Camera Practice

As you may remember, we got a new camera a few months ago. It does lots more stuff than our old camera--especially when there isn't a ton of light--and takes pictures much faster, yielding fewer grotesque faces. But still we were taking a lot of out-of-focus, grainy pictures. When we finally had a weekend when we weren't traveling and no one was visiting, I sat down with the camera, the manual, and a ball of yarn to figure out how it all worked.

(The ball of yarn was my practice subject, once Jeff left the room, and didn't scowl or whine one bit. Somebody I know should take lessons.)

I managed to figure out which version of the autofocus works more or less like a regular focus, and how to set the white balance, and how to tell the camera what should be exposed. Then, seeing as we had all that time, we went for a walk around our new neighborhood and I tried out my new skills.

So now I can show you a bit more of what it looks like in our new home.



Dreaming of summer...but it'll be too cold to swim then, too.




End of the line.

Or is it the beginning?






This is my favorite, I think. It's in close-up mode. Here's a question: does anyone know how to get a shallow depth of field on a not-very-fancy digital camera, other than using close-up mode? It will tell me what the F-stop is, but it won't let me change it, as far as I can tell. The only thing I can change directly is the ISO. So I guess I could dial it way down, but it might just slow the shutter speed instead of increasing the aperture. I can also tell it to over- or under-expose; maybe if I corrected the exposure afterward I could change the depth of field that way? Maybe I need to use the Portrait setting? Has anyone figured this out?










These are some cement silos. That's all I know. They seem to be on land owned by Dragon Cement, a Thomaston company, so perhaps they are actually full of cement. Anyway, I think they're awesome.







That one I took by accident because I was wearing gloves and also had numb fingers. But I might like it the best of the Silo Series.




I did not succeed at taking any focused pictures of the seagulls.




Stuff on land that belongs in the water.




Moon.


And, just because I had these on my camera: some pictures from Eliza's 4th birthday, a couple of weeks ago.







There was a snowstorm.






Better than cake.