Wednesday 20 January 2016

Feathers

I'm known as being a feather collector - can't resist photographing them too.  Trying to get detail in a feather floating by the bridge, such a small feather, I decided to try spot metering to see what effect I could get.  It was quite hard to keep the focus on such a small thing on a moving surface and I had several failures, but I kept trying and this is one of the successes.  What I liked is how the river water darkened and displayed the white feather perfectly.  I used Aperture Priority which stopped at 6.5 when I zoomed in fully, and the spot metering faded out the surrounding water beautifully.  You can also see the surface tension on the water around the feather.

Sunday 10 January 2016

Using Birdwatching Scene Mode - not just for the birds!

Looking at the settings that Birdwatching Scene Mode sets up on my camera, I wanted to view the difference in the settings as I zoom out.  The only thing I have against the Nikon P610 is that the lens is variable in that I can set it all I like at 3.3, but when I zoom out it changes according to what focal length I end up with.  That doesn't happen with the Panasonic FZ200 but hey, not camera is perfect.  Anyway, when I zoomed right out, there weren't any birds outside the window at the time so I aimed at a hibiscus bud.  Oh - the leaves behind it blurred out and gave me a good clean shot.  Aperture down to 5.6 but still nice and clear.
Then
I aimed at a much smaller flower, a seaside daisy.  The aperture went out to 6.5 and I found I really liked the result, with the large ginger lily leaf going right out of focus and leaving the seaside daisy and a few stems (I did crop this a bit because a lot of dead stalks were to one side).

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Bokeh

Purple Swamphen
I was pleased with the bokeh effect - blurry background setting off the sharper image of the bird, particularly in this case the eye.  Discovering some of the Scene modes in the Nikon P610, there is one called Birdwatching.  In this Scene mode, the ISO is set on auto, F/3.3, shutter speed 1/30, and the only choice being single or continuous frames.  Generally speaking I have found this setting to be much the same as if I had set up Aperture Priority with continuous frames, which would normally be my go-to choice for bird shots.  So I have been trying out both, and while often both give the same result, occasionally one or the other will produce the better result.  In other words, it's always worth taking lots more than one photo of any subject, from different angles, different distances, different zoom lengths.
Another shot I was pleased with is a pair of pelicans cruising down the Torrens.  This is also in Birdwatching mode.  I cropped it back to one pelican for this purpose, to show the frondy feathers on the back of the neck.
Pelican on the Torrens

My Nikon P610

I have tried to post a new page about my new camera (twice), but it won't show.  Apparently I'm not alone in this so I will just have to continue my news about it here.  I bought it for the zoom 60x, and I have had some lovely images with it.
Black Swans on Linear Park at Fulham
Another great close up was of a Koala, up a gum tree on Linear Park at Klemzig.  He was hiding behind the leaves but still not a bad shot.  I was impressed that I could see the details of his fur when he was so high in the tree.
Koala, Linear Park, Klemzig
I've also been looking at ripples and reflections - with the sun low in the sky, I am delighted with the appearance of the river, with the ripples and reflections appearing exactly like when we dyed the Fortuny scarf at college.  This was just one image - I ended up with a couple of dozen, kept finding more beautiful reflections.
ripples and reflections looking like a dyed scarf
More on my experiments soon.