In Which a Valuable Lesson was Inadvertently Learned

Not to keep you in suspense, the lesson is: always check your camera settings before you take a whole bunch of pictures.

Today the girls had a doggie class, and I take the P520 to doggie class because it is quite a bit smaller than the D90 and is thus much easier to manage when also wrangling doodles.  Unfortunately, I didn't check the focus point(s) before we started off on our 'in the community' lesson.  When I pulled the photos off the camera, it was clear that the focus was on 'auto' (i.e. the camera somewhat randomly picks a target on which to focus) which was a tad unfortunate, as I have been shooting primarily in 'dynamic' mode on the D90, which focuses on the center of the picture, but if something in the center moves, the camera will automatically refocus on whatever moves and so while I was expecting center point focus, that isn't always what I got....

Luckily I took a bunch of photos during doggie class, and I ended up with a few that were good.

Alas, one of the photos where the camera decided the building in the background should be in focus...

The camera seemed to like the wood 'shade' .

Finally!  Some in-focus doggies!

I really liked the sky in this photo - the girls were just filler in the foreground!

I thought this was cute - and since it was a warm day, it was also appreciated, even though I had brought along some water for the girls!

The color is just sort of funky in this photo.  I have no idea why.  But Fi is very proud of herself!

The camera focused on the rock, not the dog.  Oh well!

Jessi (the turkey hotdog lady - aka dog trainer) and Abby, cooling off in the shade.

Again not horrible photos for blog posting, but lesson learned.

Day 151/365.

A Perfect Afternoon for Tennis Ball Action

Which translates into happy, tired dogs!  After our bike ride and a long week at work (surprisingly, short weeks seem longer just because I have to pack a lot of work into less days), I was ready for some quality tennis ball time with the girls.  Luckily it was just a perfect afternoon for it - sunny but not too hot and with a light breeze.  Time to break out the trusty 24-85mm lens, set it to 1/4000 shutter speed and start chucking tennis balls.

Watch and learn, youngster!

After much tennis ball zoomies, there was a little cool down in the shade.

"Hey Mom?  It's time to mow the grass again.  Just saying..."

Happy dog!

"I'm not a tennis ball hoarder, I just like to keep an eye on my things!"

Life is good!

Day 150/365.

Of Dogs and Bees

For some reason, I didn't get a lot of great dog photos today.  I think it had to do with the auto focus setting I was using  (I think I was on center point, rather than the 'dynamic' focus, but I'd have to check), or it could have just been one of those days as I spent most of the day at work staring at radiology images of a pseudo-aneurysm being fixed.  (Fascinating, but I think my eyes went a bit fuzzy around 1pm and haven't returned to normal yet!)

But not being able to completely focus (my eyes, or the camera) didn't stop me.  Besides, the girls like their tennis ball action, and if I'm out, I might as well get a few photos!

I don't think she caught it...

After the girls were worn out, I took out the telephoto lens (70-300mm) that came as part of the D70 kit to see if I had any better luck with the bees.  Unfortunately, it was quite breezy when I attempted my bee photos, so I'm not sure if the lack of sharpness in the bee photos had to do with the wind, the lens, or the same focus issues I was having with the dogs.  But I'll keep at it, although I don't think wildlife photography (other than Wild Doodles) is going to be something I specialize in - it definitely requires more patience than I have!

This photo seems to look flat to me, but the wings came out really well.

This was the best, by far of the bee shots I got today.  I like it enough to keep trying to get better shots!

Day 149/365.

Action Photos and NatGeo Won't Be Calling Me Anytime Soon

After an extremely windy bike ride, I took the girls out for the usual tennis ball action.  Because it was overcast, I decided to see if bumping the ISO to 400 would make much of a difference in letting a little more light into the photos.  I'm not sure it did, but it didn't hurt them...

 

Later in the afternoon, I took the girls out just before dinner time and noticed that there were a bunch of bumblebees flying around pollinating flowers.  I decided to grab the camera and see if I could get any decent shots.  The short answer is that National Geographic won't be calling me any time soon.  However, this might give me a good opportunity to try out the telephoto lens (that has a macro setting) and see if I can get anything better than I got this time around.  But here are my first attempts at photographing bees.

Day 148/365.

Nothing Fancy, Just Action

I had to run errands after work, so by the time I got home, I was tired and didn't want to try anything complicated with the camera.  I went back to my trusty fixed ISO 200, and a shutter speed of 1/4000 as it was very sunny out, and I tossed some frisbees, which suited all of us just fine.

Flying Fiona

 

Perfect frisbee form.

Yep,  I could take these photos all day long!

Day 147/365.

Another Experiment

My Dad was looking at some of my photos on Flickr and he commented in an email that I seemed to always have the ISO set at 200, and why did I do this as he used the 'auto' setting (I think - right, Dad?) and even with an ISO 3200, he didn't notice any appreciable 'noise'.  My response to him was that when I first started using the D90 with the kit lenses, I was having some serious 'noise' issues and I was much happier with the ISO at 200.  I also commented that I hadn't tried any different ISO settings since I got the new lenses, mostly because I have either been shooting in bright sunlight, or using an off-camera flash, and I hadn't been doing much low-light natural light photography, so ISO really has been a non-issue.  I finally added that I should probably try playing around with the ISO auto setting to see what I got.

So, I did.

All these photos were shot with the 24-85mm lens.

The first photo I took was of Abby snoozing on the stairs after our morning walk.  The camera bumped the ISO up to 1600, and at full resolution, the photo was a little grainy, but for viewing on the web (or probably even as a 5x7 or 8x10 photo) it is just fine.

 
I decided when I took the camera outside, I'd limit the upper ISO to 800, and since it was quite sunny, I stuck with the shutter priority setting, ranging from 1/3200 to 1/4000.   The sharpness of the auto ISO photos seems to be very good, but for reasons that are not clear to me, the camera was bumping the ISO around from 320 to 800.  Not surprisingly, the higher ISO photos were 'over-exposed'.  But with the magic of Lightroom, I was able to make the photos less bright.

Fr'instance....

Here's the non-tweaked photo, 1/4000, f/4.0, ISO 450

A little washed out.

 And then after a little tweaking in Lightroom

Still a little bright (that was my choice) but the sharpness was good.

Here's a non-tweaked shot with a fixed ISO.

1/4000, f/4.0, ISO 200

So, I think the lesson learned so far is that I should probably keep the ISO at 200 for very bright days (believe it or not, shooting in bright sunlight is not as easy as it sounds), but I should definitely play around with it more in lower light settings.

That said, here's a photo with the ISO set at 200, but I'm shooting into the shade - the auto ISO could have been handy here...

Here are a few more 'tweaked' photos using the auto ISO setting.

This one, other than being a little bright is a very sharp photo.

1/4000, f/4.0, ISO 720

A shot where the auto ISO worked out quite well.

Day 146/365.

Some Action Photos

After yesterday's rain and subsequent clearing in the evening, I knew I was going to have to tackle the yard today.  But since it took until about mid-day for the grass to dry enough to actually be mowed, I got a few chances to get some frisbee and tennis ball time with the girls.  And once I was done mowing the grass and whacking the weeds, I was too tired to get more photos (or make pithy comments about the photos).

There were all shot with the 24-85mm lens on shutter priority (shutter speed 1/3200, for the most part).

Day 145/365.