It's fun looking back at friends' early uploads and seeing how much they've improved during their time on Usefilm, Lily! This is a nice snap but your more recent work is so much more creative. Well done. Best regards, Chris
It helps me to think about aperture and DOF like this: You squint to see more clearly...so does the camera....lol. When the camera's eye is smaller, it can see further away. When it is wide open, it see's closer objects more clearly, and those things off in the distance get blurrier. I've taken close-ups of my daughters where one is standing just behind the other and had one in focus and the other out. This is because it was low light, and the aperature was wide open to try to drink more light. I was so close that the slight difference in the planes in which they stood showed up. If they were standing farther away, there wouldn't have been as pronounced a problem. There's probably some technical explanation (along the lines of your diagram on mine) which is beyond me :) Hope this helps you understand better. There is a lot I need to learn about the technical aspects of the camera, and there are many here who can do a great job explaining this. You might try the forum for more help in these questions, as I've found it to be a great resource.
Toni, I think I followed the aperture example, maybe the principal similar to how our eyes adjust to low lighting. I have to think about how that applies to depth of field (a term I learned here) and see if I can figure out the relationship. If I do, I'll run it by you to see if I got it right. Training the focus on the duck's eye is a great tip...if this klutz can do it! The time you took to write this is much appreciated and will help me. Toni, Thank you so much! :-)
oh my god lily.. a sympatic and magnific frame, first the composition is perfect, with the duck in a perfect diagonal like the "edge" of the bath. and then you have ordered of the great colors! best regards roby
This is literally a "sitting duck." And he's sitting so sweetly for you. I like the composition here, as well as the color and abstract background. I can see the problem you had with sharpness. When you are this close, a slight change in the plane can make all the difference, and it seems the autofocus was looking at the feathers on his torso, or he moved slightly. You have fairly low light, which would have caused the camera to open it's aperature (narrowing your DOF), and slowing down the shutter...all of which contribute to sharpness issues. Happens to moi alllll the time. The solution is to train the camera on your focal point (in this case his eye), push the button down part-way to focus, hold hit down, and then frame your image...then click. The long wait between being able to take pics is a bugger with this type of camera. The weaker the battery, the worse it gets, so make sure your batteries are strong when it counts (keep lots of extras with you). Before I got my Nikon which has a nice buffer that allows for more pictures in a row, I used my Casio to capture portraits of children in low light, and dancing in ballet theatre. Missed a LOT due to that delay. Nonetheless, it was my learning tool for my first 3 years in digital! Try to avoid having to use your flash and use freshly charged batteries, and that should help.
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{K:30599} 2/3/2005
