Saturday Jun 21, 2008

More and better pictures

So once I had some daylight to work with, I went out into the backyard.   My first attempt at a picture was this orange, which was backlit:

Obviously not right.   But a little RTFM later, and a few shots to try different metering and exposure compensation settings, and I got this one:

Wish it had occurred to me to try learning to use a fill flash; I might have been able to get an orange orange AND a blue sky.   Oh, well...that's for another day.

While I was experimenting I also took these:

Hibiscus, I think...

Knowing as I do what the whole backyard looks like, I have to say that a key advantage of an SLR is that it gives you the option of a longer lens.  That lets you take a picture that crops away all of the "un-beautiful" bits.

When the adapter for my Minolta lenses shows up I'll have some more experiments to share.   It should allow me to take some pictures that I can't with the kit lenses.   For example, in low-light situations, I'd turn to the fixed "normal" lens that came with my film SLR.  It is a 58mm f1.4.   My kit lens is f4.4 at that focal length--a very large difference in exposure--and on this camera 58mm is a moderate telephoto (like a portrait lens).

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