This was taken at Lions Den Gorge in Grafton Wisconsin - Lake Michigan. There was some pretty views (a bit hazy though) which I thought I captured. Loaded them on the computer and noticed some of my best views were not focused enough. I am hoping that someone covers some of the focus settings for the camera settings challenge in the future. This is one of my weak area's that I need to learn. I know there are options that I'm missing.
What settings do you typically use - manual focus on your lens, auto focus on the lens? What about some of the other focus settings what do you use most often?
I try using auto focus on the lens unless it finds something different than I want. If I am doing action photo I try to do auto and then switch to Manual. We are going to Grafton Blues fest in Sept- Friends live in Port Washington.
kathy, i feel for you. and that is why i carry with me a good p&s.i know it's a hassle and some would say you don't get to learn that way. but i wouldn't want to miss a really good shot. yesterday we were at the racetrack. 490 photos and more than half are crap. washed out, like over exposed and i couldn't tell what i did wrong, except that i had the flash mode off because i hate that flash just popping up sometimes even when clearly there's a lot of light. this is still a nice shot but i know the opportunity that it could've been better.
Go manual! Switch that little button on your lens. After about a week you will have it down and you will see the difference in your pictures, I promise!
i used to be autofocus all the time , but i dared to use manual out of desperation in one od my shots and now i am hooked to manual. try it, you will love it becuase you can really control what you want ot bring out in the picture. this is very well shot.
It's a beautiful view, Kathy! I have discovered that bracketing my exposures will give me a different focus, so the amount of light allowed into the camera will effect focus. I have my camera set to automatically bracket exposures when I am ready to click the shutter. You might be surprised at the differences! I get three shots of every pic I take, each a different exposure and some with a sharper focus. So you can see how easy it is to have 300 pics on your camera when you actually only took 100 shots.
It's not a bad shot Kathy. I think your aperture is a little big for the distance you are shooting. Set it a little smaller for this type of shot (maybe F11). Also watch just exactly where you are focussing. Here your actual focus point is quite close to the camera (relative to the whole scene).
It's a very pretty picture, but looks a little over-exposed. I would adjust your aperature so that your lens opening is smaller, this will give you a larger range of focus and less light going into your lens. I really don't see a problem with your focus. I normally do use manual focus, but there are those times that you need that really fast focus for moving objects...I just can't manually focus fast enough for those shots.
This is a really beautiful view! I've tried manual before, but it didn't work for me ... all of my pictures ended up blurry. I guess I just can't trust my eyes! What does work really well for me is setting your camera so that it uses only the center focal point. I take a lot of portraits, so this technique is great, because I focus on the eyes and then recompose as needed. That way, you have complete control over where your picture will be focus, but you can rely on the camera to do the actual focusing. My only problem is remembering to recompose! For landscape shots (which I don't take too many), I will switch to the A-DEP mode which automatically sets it to a high aperture #, which also happens to have many focal points. Hope that helps!
@myhrhelper Mike is a GIMP user! Let me see if I can give you his handle... http://365project.org/jaboney/profile@jaboney Not sure if he's used it for HDR, but I know he uses it for a lot of other processing. He may be able to give you some assistance, Kathy! Just ask him. He's on a fishing trip with little or no internet access, but I'm sure he'll be happy to help you if he can. I am unfamiliar with GIMP. But you do need bracketed exposures for it. A tripod is also a necessity unless you've got a real steady hand!
@marlboromaam Thanks, I am going to learn how to do this! I see the settings on my camera. Don't know what all of them mean but I did discover the 3 shot with different lights. Thank you Maggie
@myhrhelper If you can set your camera to automatically bracket at +2 over and -2 under, that would be the best way to go! It should be there in your settings and under your manual for bracketing exposures.
@buttercup Thank you, you may want to take part of our camera settings challenges - it's for those of us that haven't figured out all those settings. There should be a new one starting fairly soon.
@myhrhelper Thanks! I did the first one but not realising it was a challenge. I was just wanting to learn settings, so maybe I will try it again and not post my photo!! lol
@buttercup You really don't have to look at it as a competition but as learning something new. My whole goal originally was because I got a new DSLR and I wanted to learn how to use it. I think some are harder than others.
July 18th, 2012
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