Polarizing lenses…. I’m undecided

First. Sorry for the long radio silence. I took a few weeks off work, and spent them doing duck all. No, really. I demolished some stuff, I played some games I even slept a little. But the one thing I wanted to do was snap and the one thing I didn’t do was snap.

Except for one day in Donegal (Nope, still not being sponsored by the Donegal Tourist Board!).

It was kind of a family weekend, so a lot of family shots, which means you won’t see ‘em here – sorry.

That said…..

I own a polarizing lens. So I took it out to take this shot. Here’s kind of a before and after (or my attempt at one).

Ignore the digger. It was a picture I took for my mother in law as she’s about to lose this view in favour of someones house. (Remember what I said about over population in Donegal?).

I don’t think I was using the polarizing lens quite right. The left hand side of the sky looks great, but it fades out as you move right.  If you’ve an idea where I’m going wrong, let me know!

How not to park a boat…

As I’ve mentioned, Saturday and Sunday were pretty unsuccessful in terms of photographs and learning anything useful.

Still, I thought I’d share some of the shots this week. If you have opinions about what went wrong, or advice on how to make better use fo things, please let me know!

I could get into a diatribe on the decline of fishing within Ireland and how generations of fishing heritage are being lost because of over fishing and EU bureaucracy….

Instead, I thought I’d share a good example of how not to park your boat.

(1/100, f/5.6, metering – matrix, focal length – 18.0mm, 04/08/07 16:05)

Personally, I think the image is too dull. I’d prefer the shadows under the boat to be less black, allowing some of the detail and the rust to be visible. In retrospect I should have got lower and been looking up at the boat to make it more expressive. As usual the image has been quite heavily cropped and had minor tweaks from Picasa to make it presentable.

Must try harder…

Well, I got back from Donegal.

I had the camera out both days.

I got zip.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

OK, I took maybe 100 photographs. Mostly repetition of the same couple of scenes and people to see what slight (and sometimes quite drastic) settings changes would do. I uploaded them tonight and there isn’t a single photo I looked at and went wow.

As I’ve said before, you’ll see more tripe here than treacle, so I’ll post some of the better ones over the next few days. I’ll also provide some commentary on what I was trying to do at the time.

If I’d thought I could just pick this up before the weekend, my mind is set on needing a course now.

I can see the sea, it’s waving!

Last of last weekends shots (and just in time too since I’m off to Donegal again this weekend)

A few posts back I mentioned taking photos when the tide was coming in? Well, yeah. this was that shot.

Camera was still on “world of automatic” and as I’ve posted these images this week it’s the one thing that has frustrated me. I need to start stepping up and seeing what these other buttons do.

If anyone can recommend a decent “Idiot” book or can advise on a course in the Belfast/Northern Ireland area please do so…

 

(1/250, f/87.1, metering – matrix, focal length – 85.0mm, 04/08/07 16:05)

(Yes, the ocean is at a funny angle. I just noticed that too.)

Over Population in Donegal?

Another shot from last weekend.

To be honest there will be a lot of shots of Donegal appearing on this blog. I’ve family up there and I tend to spend a lot of time there.

Have camera, will snap

No real deep insights or comments about this for you. If you know Donegal, this is on the road between Dungloe and Doochary. The continued urbanisation of Donegal is a growing problem.

(1/200, f/8.0, metering – matrix, focal length – 18.0mm, 05/08/07 19:05)

I like this shot, but it suffers from a mistake I make a lot. If I’d stepped maybe two steps to the right it I think it would have been much better. Aside from the 47 billion options and widgets and doofers and stuff that you can do between picking the camera up and setting it down, there seems to be a whole bit about what you look at as well.

I read a good article on this in Digital SLR Photography last month and, assuming the opportunity presents itself, I’m going to try and play with this at the weekend.

Oh, and as you can see. Saturdays grey skies turned out just peachy on Sunday.

Learning To Snap

Gone Fishing…

Since it’s lunch time and I’ve got five minutes, I thought I’d post another from last weekend in Donegal.

Again, it was taken on the dull overcast Saturday but strangely it doesn’t seem to hurt this one too much.

This was the first time I used the Tamron 55 – 200 lens that came with my camera kit. The picture was taken at full zoom and then cropped and tweaked using Picasa to make it a little less mweh and a little more hmmm….

It was still taken using one of the vast range of automatic settings on the 400D.

(1/500, f/10.0, metering – matrix, focal length – 161.0mm, 04/08/07 12:32)

Learning To Snap

Lesson 1 – Dull Days do not a picture make

I think I mentioned the other day that I ended up in Donegal at the weekend. Well, it was my first real opportunity to get out for an hour with my shiny new camera and see if I could point it at things and make it work.

To my mind, the aim of the day was to get out and point the camera at objects, to get comfortable with it in my hands and using viewfinders and things again. I didn’t intend to make use of the manual settings on the camera (I’ll start looking at Aperture and Shutter priorities soon I guess).

Anyway, I went back to Cloughglass Beach since it’s close and I’d visited it a lot.

The August summer weather was what you expect, dull grey, rainy.

The sky was an almost solid grey, but it had a moody feel to it – I have no idea how to get that into a picture. Maybe someone with more experience will happen in here and tell me the secret? My own overriding impression of the day was that if the sky is like that again I’m not going to expect to get much from it.

Other lessons I learned…

1. The tide is coming in means THE TIDE IS COMING IN. Thou shalt get wet feet if you stand there too long
2. Carrying a tripod is not fun. Using it may be, but carrying the bugger is a pain in the bum
3. Think about what you need in your camera bag before you go – AKA- There probably isn’t a plug on the beach, so you didn’t need to bring your battery charger

As this blog grows I’ll probably post more turkey giblets than turkey dinners on this site. Here’s one (you can decide which) from Cloughglass Beach.

(1/800, f/4.0, metering – matrix, focal length – 18.0mm, 04/08/07 15:56)

Learning To Snap

E550 in Donegal, or why I want to know more…

These were some of my favourite shots with the Fuji E550 and I guess they formed the kernel that made me what to know more about taking decent photographs.

I tend to spend a lot of time in Donegal. If you’ve never been I have to recommend it – good food, good pubs and great scenery. Regardless of the time of year, it’s always breathtaking (though as I found last weekend, not very photogenic with grey skies).

Anyway, I took a lot of photos one weekend while playing with my little E550 and these are some that I really liked. Typically everything was done by the camera and that’s what was so frustrating. That’s what started the drive towards spending money on a dSLR and this site and stuff.

I’m sure these could be better, I’m keen to hear your thoughts and comments on these and any other image I post here.

Cloughglass Beach

Cruit Island

 

Learning To Snap