Focus Control

On this particular day, I was working on controlling my focus - my camera has a great ability to put everything in focus, but I want to be able to be more selective.

A brilliantly sunny day, an aperture of f/2.8, and a 5mm focal length (macro) gave me these bright pink flowers in lovely focus, with the conference centre in the back a recognizable but out-of-focus object. I think the shape of the building adds to the picture, without taking the shine away from those beautiful flowers.

On the flip side, here I had fun looking through a tall, grassy plant that is blurred, while the hillside on the opposite side of the river is clear and sharp. Aperture f/4.0, 15.5mm focal length. (Note the horizon isn't actually crooked, the hill just isn't straight. I should have pretended it was and tilted the camera slightly to compensate.)

In both cases I tended to focus on what I wanted to have clear, and then recompose the image to get the shot just how I wanted it. This is a neat trick I learned from my last instructor, and I really like it.

Bird Stalker Pt 1

Once again, I have been a bird stalker lately. For me they are a great challenge because they don't usually sit still for a long, involved process of composition and fiddling with settings. Especially these little guys.

I haven't got a clue what kind of bird this is. I love the contrast though between this very lively little bird and the old bars and concrete around him.

1/80 sec exposure, f/5.0 aperture, 44.5 mm focal length, ISO 200

Wordless Wednesday: Moon

1/400 exposure, f/5.0 aperture, 59.2mm focal length (to eliminate background items), ISO 100

Focus just where I want

My camera is not a DSLR. I only have a very awkward and imprecise manual focus. So things that are easy with a spin of the lens on a DSLR are a real challenge with my lovely SX10.

This is the first time I was able to get both the foreground AND background out of focus, with something in the middle clear and sharp! I'm thrilled with the results of these beautiful bleeding hearts.

1/60 sec exposure, f/5.0 aperture, 63.6mm focal length, ISO 200, Flash on (it was later evening), non-macro

Rainbow!

These were all taken of the same rainbow. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find my polarizing lens (stupid move!) until the rainbow was nearly gone, so I didn't get to experiment with that nearly as much as I would have liked. These are all with just a regular UV filter that is always on my camera.

The left part of the rainbow. It really stands out against the dark clouds.

I thought about cropping this, but then decided to show it with all it's warts! Those warts are... two tips from my umbrella, creeping in to the top of the frame. I had my umbrella out to protect the lens from getting spotty, but as I didn't have a tripod, sometimes it was hard to balance everything at once - and this was the result. Aside from that, I LOVE this picture. The rainbow enters and exits the image at pretty much the same height on each side. Yay!

And for balance, here is the right side of the rainbow.

All were taken with a bit of zoom to cut out roof tops and so on. There was in fact a bit of a double rainbow at one point, but the second one was so faint, I don't know if I caught it at all. It was still beautiful to see!

Bribe you with pretty

I will bribe you with the pretty, so you'll forget how long I've been MIA!

I was thrilled to discover that our new house has a small army of giant irises in the front flower bed! Here's a beautiful macro shot of one of those flowers.

1/100 exposure, f/4.0 aperture, focal length 5mm, ISO 80