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“Sold my Story” - Wow, what an old dear. She’s 89 years and 10 months old! Apparently, she was once a belly dancer (hence the finger swizzle) and has live in Wellington (Shropshire) for 65 years. But I’ve learned a lot more than that by talking to her today. Such as, sometimes by having just a short chat with someone can save me from worrying about snapping a sneaky “paparazzi” shot and instead cause them to offer to pose for the camera instead. That just makes things easy!
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“Make a tit at home” - I’m so excited, I’ve traded my beloved 50mm for a 55-300mm for the long weekend. Essentially, this means that I should be much closer to getting all the real good close-ups of wildlife that I’ve wanted in the past. Here’s a little fellow that has made a home, we think a nest, in my parent’s roofing.
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“At The River” - Had a sunset stroll alongside the River Severn this evening. I saw a Heron (or Crane) and some jumping fish! None of which I was fast enough to capture on camera. :o)
Aperture Science Part 2
Following on from my recent post, I continued experimenting with fences. The photos above were taken with identical camera settings (f/1.8, 1/1250sec ISO 100) from the same place, around two feet from the fence. In the first shot I focused on the fence directly, blowing out the background entirely, then I manually focused on the “No fishing” text on the wall beyond. The fence is still there but it’s practically invisible, all from keeping that lens aperture right open.
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“Train man” - I think this chap was spotting trains today at Birmingham New Street.
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“Classical Rose” - Vikki’s rose bush has these huge roses in bloom at the moment
Aperture Science
Let’s break up these Project 366 posts for once with an example of how to use your camera’s aperture settings to your advantage.
For the sake of experiment I’ve taken 3 shots here, all from the same place with the same ISO (100) and the same point of focus on the backboard of the basketball hoop.
The first image was taken with the lens’ focal length set to f/16, the highest it is capable of. Essentially this means that the maximum amount of the image will be in focus. This is often what you want with landscape scenery but in this case it brings the basketball court’s surrounding fence into the foreground and obscures a good portion of the image.
By opening up the aperture to f/5 in the second image, we’re allowing more light into the lens which begins to throw much of the image slightly out of focus, but the foreground fence in particular really starts to blur.
The third image opens it right up to f/1.8 allowing in much more light (it is in fact a little over-exposed) but it narrows the depth of field dramatically. This means that there is a real loss of detail throughout the image (which may actually be the desired result if you are drawing focus to a particular subject within the image), but the fence itself is much less visible. If I’d have moved slightly nearer to the fence, I reckon it would disappear further still. Sometimes, you can afford to use a method like this, sometimes not, but I thought it was a good demonstration of those camera settings that you might not use very often.
Another method is to pan with your subject if it is moving behind a fence. The following shot was taken on a half-pipe ramp which was surrounded by chain link fencing. While you can still see the fence behind the subject, he’s still pretty clear through the nearer one.
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“Summer of soccer” - This is a cheapo football, seemingly abandoned at the edge of a field within the university campus. On a related note how funny is it that Gordon Ramsay got smashed during Soccer Aid yesterday? Stick it to him Teddy! (Ramsay later confirmed via Twitter that he’s fine so I don’t feel guilty for laughing)
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“Savannah shock” - This fella had a caused a massive argument with the dog first thing this morning. Seriously, how often do you get a giraffe in your garden?
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“Coco” - The fluffiest kitten in town
