Learning to Use my Camera

Darcy over at My 3 Boybarians is doing an awesome, month long tutorial on taking better photos. I have great Nikon D50 (I know, that's kinda old) but I'm lazy and always use the pre-programmed settings, which really, have never let me down. However, I want to learn how to really use my camera. I haven't had much time to play with her suggestions, but this morning I took a little bit of time to take some pics from todays post.

She taught us how to get a depth of field with our cameras. I took several different photos and so we'll see how it goes. At least I tried.


Here is a series of pictures of three soccer balls (they are laying all over our yard so I figured I'd use them). At first I didn't think it worked because I was focusing on the far left ball and was expecting the other two balls to be out of focus, but upon further observation, I realized that the gravel on the top left was what was out of focus, because as I changed the settings, it became more clear. In the second set, I used my girls. The trees in the background between them are less focused at f4.5.

 Shot at f/4.2
 shot at f/5.6
  shot at f/9
  shot at f/14
  shot at f/29
  shot at f/4.5
  shot at f/....oops can't remember

On the pictures of the soccer balls I used my Quantaray 70-300 zoom and I think I had it at about 70mm. On my girls I used my Nikkor 18-70mm lens and shot it at about 50mm. I'm not used to keeping track of all the info. Hopefully I'll get better at this since I know it will help me get better.

With Joy UNquenchable,

Comments

  1. You got it sussed - thats cool. Great photos and examples.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great shots to practice with. I have been practicing the depth issue with KG in the marching band. It's a lot of info sometimes! Your girls are beautiful. Love their personalities shining through!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You got it!

    You can definitely see the difference in the background.

    If you have a photo program, it will usually tell you your photo's exif data. Lightroom, Bridge, are some examples.

    Very well done!

    ReplyDelete
  4. same here, I'm not used to knowing what it is I'm doing. Just that the picture looks good. Great Job!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'm so glad you stopped by. Thank you for leaving me a note. I look forward to making new friends on this blogging journey!

Popular Posts