Monday, June 06, 2011

June 2

.

Iris.





Almost fully leafed out.



Rose.



Alium.



Rose.



Columbine.



Rose.


.
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5 comments:

Morning Bray Farm said...

So lovely. I love them all. You're getting pretty darn good at flowers - mine are still often blurry and not as crisp as yours. :)

June 8, 2011 at 1:14:00 PM EDT
I need orange said...

Thank you. I was especially taken with the way those rose petals unfurl......... Each one overlapping the next..........

:-)

Once upon a time, with my old trusty (film) Pentax, sharpness was something I could take credit for.

No longer.

Alas. If I were using a camera with manual focus, I don't suppose I could see well enough, up close, to be able to focus the camera.

I can see just fine at reading distance (sitting here in front of my monitor, with no glasses, all day....). But at "looking at things up close"? Not any more. Alas. (People complain about gray hair, they complain about wrinkles -- I don't care about that stuff, but I seriously miss my eyesight, even though "it's correctable".....)

The sharpness is all thanks to Panasonic engineers. :-) Panasonic has some very nice image stabilization, and its macro focus seems to do a good job. If I remember to put the camera on macro focus, then all I have to do is point, shoot, and try to hold still (and hope the day isn't too windy!).

:-)

And take at least three shots of everything.

:-)

So that I can throw out the two blurry ones.

:-)

I have noticed that macro shots are more likely to be blurry than images of farther-away full-daylight stuff.

So I make sure I always take at least three of the exact same shot. Sometimes more. It can get tiresome doing the triage -- but I keep reminding myself that if I can't tell the difference between two shots, it almost certainly doesn't matter which one I pitch........

:-)

So that's me, choosing which image is sharp, but any sharpness I get to choose from is due to those fine people at Panasonic.

That's something I need to add to my gratitude list -- that I can take pictures that make me happy despite my inability to focus the camera!

June 8, 2011 at 1:43:00 PM EDT
I need orange said...

It occurred to me, looking at the iris, that I DO work on what PART of the pic is in focus.

I'm sure you know the "press the shutter halfway down to get the camera to focus but not take the pic" trick.

That's helpful for catching motion, if you know where the motion will occur, and it is also helpful for deciding what part of what I"m looking at I want to have the camera focus on.

I put that little focusing rectangle in the middle of the viewscreen on the part I want to have sharpest (the center of the flower, maybe), and then I can shift the camera slightly, so the center of the flower isn't in the center of the image.

And then push the shutter the rest of the way down to take the pic.

The macro focus on my cameras is pretty specific -- an inch or more difference in distance can make a noticeable difference in sharpness, when all the distances are short.

So that is something I can actually take credit for.

Sort of. :-) Sometimes the camera and I have arguments about what to focus on, particularly if there are some nice contrasty branches (or something like that) behind the thing I really want it to focus on. It will go for the branches or the fence or.....

I may take five or six images of the same thing, and only one has it focused on what *I* wanted it focused on....

Sometimes I throw out every shot I took of something, because the camera made a different focal choice than I wanted. This is MUCH more likely with macro shots than with distance shots.

So I guess I should add "choose where I want the sharpest focus" to my list of "put the camera in macro mode, and try to hold still".

Right between those two other items.

:-)

Oh -- and one more thing that can help -- back up a bit. Sometimes the camera will focus perfectly at 1-2", and sometimes, it won't. Sometimes I'll get what I want at 5" or 10". And then have enough pixels to crop it tight and just show what I want to show, at least for online. The cropped image wouldn't print very well, unless it was postage-stamp size, but it looks fine on the web.

June 8, 2011 at 1:55:00 PM EDT
Morning Bray Farm said...

You are awesome - thank you Vicki!!! I have a lot more practicing to do... when I have time... :) I will work on using your techniques. :) Hugs!

June 9, 2011 at 4:06:00 PM EDT
I need orange said...

[blush!] You are most welcome. Hugs right back at you. :-)

It's so interesting -- the things we spend a lot of time on come to seem so obvious to us that we may forget that we have actually worked on them. At least -- that's the way my brain works!

My first reaction was "be sure you're in macro mode, and then hold still!"

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there really was a bit more going on.

:-)

I really couldn't do it without those Panasonic people having my back, though.

Even if I could see the way I used to be able to see, the new cameras do such an excellent job with, say, flowers blowing in the wind. They can't always get 'em, but they get 'em more often than I could have, back in the day, focusing by hand.

And I can't see to focus, so I depend on my buddies at Panasonic. Heavily. At all times.

I was a hard sell, on digital cameras. Now they'd have to pry them out of my cold, dead, fingers.

:-)

June 9, 2011 at 4:41:00 PM EDT

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