Camera Challenges

A local Camera Club advertised their new sessions as being particularly suitable for beginners, so I thought that I ought to give it a go. I have had my fancy DSLR camera for a few years now but I know that it (and I!) could do so much more if I only knew how, and I was hoping that the sessions might go some way towards that.

The session two weeks ago was a quick run down on the lessons that the club had gone through last year, and was a welcome refresher for me on the basics of apertures, shutter speeds and ISO's. Not that is to say that I am now an expert on any of those things, but I did recognise most of the topics being discussed even if I don't always practise them :)

A recent visit to Pollock House after that session was a chance for me to make sure that I used a high aperture setting to keep all of the detail of this fine country house on the outskirts of Glasgow.

Then I switched to a low aperture setting to give these thistles in the grounds a blurred background.

Clearly the lesson on quick shutter speeds to freeze the motion of this insect on the flower didn't quite sink in :)

This week's lesson was all about "Exposure Bracketing" which might as well have been a foreign language to me. Apparently it means that the camera can be set to take the same photo at different exposure settings, which can then be combined to produce a composite shot. Who knew such a thing existed???

Although we practised some shots during the session I decided to have a go at home to see if I could remember what we had been told, and here are the results.

The bottom photo above is under-exposed by 1 stop, the middle over-exposed by 1 stop and the top photo is taken at the original setting. I am not quite sure what all that means but you can see for yourself the differences in the photos :)

The trainer recommended free software, for those of us who don't have Photoshop, where you can upload the images and they will be combined in something called HDR (High Dynamic Range ????) and result in a photo that has the definition in the shadows of the under-exposure and the clarity in the light of the over-exposure. Sadly you will have to take my word that this occured as the website, Fotor would allow me to upload and combine the photos but I couldn't save the resulting image without signing up and paying for the advanced version.

I couldn't initially think of when I might use this facility on the camera, but then I remembered the trouble that I had taking photos of the amazing painted monasteries in Romania recently. The detail beneath the eaves was lost in all of my photos so maybe if I had known about the Exposure Bracketing I might have ended up with photos that showed all of the wonderful frescoes, then again maybe not without paying who knows what for the software :)

Still at least I have used a setting on my camera that I never even knew existed, maybe now I need to do the same with all those fancy settings on my sewing machine :)

Manually Challenged!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been trying to follow the challenges laid down by Katy each month to discover and try out hitherto unknown settings on my camera. This month's challenge was very daunting - to dispense with the comfort of automatic or pre-set settings and go into freefall with manual!

My husband thinks I spend too much time dithering over taking photos as it is, so this was definitely going to be a challenge and a half :) Fortunately, for me, said husband took himself off to Ireland on a golfing trip last week so at least I wasn't clock watching as well as trying to get my head around the manual settings!

The gardens in a local stately home are just coming into their best so that was my first port of call for the manual challenge.

I am used to only having to think about one setting when I take my photographs, so as you can probably imagine having to consider several things seemingly at once took a bit of getting to grips with! Landscapes, at least, don't move which is more than can be said for the subject of the next challenge photo.

A while ago my mum gave me a solar-powered butterfly decoration for a pot plant. Although the plant was sitting next to a set of patio doors, it clearly didn't get enough sun as the butterfly never moved an inch. A recent reshuffle of the rooms lead to said plant being relocated to the greenhouse. When we then had wall-to-wall sunshine for the next few days, well I am sure that you can image what happened! The poor butterfly has been frantically beating its' wings ever since :)

The perfect subject to challenge my manual skills. Just in case you think I have cracked it though, here is my first attempt :)

Not quite so obvious there is a butterfly there is it?

I have certainly enjoyed this challenge, and would never have attempted the manual settings on the camera without it, but I suspect that it will take a lot more practise on my part before using the manual settings comes anywhere near naturally to me.

How about you? Are you a point and shooter, or do you know your way around your camera settings like a pro?

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New to Me in April

Welcome to another New to Me Link Party, doesn't time fly when you are trying out new things??

This month my New to Me activity has been a real mixed bag.

First up, another Camera challenge from Katy

This time we were tangling with speed, shutter speeds to be precise! So, where better to practise speed shots than a racecourse.

 I am really enjoying these Camera challenges, whilst the science of the photography mostly goes over my head, I am, at the least, having fun finding appropriate places to take the photos for each challenge:)

 My next New to Me activity, was prompted by wanting to incorporate a tiny ribbon bow in the Kilt Pin brooch I made for the IG #outlandercraftswap. Never having attempted such tiny bows with any success before, I knew that I needed help. Quite what help I needed was a big surprise!

It turns out that your ordinary table fork is the ideal tool for tiny bow making :) You can check out how that works here

Of course, you might find like me that one tiny bow is never enough :)

So, that's my New to Me activity this month, now it is your turn to share your New to You challenges. As ever please help to spread the word by linking back to this post in your post and/or adding the blog button to your sidebar.

Check out the other links too and, maybe, leave an encouraging comment along the way. The emphasis of this link party is to celebrate the trying of something new, whether it works out exactly as planned or not, so a little encouragement here and there would not go amiss! 

The link will remain open until 23.59GMT on April 30th, so you have some time to try something new and link up and join the party :)

An InLinkz Link-up

If your New to You activity involves Christmas and Holiday gift or home decoration making this month, there is still time to link up your makes over at SLIK stitches You never know, you could be the lucky winner of this fantastic cushion pattern, courtesy of Bustle and Sew.

 

Looking forward to seeing your New to You activities this month :)

Racing against time!

As you know by now I have been attempting Katy's Camera Challenges, and this month we have been challenged to use the Shutter priority setting. Now, I knew that the setting existed on my camera, but I have to confess that any use prior to the challenge has been entirely accidental!

For this challenge we were tasked with finding some willing moving subjects, which was a challenge in itself. Having watched the Scotland rugby team end up winning the Wooden Spoon, and thereby propping up the league table, they definitely didn't fit the bill, and living at the end of a cul-de-sac meant that moving cars were not an option either. So, I decided to combine the challenge with a day out to the Races. Plenty of moving subjects there for me to practise on and the opportunity to add to the Celtic Thistle coffers at the same time, what more could I ask for :)

Well, paying attention to the instructions might have helped!

Shutter Speed 1000

Our first challenge was to take photos in the Shutter Priority mode starting with a fast Shutter speed and gradually slowing the speed down. Katy suggested starting with 1000 for cars and 500 for animals, but I reckoned that racehorses and cars were probably much of a muchness in terms of speed so started with the photo above at 1000. As you can see even the movement of the horse's tail is crisp. Sadly none of my money was on any of the first three past the post in this race, so the Celtic Thistle coffers were lighter by the end of it!

Shutter Speed 800

I know that it looks like this horse is galloping in the wrong direction and it is, but I found it much easier to take photos of the horses as they headed down to the start when I was trying to fiddle about changing the shutter speeds. I think this speed is probably acceptable too, and certainly better than any shot I might have attempted like this in the past!

Shutter Speed 400

Not so great

Shutter Speed 125

Definitely not crisp and even!

Our next instruction was to leave the shutter at a fixed speed and try to follow the movement pressing the shutter as I went. I wrote the instructions down before going out to the Racecourse, but did I read them whilst I was there? Of course, not! So I will have to rise to that challenge another day :(

The final part of the challenge involved photographing running water, so I was delighted to find a waterfall in the racecourse garden. We were also supposed to take the Camera off of the continuous focus setting, but you know how bad I am at remembering (or reading!) instructions, so needless to say that didn't happen.

But I did get these shots

Shutter Speed 250

Shutter Speed 125

Shutter Speed 50

I have to say that I am really enjoying these Camera Challenges from Katy, and even although I would appear to have the memory span of a gnat, some of the information that Katy is passing on is filtering through!

An added bonus is getting to have a great, if not lucrative :(, day out at the same time.

And my favourite photo of the day has to be this one

A determined face if ever I saw one :)

Looking forward to seeing how everyone else has approached the challenge and if you are up for a challenge, it is not too late to join in!

Rising to the challenge

Recently, Katy at The Littlest Thistle has been challenging us all to get to grips with our cameras. Having supposedly mastered the Landscape, Portrait and Sports settings we were then challenged with something called the triangle of light (No, I had no idea what she was talking about either!)

To get to grips with this scary sounding triangle we first had to get our heads around the aperture settings. Now, as it happens I usually use the aperture setting on my camera, so most of what Katy said about the challenge almost made sense:) In a later post mathematical equations were being banded about and they definitely made no sense whatsoever!

We took a photo of a line of objects, focusing on the front object and increasing the aperture with each photo. So, the above photo was taken with the aperture set to f5.6 and the focus on the front reel. The front reel is in focus but the rest are not

Same photo at f8

At f11 the second and third reels are now in focus but the lettering on the last two reels is indecipherable

At f22 you can read the lettering on the brown spool

At f29 you can read all of the lettering on the spools.

We then had to repeat the exercise focusing this time on the centre object

So, this time at f5.6 the green spool is in focus but the spools either side are not

At f11 only the front and back spools are indistinct

At f29 the variation in the front thread is now discernable.

And just in case you thought that all this information was going in one ear and out the other (it has been known!)

On our sporting trip to Murrayfield last weekend I was able to catch the flamethrower using the Sports mode

and the sequence of a lineout, which unfortunately was about the only piece of action that happened directly in front of us. By this stage, my Irish husband, was too tense to utter anything more than the odd syllable so it was maybe just as well. His heart rate only recovered when the fact of Ireland's winning of the Six Nations Championship sank in around 10.00p.m that evening :) Sadly for me, Scotland could only gain the Wooden Spoon, so our prospects for the World Cup later this year seem rather dismal :(

Throw - in

Jump

Catch

Gather

This month's challenge is to get to grips with the shutter speed, so I am off to find some fast moving objects :) There weren't many of them to be found amongst the Ireland fans on Sunday morning in Edinburgh I can tell you :)

Camera Challenge - the sporting edition!

The opportunity to use the sports mode on my camera at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh for a Six Nations Rugby game was too good to pass up.

The game between Scotland and Wales was much too tense for me to concentrate on taking photos during it. Sadly the result didn't go Scotland's way (no gloating there Catrin!) but I did get some photos taken before the nerves kicked in :)

Marching Band Murrayfield

Marching Band pre-match entertainment in sports mode.

Marching Band Murrayfield Stadium

Marching Band in full auto mode

The pre-match entertainment also included fireworks, which I attempted to get a photo of

but I was so startled by the bang that I missed the shot completely!

I couldn't miss these strange fellows though

Welsh sheep are bigger than I thought :)

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Camera Challenge

When we returned to the UK from our stint in Latvia I treated myself to a fancy DSLR camera, and since then I have been on a couple of training days to try and learn how to get the most out of the fancy kit. I am still a long way from being comfortable with the camera and taking the kind of photos that I would really like to be able to.

So, you can imagine how pleased I was when Katy announced her monthly Camera Challenge for the photographically challenged!

This month our challenge was to get away from the full auto settings where the human behind the camera is simply required to point and shoot, to select and use the landscape, portrait and sport settings in the appropriate situation.

So, I took myself off to the coast and started snapping.

Unfortunately I didn't read the instructions of the challenge properly and discovered afterwards that we were supposed to take a photo in full auto mode and then the same photo in one of the three settings!

Camera Challenge Scene 2

A lovely, sunny afternoon found me heading out to Hadrian's Wall, for some, hopefully, appropriate landscapes. Sadly, by the time we reached the Roman site the sun had been left behind :(

The view from Brocolitia Roman Fort taken in full auto mode

The same view in landscape mode.

The Fort is pretty desolate at the best of times, but on a grey day in February I feel sorry for any poor Roman who found himself patrolling the wall and thinking of the glorious Italian weather that he had left behind :)

The only contenders for portrait shots on the day were the sheep grazing on the other side of the road, but they weren't too keen to have their portraits taken, so plan B was called for.

Our son and daughter-in-law's rabbit is always happy to perform for food, especially when it is on offer outside of his regular meal time :)

The above is taken in full auto.

And the same in portrait.

I did entertain notions of taking action shots of him in sport mode, but they didn't quite work out as planned.

We are heading off to Murrayfield, Edinburgh to, hopefully, watch Scotland beat Wales (sorry Catrin!) at rugby, so maybe I will get some suitable sports shots there. I have no idea where our seats are in the stadium, so you may just have to imagine that the dots in the photos are players :)

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