One of my 1st photos with my macro lense. A Canon 50mm f/2.5 macro. Boy, f/2.5 at full macro is a bloody shallow depth of field. Its going to take a hell of a lot of practise to get used to using this sucker.
The picture you can see is of a rather large leaf being backlit by the sun. If viewed large, you can see a hell of a lot of detail in the leaf.
A forum I am a member of has a monthly photo comp, and this month the topic is bridges. So off I went to try and capture the ANZAC bridge from a new angle at night with a wide angle lense.
It proved to be a bit more difficult than I imagined. Firstly, I was standing in mud the whole time. The tripod kept moving and getting it level was a chore. But I wanted it to be where it was so as I could get the moon reflected in the puddle just in front of the camera.
Once I had the camera set up, it was quite difficult to try and get the exposure right and as you can see by the bridge, I didnt acheive it at all.
One thing I am finding I am having alot of trouble with, is focusiing at night. Auto focus is bloody hopeless, and to be honest, I am not much better.
Whether I will actually enter this shot or not in this months comp is still undecided. I might have another crack at it, but I wont have the moon as full as it was on this night.
Well after a lot of positive emails about the previous post, I thought I would post another link to a very good explanation of Depth of Field. This one is a little more dtailed, naturally, but just as good a read.
Remember, DOF can greatly affect a photo. It helps to put the attention on a particular point. Also, it isn’t just things in the background that you can throw out of focus. Things in the foreground OOF can help a photo too. Here are a couple of examples.
This is a perfect example of the background thrown out of focus. I only wanted the sugar container in focus on that photo, so I set a low F stop, f/5.6, and focussed on the container itself.
You can still see the other sugar containers in the background, but they aren’t the focus of attention.
In this example, I have again gone for an f/4.5 and focussed on the musician on the right and the one to the left is out of focus (OOF)
I hope that helps. I know when I realised you could actually control this sort of thing, my photos started to look better.
Ok, before we go any further, let me just point out, I am no genius when it comes to photography. I learn by doing things. So if you are like me and need to go and do things to learn, this little BLOG entry maybe of some help to you too.
This whole dSLR business was completely new to me about 10 months ago, then I bought a second hand Canon EOS 300D and I had a rather steep learning curve to try and come to grips with. f stops, apertures, exposure, shutter speeds etc etc etc. Having only used an old IXUS II before, point and shoot had been my world.
One thing that always intrigued me as a photographic ignorama (that may not be a word) was how those slick photos with something in focus and the rest out of focus was done. So I asked a few stupid questions, Googled like a demon and found out the answer was Aperture settings. Ah, so off I go. Change to manual mode on the dSLR and everything is stuffed up. As I go for greater depth of field, every thing got dark and blurry. As it turns out, exposure is a VERY important thing in photography. Well I’ll be buggered. More reading and it turns out that aperture and shutter speed have a relationship. One that I may venture into when I understand it better.
Ok, so set the camera to Aperture Priority and have another crack at it. Now you can see from the picture to my left, or your right, and you might have to click it and see the larger version to appreciate it, that I have focussed on the front of the formula 1 car (thats the red car at the front for the car racing ignorama). Notice the dark green car at the back is out of focus, or OOF if you are reading photographic forums. Ok, that was taken with an aperture setting of f/5.6.
f10
Originally uploaded by norbography. Ok, here we have one that was taken at f/10. Again you may need to click it to see it in its massive glory. You should be able to tell the differance pretty easily. Forget the stuff up in exposures, look at the sharpness on the next couple of cars back. They are slightly sharper.
Now, this one was taken at F20. Note the sharpness of all the cars now. That, in a very, very basic form is how aperture settings effect depth of field.
Obviously, there is alot more to it than just that. For a much more in depth look at it, and better pictures too I must say, see this terrific site.
I hope that helps. Thanks to daisydingletoy at Flickr for the prompt to pull my finger out.
These little buggers were behind glass, and moved around at a rather rapid rate.Yes, that is a grape in his mouth, which gives you some idea of his size.
I would reccomend the Mogo Zoo to anyone going near Batemans Bay, it is well worth the trip.
Well, this was to be my last pre dawn get up of the trip, so I was glad to see the sky was clear and it looked like being a good day. Apart from the fact it was bloody freezing, it was a good morning with plenty of shots taken. This photo was one fo the better ones.
After grabbing about 120 photos, I headed off to Batemans Bay for lunch. Just 10kms south of Batemans Bay is a place called Mogo. And at that place they have a terrific little zoo. More on that in the next installment.
Another early rise to try and capture a nice sunset. I was at Eden last night and because I arrived pretty late, I didnt get any pics or an idea where the sun would rise. So I took a bit of a punt and drove down a very dark driveway marked coastal patrol. As you can see from the photo it turned out to be a reasonable spot.
I set the tripod up and bolted on the wide angle lense and waited. I could smell rain and was worried that I would get wet. But, once again mother nature was a good old girl and the rain came once I was done. While I was snapping away, and things were getting brighter, I turned around whilst having a stretch and a yawn and spotted a ripper rainbow. I quickly spun around and grabbed a few shots of it. See them on my Flickr site.
I left Eden and drove to Bega and Tathra. The famous historic wharf at Tathra was being rebuilt and it was pretty much closed off. Bitter of a bugger. So after a quick breakky, it was off to Narooma.
I had heard a bit about Narooma, all good and it didn’t dissapoint. Like Lakes Entrance, it is a photographers dream. Snapped off a load of shots this afternoon and got a few nice shots. Up early tomorrow and off to Mogo Zoo, Batemans Bay and Culburra Beach. Due to the fact that I don’t have internet, this post will have to go up when I next get net access.
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