Manual Mode - always surprising!

This blog is about my experiments with photography - here is another one with Manual Mode.  Anything with Manual Mode to me is experimenting!  I put the focus on manual as well and used the little button underneath to get the focus on this hibiscus bud. It was early evening and the sun was low but a lot of the garden was still in sunshine, so this pot I moved to the edge of a shaded area, so that the pot itself was still in the sun and immediately behind it was heavy shade.

My aim was to get a photo of the bud with a dark background.  I set the aperture at f/5.6, and I see from the Properties that the shutter speed is 1/125 - yes I was following a book from the public library to work this out, though I had to make adjustments myself also.  The book said that the background would be dark and the flower bright.  I found the background wasn't dark enough; I could still see the trellis and - worse - the rubbish bins behind it.  So I used a technique I learnt from another book from the public library: that is, to aim at a bright area, press the AE/AF lock which will not only set the focal length for the image but also the exposure. Being aimed at an overbright area, it compensated by darkening.  I then swung back to the bud - which being in full sunlight stayed bright, but the background being in shade became dark, and clicked.

©Christine Linton

For an interesting article about how the photography is more important than the gear you use see this fascinating article by Rob Sheppard on his blog:
http://www.natureandphotography.com/?p=1887