exposed!

The major exposure this week was my need of assistance & practice with this new toy!

I found a free EXIF viewer through zdnet.com that I have been happy with so far. I wanted a little program. Don't need an overblown one with editing extras. This was a tiny download. Less than 2 minutes evening primetime on dial-up..*grin* If you would like to skip searching zdnet.com and go directly to the source to check it out, it can be found at:

http://www.stuffware.co.uk

Here are some of the tidbits I learned:

• If you use reading glasses [or any other kind of that matter] take them with you to shoot photos so you can read the teeny weeny settings. I ended up with some blacked out shots because I *thought* I had the shutter speed set between 1/250 and 1/500. Actually, it was between 1/1250 and 1/1500. HaHa, there I was snapping merrily away and didn't bother to check until I got home. I even had the silly old lady glasses in my purse but wasn't using them at the moment. grrrrr & haha
  
  
• The LCD screen tends to make things look a lot lighter than they are in reality. I was trying to adjust to darken things and wasn't taking that into account. Also, it is hard to judge in bright light. There is an option to check pictures that includes a tiny histogram. I need to turn that on a bit more often and trust that it knows better than the screen view does...if there is a shot you won't be able to easily come back and recapture, check, Check, CHECK before you leave.
  
  
• The optical viewfinder tends to add a bit more to the top of the viewing field than will really appear in the final shot. Need to adjust accordingly.
  
  
• If you have an assignment that needs bright lighting, the weather will be gray all week...haha [isn't that one of Murphy's Laws?] Had light the day I didn't use my glasses, but then all was dismal gray again until today....well, yesterday was okay, but my new toy was borrowed for a biz trip by Mr. W. [excuses, excuses] now on to ----

the assignment:

This week we were to find difficult lighting situations, ie. backlit subjects or scenes with lots of shadows and bright areas. Show a "before" picture done in the camera's automatic mode, then try some different adjustments of aperture, shutter speed, metering, etc.

Camera Used: Canon PowerShot S30

I found this lonesome little abandoned house that is in a part of the countryside not far from here that is rapidly [rabidly?] being devoured by suburbia. Thought she looked like she could use a bit of attention. These were taken with a bright late afternoon sun slant. I find it interesting that I have washed out the sky in almost every shot. [There were a lot of large, puffy white clouds. And it did appear more bright white to exceedingly pale blue. Is that a good enough excuse?? ;-] ;-]  Also interesting that the lighter the shots get, the more non photo like they become. Start to take on the qualities of a drawing. This is much more evident in the compressed versions...a little bit more photo like in full size as more detail is evident.

I may have to come back to this one under better lighting conditions. [And when we are allowed to play with the images...dang my PSP fingers are itching! ;-] There were also a couple of interesting out buildings nearby, but for now, I concentrated on the little house exterior.

All shots were taken in jpg/superfine/large mode
Original Size: 2048x1536 [resized for web viewing]
Compression for Webviewing: 30%

Click thumbnails for larger views and setting details:

I did manage to salvage a few things from the afternoon that taught me to use my reading glasses. I had gone, again in the late afternoon to Mt. Olivet Cemetery. It is one of the older ones in Nashville and resting place of several of the founding families of the area.

That's all of this part of the lesson. I am still managing to keep my fingers out of the adjustments and fun parts of the painting pot, but couldn't handle not playing at least a bit with cropping. If you are interested in my additional adventures, they can be found at the *extras* link below.

Here's hoping my skills will improve a bit in round three...lol!

Keep clickin'!
_^..^_
Farron