versus trying to match what you see in calendars or whatever. So if you can up your "keeper rate," that strikes me as a good thing.