Shutter Speed Experiment - Woohoo!

Loved the shutter speed stuff that we did last night at college so wanted to get out and do some more.  Battery fully charged, 4GB memory card empty ....... grab camera and and off to the exotic location of Toyota island over the A38 - fabulous!

My intention was to capture the streaming lights of the vehicles below me, so with my camera set to manual, leaving me to set the shutter speed, aperture and iso I snapped away, trying different variations of all the settings.

A selection of the 149 photograph's taken are below .........

                                            f/10, shutter 1/2, iso 400

                                             f/10, shutter 1/2, iso 400

                                              f/10, shutter 1/2, iso 400

                                            f/5, shutter 1/3, iso 400 

                                            f/6.3, shutter 1/3, iso 400


Hopefully will get more time to go out with camera this weekend and also to start thinking of some themes for my main assignment.

:o)

Week 3 - Shutter Priority

Tonight we have been experimenting with shutter priority - love it!  

I have taken a number of pictures with a slow shutter speed which gives a blurry image of a moving object while the background remains in focus, along with some images at the other end of the scale using a fast shutter speed which shows a moving object perfectly in focus, giving the impression that the subject is actually stationary.

Slow shutter - blurry subject - Results below:

                                          f4/5, iso 100, shutter 1/5

                                          f11, iso 100, shutter 1/5


Fast shutter - Subject in focus - Results below:

                                          f/3.5, iso 200, shutter 1/2000

                                         f/4.5, iso 200, shutter 1/200

 The following images are the results of some digital tweaking:

  Original                                                                         Cropped and Black & White

 Original                                                                        Cropped & colour enhanced                        

Really love the effect of using a slow shutter to create a blurry moving image and will definitely experiment further with this.  Hope to have some time this weekend to get out and about with my camera ......

Also need to start thinking of some potential themes for my chosen assignment - landscape!  

:o)

The Light Task!

This week's task has been to take 4 photograph's of the same object / building etc. at different times of the day.  My effort is below, although I have to say i'm not overly impressed with the outcome, mostly because of the subject matter.  Short on time as ever, my only option was my parents garden as I had stayed overnight and was there for the day.

                                            Taken at 7am, f/25, ISO 200, shutter 1/2

                                            Taken at 12pm, f/25, ISO 200, shutter 1/40

                                            Taken at 3pm, f/25, ISO 100, shutter 1/15

                                            Taken at 7.15pm, f/25, ISO 3200, shutter 2

I took a number of shots with different ISO settings at each time and the one's above are the best of the bunch, in my opinion anyway.  The first one looks dull, but the sun had not quite risen.  The second one is better as the sky looks bright and you can see the shadow on the lawn showing the time of day.  The afternoon shot is pretty unremarkable and the final shot is blurry due to camera shake ( I didn't set the flash but upped the ISO to 3200 which is the max on my camera)  I think i'd like to do this task again, but would take the afternoon and evening shot much later to show more difference in lighting, oh and with more interesting subject matter ...... not sure what though!   All I need now is a whole day to be in the same place, to photograph at my leisure,  easier said than done!

Looking forward to week 3!

:o)

Week 2

So, here we are in lesson 2 and today we've been learning about aperture priority.  It's bit confusing, as most things are when you start out ... however, I think i've got a better understanding now than I did 2 hours ago when I walked into the classroom ........ the light outside wasn't great as it was about 6.30pm when I starting taking some shots and although the ISO was at 400 it was still too dark to avoid shaky shots because of the shutter speed.   


On the whole I think I've done best with shots using a larger aperture meaning a small part of the picture is in focus with a blurry background.  A few examples below:

                                           F5, ISO 400, Shutter 1/60

                                            F/5, ISO 400, Shutter 1/60

F/5.6, ISO 800, Shutter 1/13

                                           F3/5, ISO 400, Shutter 1/160




Not so pleased with the shots using a small aperture; which in theory should create a sharp picture with all in focus.  A few examples below:

                                                         F5/6, ISO 800, Shutter 1/50

                                            F3/5, ISO 400, Shutter 1/250

                                           F/22, ISO 400, Shutter 1/2

 Conclusion, more practice required!   


To be continued ..........
:o)

Aperture Priority - Trial!

So, after running around taking husband to garage, step-son to hairdressers and going to visit friend with new baby, I managed to find half an hour camera time so decided to experiment with the aperture priority setting on my camera.  A couple of results below:

F5/6, ISO 125, Shutter 1/80

F32, ISO 400, Shutter 1/6

More later ..........

Intro ....

So, finally i'm on the photography course that i've been promising myself for ages!  It's a City & Guilds Level 1 and i'm currently sitting in lesson 1, wondering what to write in this space!


I love taking photographs ... mostly landscape and travel but any subject can be interesting.  Having owned various compact digital cameras for years I finally splashed out on a DSLR earlier this year and have absolutely no idea how to use it, so i'm stuck on auto.


I'm really looking forward to the course and learning how to use my camera and ultimately take better photographs!


Bye for now 
x