photo Friday

I am still not in love with my new camera. I was used to my old one. The manual on this new one is an inch thick. I'm still wading through it and checking all the settings to determine if the default ones are what I want the camera to be doing.

One I found that was giving me a lot of trouble was "dynamic range" focusing. I did not know that was the choice they defaulted to. It lets you choose where you are focusing, but the "range" part is that if your subject moves a little bit, the camera will refocus for you. Hmmm.. no thank you. Let me be in charge of that. I focus and lock in all on my own. Trust me and don't be second guessing. Don't get me wrong, I do not want to fully manually focus (all the time), but having the camera thinking on it's own when my subject may or may not have moved out of focus isn't what I want.

Here's a really good example of what was frustrating me before I changed it off this setting. With people, you always focus on the eyes. Well, I was taking shots of the kids (my main models, of course) and getting things like this:It might be hard to tell here... but her eyes are definitely not in focus. However, her coat below her shoulders is tack sharp.

I switched off that setting and think I am back to being able to focus the way I was used to on my old camera. Well, the cool new difference is that I only had 5 focal point choices on the D50 and now I have 11! Here is Gretchen with tack sharp eyes!
But, these next photos are from before I made this change... oh well. It's just Photo Friday. Plus, on the blog, the pictures are so tiny you can't really see a difference.

Here's one final photo. I am holding the 2 pictures I have on display downtown in a small gallery. They are displaying the 30 photos that won ribbons at the end of year competition last year. Our final competition always consists of all the ribbon winners from previous competitions. But, I was fortunate to have more than one win at that event! The gallery owner required all of us to have the photos available for sale if we were going to have this club display. And, they wanted all or nothing with the 30 photos. So, I felt I did not have a choice to not show my works. But, I did put my foot down and refuse to sell the shot of the kids. I really don't want anyone buying the water drop either because I think that is weird that someone I do not know would hang my photo in their home, but I put $150 on it. The gallery commission is 40%. Like I said, I hope I get the photo back at the end of the showing and not a check for my part of the sale, but if for some strange reason it does sell, I will be putting the money into my Tripod Fund. Now, I know some (or at least one) of you are (is) studying everything in the background of this photo. So, I will tell you more.... I took that waterfall shot in Letchworth State Park years ago. The other visible artwork is Gretchen's Earth painting. The doll house is sitting in the formal living room because the Christmas tree is currently in the spot where the doll house resides. Yes, the tree is still up. Tomorrow is going to be very busy around here, I can tell you... it ain't comin' down tomorrow. Yup, those are Hess trucks under the picture of the kids. The table is from my mother in law and the pink and red kitchen towel on it is Nanny's. It is not decorated with knick knacks.. it is being used my Gretchen for her Princess magic Rise Oven, hence the towel table cloth. We bought that big wooden bookcase from an Amish furniture place in Buffalo back when we were first married. That shiny travel coffee mug is a work related gift item and not used - we do not place our coffee travel mugs on the bookshelf otherwise. The water drop is framed 16x20 and the canvas is from Costco and is a 20x30! And I love it!!! I can't wait to hang it here at home.

I drove past the gallery on my way downtown the other night and you can see it from the street - it is so big!