The 365 Project: Week 2

Week 2 Challenge:  Going Manual
Week 2 Theme: Transportation

This week we learned more about the 3 major setting you can use on your camera; shutter priority, aperture priority, and manual mode.  After a explanation of how and when to use each mode we were challenged to pick one and master it this week through the theme transportation.  So I chose to work on (definately not master) Aperture priority. One of the key things I learned about aperture priority is that the higher f/stop number you use (or the lower number) the more light you are letting into the lens, and the lower the f/stop number (or higher aperture #) the less light and therefore it wont be able to focus on as many things in the picture.  So in my first 3 pictures I will show you how I played around with 3 different aperture numbers and the results from each one:

For this first one I shot it with a f/5.3 setting on my camera (which is a very low f number which also means it is a high aperture setting) and you can tell it was able to get all 5 of the trains in the photo in pretty good focus.

In my second photo i shot with a f/10 aperture setting.  There isn't a whole lot of difference between these 2 yet.  It should probably be a little less in focus than my first one but we also have to account for the fact that I wasn't using a tripod so I may have moved the camera a little more in the first photo.

In this 3rd Photo I shot at a f/20 aperture.  Not a huge change still but I think they are a little less in focus.

Fourth and finally I shot at a f/36 aperture setting.  Now I think it is obvious the camera wasn't able to get enough light to focus on any particular train.  It might actually even been shakier than it really should be but I blame that on an unsteady hand.

I know none of that was earth shattering photography but it did help me see how the picture can change as the settings change.  I think I would have gotten better results if I had staggered the trains each a little more and then had a little more definition between each one.  I was kinda copying what the instructor did and my results weren't quite as good as hers.  Check out the 365 blog if you want to see how it should be done.

For my final 3 shots of the week, I am going to steal from my Christmas Kansas photo book again and use a couple of pictures I took around the farm that happen to be of transportation.

In this pic I played with my color select mode:

Here again I was playing with the colors, I like it except that my shadow is in the photo:

I didn't get to spend a lot of time playing with my camera this week, between the 3 of us coming down with a mean stomach bug and Will still on nights this week I have been pretty busy doing other things.  Maybe things will settle down next week and I will have more time to play and get some better shots to share, maybe.  In other news I am still current on my Bible reading and even though I got sick the baby is still healthy and active as ever.