Experiments in photography #photography

Machine heads

I zoomed in on the neck of this guitar. I think I'm right in saying these are the machine heads. It makes for an unusual picture and this style of picture is often used in advertising. You can still make out the books in the background and the microphone and stand despite the bokeh.

Movement

Sometimes a little blurring will show movement and my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze the motion of the guitar in this shot but it doesn't really matter because the wide aperture blurs the background anyway. These experiments weren't about getting a sharp picture.

Crowd shot

All the experiments add to my experience and I need it to take a shot like this. When you are taking a shot of a large group, you have to concentrate on focusing the shot. I often only use one focus point but for a shot like this, you need all of them. Try to get focus points lit up on the left and right side of the shot and the top and bottom too. You do that by gently rocking the camera left and right and then up and down until you have a lot of focus points lit up and your camera beeps to acknowledge you have focus. Hopefully, when you release the shutter everyone is looking at the camera and smiling, with their eyes open!

Auto experiments

I went out to take landscape photographs on Sunday but ended up looking for a car and experimenting with my shots again. It was a bright sunny day and after the dark days of winter, I needed to adjust to all that light! Many of my shots didn't look right because of dark shadows and reflected light. The dark shadows can be improved by turning on Active D-lighting and the reflections can be reduced by using a polarising filter. I didn't think to do either at the time because I was more interested in looking for a car! It's still an interesting shot! I did experiment a lot by zooming in on the car badges and even took a shot through a tinted window.

This shot of the street is alright but I should have gone much narrower. I shot it at f/10 and in such bright light f/16 or even narrower would have brought the buildings at the end of the road into sharper focus. It is quite unusual for there to be no cars and so I didn't need a fast shutter speed either but managed 1/500 second on aperture priority. The shot was something of an afterthought when I left the car dealer but I should have changed my settings.