Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Practicing Photographing

The other night the sky was crystal clear, so I decided to try another couple of moon shots. I don't know whether I'm a couple days early or late, but I'm just not quite at the full moon point. I tried tripod, max zoom, shutter speed priority, and a shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second. I also used the remote to trigger the camera so my finger pressing the button wouldn't cause any blurring. I don't think it looks that much better than the last ones though. I think I may have taken this experiment about as far as I can.

In addition to the moon shots, I had a couple of tree branch pictures from a couple days ago. I figured now that the tree is actually showing some leaves, might as well try and get some pictures. These two pictures are of the same branch, but from different directions where I deliberately positioned the sun near the top of the branch for the second shot. I'm really not sure what the blue at the bottom is other than some prismatic reflection from the fact that the lens is pointing almost directly into the sunlight (even though the sun is severely out of focus). I like the second shot with the sun a lot better, even though you can't see as much detail on the branch and leaves.

Since Ginger isn't here, there's no one to complain if I take a screen out of one of the windows upstairs in the sitting room. By doing that and using my zoom lens, I can get some nice shots of birds on the bird feeder without them being scared off. This was the first time I had seen a red (purple?) Finch. Birds that visit the feeder that I haven't been able to get a picture of so far are a Blue Jay (there must just be the one in the area, and it's extremely skittish) and the occasional woodpecker.

These last couple of shots are simply attempts at the ever elusive "really good sunset picture".




3 comments:

Scott said...

The pictures are really really good. The Japanese Maple against the sun is very good. And though you don't seem to like it, the moon shot is incredible too. Thanks for posting the parameters of the shot, so I can try to emulate it at home.

By the way, that is indeed a male purple finch. There are ones with just a red head, brown body, and those are male house finches. (Females are all brown.) All of what I've just said pertains to their summer plumage. In winter, they're all mostly brown.

And for grins, here's info about goldfinches, which are also shown.

Barry said...

I like the bird coming in for a landing.

BullBunky said...

Well, at least you HAVE sun for a sunset. I agree with Scott that the backlit branch shot is a nice one. I like that your camera still picks out the leaf edges without everything getting blown out by the sun. Good sensor, I guess.

You're so creative and artistic when you're fending for yourself!