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bunnI threatened to post more photographs taken while testing out the new camera, and now that threat has been realised...
I am really still at the taking 9999 photos to see what is easy and what I need to work on understanding more stage...
I tried taking some macro photos. This fungus illustrates the problem with this lens on this kind of shot : with my old camera I would be able to take a photo of the fungus at the front, with the focus soft behind : this one just can't focus that close to the lens, so has got the middle distance sharp and foreground and background fuzzy.
This is great for portraits like this one of Az, where the focus is sharp on the eyes, but a little soft on the tip of the nose and very soft behind. Despite the shadowy winter light the camera has done a nice job on getting his white bits sharp without losing his left eye in shadow.
This was taken with a low F number and a high shutter speed, with was my approach for everything but landscapes on the old compact as it forced a nice shallow depth of field effect.
I think I need to try playing around more with higher f numbers now : for the first time I'm getting a depth of field that is actually too shallow to get everything I want in focus! Because the old camera was pretty poor at high-ISO settings (very blotchy) I also got into the habit of using the biggest possible aperture for everything to squeeze every possible tiny bit of light onto the small sensor. Now I need to rethink that approach.
It would have been nice in this shot to get both their faces in focus (they are looking for a squirrel, but can't actually see it or they wouldnt' be standing still like that!)
Action shots : I don't think I'm getting the best out of the camera here. This one is not bad:
but I'm also getting a lot of this sort of thing :
(actually, I love this picture anyway, they both look SO happy - that's our Welsh holiday cottage in the background and they were having fun in the field that belongs to it.)
This particular one is kind of expectedly blurry, as I was taking photos in landscape mode and turned round to find them doing mad zoomings, so it's on a low ISO setting and a slow shutter speed, but I'm getting this sort of thing from the 'action' auto mode as well, which is a bit disappointing. I think I need to whack the ISO up and manually set higher shutter speeds than the camera wants to do to take this sort of photo at this time of year.
Here's an example of an action photo (of fleeing piglets!) taken with the 'intelligent auto' mode. It really has NOT done a good job, I should have set things up manually, only I didn't realise I was going to have fleeing piglets to photograph beforehand. So often the way! Why the back feet of the middle fleeing piglet are in focus when the rest of the pic isn't, is beyond me...
I had a suspicion that the fleeing piglets might well not flee very far, so I went on a bit, then came back carefully and quietly having fiddled with my camera a bit and set the ISO up from the 200 chosen by the 'intelligent auto' up to 1600, which was much better suited to the light conditions :
The Intelligent Auto did a better job of a dim static scene: the dim interior of a monstrous bookshop basement lit only by a couple of fluorescent strips:
Did I mention I adore the panorama mode? Here's what that can do!
The Welsh cottage again, fairly early morning so you can see the difference in shadow as the sun comes over the mountain and hits the hill behind.
Looking along the valley down from Gospel pass towards Capel y Fin
The other way down from Gospel pass towards Hay : what I was trying to catch here was that the mist is lying all over the lowlands ahead, but you can't really see the land on the other side in this smaller web version. It was foggy and grey all day in Hay under the mist, but clear and sunny in the mountains. Possibly this is because Hay is under a curse of some sort from someone who was unable to find even one copy of book one of the series they wanted, but found 6 copies each of books 2,4 and 5...
Sunset over Dartmoor (taken on the way home: we stopped on our way to walk the hounds before it got completely dark and were rewarded with this fabulous sunset).
I am really still at the taking 9999 photos to see what is easy and what I need to work on understanding more stage...
I tried taking some macro photos. This fungus illustrates the problem with this lens on this kind of shot : with my old camera I would be able to take a photo of the fungus at the front, with the focus soft behind : this one just can't focus that close to the lens, so has got the middle distance sharp and foreground and background fuzzy.
This is great for portraits like this one of Az, where the focus is sharp on the eyes, but a little soft on the tip of the nose and very soft behind. Despite the shadowy winter light the camera has done a nice job on getting his white bits sharp without losing his left eye in shadow.
This was taken with a low F number and a high shutter speed, with was my approach for everything but landscapes on the old compact as it forced a nice shallow depth of field effect.
I think I need to try playing around more with higher f numbers now : for the first time I'm getting a depth of field that is actually too shallow to get everything I want in focus! Because the old camera was pretty poor at high-ISO settings (very blotchy) I also got into the habit of using the biggest possible aperture for everything to squeeze every possible tiny bit of light onto the small sensor. Now I need to rethink that approach.
It would have been nice in this shot to get both their faces in focus (they are looking for a squirrel, but can't actually see it or they wouldnt' be standing still like that!)
Action shots : I don't think I'm getting the best out of the camera here. This one is not bad:
but I'm also getting a lot of this sort of thing :
(actually, I love this picture anyway, they both look SO happy - that's our Welsh holiday cottage in the background and they were having fun in the field that belongs to it.)
This particular one is kind of expectedly blurry, as I was taking photos in landscape mode and turned round to find them doing mad zoomings, so it's on a low ISO setting and a slow shutter speed, but I'm getting this sort of thing from the 'action' auto mode as well, which is a bit disappointing. I think I need to whack the ISO up and manually set higher shutter speeds than the camera wants to do to take this sort of photo at this time of year.
Here's an example of an action photo (of fleeing piglets!) taken with the 'intelligent auto' mode. It really has NOT done a good job, I should have set things up manually, only I didn't realise I was going to have fleeing piglets to photograph beforehand. So often the way! Why the back feet of the middle fleeing piglet are in focus when the rest of the pic isn't, is beyond me...
I had a suspicion that the fleeing piglets might well not flee very far, so I went on a bit, then came back carefully and quietly having fiddled with my camera a bit and set the ISO up from the 200 chosen by the 'intelligent auto' up to 1600, which was much better suited to the light conditions :
The Intelligent Auto did a better job of a dim static scene: the dim interior of a monstrous bookshop basement lit only by a couple of fluorescent strips:
Did I mention I adore the panorama mode? Here's what that can do!
The Welsh cottage again, fairly early morning so you can see the difference in shadow as the sun comes over the mountain and hits the hill behind.
Looking along the valley down from Gospel pass towards Capel y Fin
The other way down from Gospel pass towards Hay : what I was trying to catch here was that the mist is lying all over the lowlands ahead, but you can't really see the land on the other side in this smaller web version. It was foggy and grey all day in Hay under the mist, but clear and sunny in the mountains. Possibly this is because Hay is under a curse of some sort from someone who was unable to find even one copy of book one of the series they wanted, but found 6 copies each of books 2,4 and 5...
Sunset over Dartmoor (taken on the way home: we stopped on our way to walk the hounds before it got completely dark and were rewarded with this fabulous sunset).
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 08:28 pm (UTC)That's a neat feature which allows you to capture panoramas like that.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-28 09:37 pm (UTC)I see what you mean about some of the stuff. But it certainly shows the sort of things that the camera is capable of.
I particularly like the two dogs looking for a squirrel and the first of the two dogs zooming action shots. The panoramas are also very impressive.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 08:49 am (UTC)I'm having similar problems with the auto action setting on my camera. Judging by your 'fleeing piglets', it looks like I need to get Pip into the centre of the frame to get him in focus. Unfortunately my reactions aren't quick enough!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-30 12:07 am (UTC)