White balance - A little experiment on the beach

Today I went to another beach in Auckland called Orewa. It was a patchy day, cloudy at times and blue at others. I thought I would give the white balance settings on my camera a go to see what differences it would make - for no reason other than experimentation... which I am finding is the best way to see out how everything works.

Plan to go out tomorrow and play some more with the White Balance Settings, but this little test showed me the difference the settings can make. The top three photos were all taken in the space of about 30 secs, and the sun was behind clouds during this time. I think this shows, as in my opinion (and again, I note I am colourblind, so my perception of colours can be different to others), the "Shady" Preset actually created the best pic. This may just be me though, because I tend to like the "warmer" looking pics.

Not the best experiment I know - next time I will use all the White Balance settings  - cloudy would have been a good start! Today however, I really just wanted to get in the water!

What is White Balance?? http://www.photographymad.com/blog/post/white-balance-explained

White Balance Preset: Tungsten Light

White Balance Preset: Shady

White Balance Preset: Sunny

White Balance Preset: Auto (the sun was out by now)

Finally, on an unrelated topic, here is a snap of Auckland City I took from the car window (through the glass) on automatic setting on the drive home from the beach (have cropped it to take out light posts and road railings). Actually a very nice city!

A walk in the park and cats: 26 - 27 December 2010

After a successful morning of taking snaps of flowers, it was time to head out and actually go for a walk with my new toy slung around my neck. Being in New Zealand, I am actually quite lucky with a range of, what at least to me, seem interesting places to go take some pics.

Armed with still only a read of the manual, I set off at about 5pm on 26 December for a walk up one tree hill which is literally, just a couple of blocks from Simone's house (cue - the U2 song named after the place below), and also the venue of our Wedding reception in January!

Anyway, after a hour or so of auto mode snapping I had quite a number of pics! I experimented a bit with composition in a number of the shots.

Back at Simone's house their cat, Sammy, was in a cute pose on the front porch. Simone ran (carefully) and grabbed my camera and snapped this pic herself:

After realising it was the centre of attention the cat jumped to the lawn so I decided to try and take some pics and play around with the depth settings. I put the camera into AV mode and slid the Aperture down to 4 (as low as it seemed to go). Based on some research here: http://www.slrphotographyguide.com/camera/settings/av-mode.shtml

I now realise the lower the f-number (the apeture number) the more open the lens actually is and the more light that gets in. The result is an in focus subject close to the lens with the background out of focus. Here is the result (just to add to the millions of other pictures of people cats on the Internet!)

In the beginning there were... Flowers : 25th - 27th December 2010 - !

On day one I went to my room (well, the room where I was staying at the in-laws house) and dutifully read through my entire manual from front to back... only problem being, by the time I actually got a chance to kick back and relax (after an amazing X-mas day!) it was well into the night. By this time my fiancée was next to me in bed and the only illumination was the glow of a laptop screen (I was reading the manual online after my fiancée brought the camera from HK)   and a small desk lamp. Accordingly.... I ended up with about 40 + test photos of a dimly lit wall.

The next day however, I woke up feeling inspired, trying to remember what ISO and f-something and white balance and focal points and all that other jazz meant and, in a delusional state of hoping I’d soaked at least something up - decided it was time to take my SLR out for its first adventure. After about 15 mins of annoying Simone (I might as well give this wonderful fiancée of mine a name) and taking pics of her putting on her shoe laces and other exciting household chores, I decided it was time to get serious and test my skills..... so.... in dutiful style I looked out the back porch, saw some flowers, and thought, presto.... this is it!

To be honest, I think pictures of flowers are a little boring, but, again, for the most basic of beginners, they are pretty damn awesome to photograph! They don't move, the sun doesn’t really get in the way that much, their naturally nice to look at and they have the ability to make even the most average photographer out there (such as myself) have those "wow... this really looks professional" thoughts, on an all too constant basis.

And that is how my first snaps ended up… close up of flowers, completely forgetting the world of apertures and depth of focus and white balance and ISO’s - for at least one half of an afternoon! And the result…. (drum roll) all from the wonderful green rectangle setting on my new Canon EOS 550D… are as follows:

(in the spirit of full disclosure i completely forgot my camera had a macro setting for these - not sure what effect it would have had to be honest - but i did try something i remembered my dad telling me years ago about focusing (the half down button) then moving the view to something different....)

My First Post - Let the exploration begin!

Well... this is my first attempt at doing anything blog related on the net, I guess mainly because up until this point in time I haven't felt I've had a hobby or "story" interesting enough to keep the attention of either myself, or anyone reading online.

This however all changed on Christmas morning, when my beautiful fiancee broke our "$200 limit" for presents in the most dramatic fashion and bought me a new Digital SLR camera.

Now, I've been interested in photography for quite a while - my Dad has had an SLR since I can remember, and enlarged photos of his work are in frames all over my childhood home. I also have quite a creative group of friends, with more that one bringing their SLR's to every event I attend and leaving me more than envious with the quality of photo they upload to Facebook.

I've always been a keen photographer - with a few great overseas trips kick starting my interest. One in particular with a friend across China, Russia (the Trans-Siberian) and Europe - all by train - ended up being a semi-competitive digital "point and snap" photography competition with us both pushing our 7.2 MP Canon and Olympus to the limits, from -32 degrees (Celsius) in the midst of Siberia to taking more than one tumble on the Swiss ski fields! This, coupled with my genuine interest in taking up any hobby under the sun, especially if it is slightly "tech" related, made my fiancee (to be married 15 January 2011) realise that a digital SLR was for me.

And this brings me to now... someone completely over the moon with their camera, but other than realising that you have to hold the button half down before shooting - my knowledge is pretty much nill! And... that is, I guess, the point of my blog. Surely I am not the first person to be in this situation, so over the coming days, weeks, months and years I will be posting my learnings, my photos, my experiences, etc in the world of Digital SLR photography. Pretty much, my exploration of Digital SLR.

This blog may frustrate those more knowledgeable than me in the world of SLR photography, as I really am starting from the basics. But, it may prove interesting for those in a similar boat to me! Hope you enjoy - now... I am off to read the instruction manual!