I finally got my camera fixed after about 6 months with the auto-focus not functioning and my favorite lens not working. I was thrilled to get it back because I found that my eyes weren't very accurate with the manual focusing. One of my goals this year has been to learn the manual function on my camera. I want to understand it all better and how each setting works together. I'm doing fairly well with the outdoor part of this. I started working on it in Las Vegas last fall when I attended Spraguefest with my friend Debbie. One of the classes we took was a photo class and we then went on a late night photo walk learning to take pictures of the neon lights at night. It was frustrating at first but after teaming up with a few others we managed to figure out the range of settings needed to get a good picture at night and after that we had a blast snapping everything. I learned that I needed to set my aperture as low as it would go...I think it was 5.6 that night and then I would put the ISO at 400 and then move the shutter until the light meter read a little past center. We took quite a few pictures that night but it was great practice. I've been practicing with the birds at my bird feeders and whenever I travel with Russ I take the camera and go walking shooting random things. My main goal is to learn to adjust for the different light situations and in my mind know which way to go with the adjustment. The birds are a little tricky at the feeders because they are always moving so I have to keep
changing my settings with each move to a different feeder. There's also the blur factor as well. I've been happy with several I've gotten out of my playing. I got some nice ones of a butterfly on the butterfly bush in the backyard and some great seagulls at the beach. I'm not quick as successful with indoor pictures. When I don't have a flash going, things blur too quickly and so I haven't quite figured out the best settings for our limited indoor lighting. When I use the flash it washes out faces and so I've still got some work ahead to master the indoor stuff. So many of my indoor attempts are of babies who are constantly moving as well so I know there is a trick to that. Higher aperture and shutter speed lower I'm thinking but will keep trying until I get better at it. I usually end up just flipping over to auto modes indoors because I miss too many good shots of my grandkids by playing with settings all the time. I think I may just need to get my husband to agree to model for me so I can get it down. I'm making progress though and that makes me happy. I love it when I get a really good one out of a batch of a 1000 tries. I am learning and that's what counts. Now I need to go back and delete all the bad ones because I am ending up with way too many photos on my computer. I've posted a few of my favorites from our trip to Tennessee earlier this month. The ducks were sweet to let me take a ton of photos of them. I was particularly fond of this yellow duck. The other ducks were the same colors and this one was unique to what I saw there. The ducks who were the same started pushing this duck around a little and made me think of the ugly duckling story. This one became my favorite after that. I've always rooted for the underdog. (or underduck in this case)
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