Wet flowers on an autumn morning

This morning promised to be the start of a beautiful day. Warm after a night with a lot of rain, no fog though.
I took the chance to kneel down in the wet grass of my garden to take some pictures of some autumn flowers.


Also this one gives a nice composition of the colors.



Both pictures were taken with an A of F/7.1 . The first with a shutter speed of 1/40s, the second with 1/13 s.

Another sports photo

This one seems to be what I want: focus on the runner (what a beautiful lady - I'm such a lucky guy that she's my wife ;-) and a blurred background.



As this blog is about learning how to become better in making good photos here is the information:
Shutter priority, 1/40s, Aperture F/4,5 and a single AF point.

Sports photos

My wife participated in a 10k run today. So I thought I'll try some sports photos.

First I tried to play around with the shutter time and move the camera with the motion.
I will spare you the pictures. Pretty terrible (make mental note - more practice needed).

Then after the start of all runners I went to the finish and witnessed a world record of Leonard Komon, who ran the 10k in 26.44! I also managed to take some pictures of him. I had the shutter on 1/80s and the lens on F/3.5. The picture turned out too dark, but luckily I switched to RAW&JPEG in the settings. So a little bit of fiddling with CaptureNX and the picture is almost ok.



Unfortunately it is only almost ok. He's not sharp on the image, and the focus lies somewhere but not on him.

I managed to make on photo of another guy which turned out quite nice, due to the effect of the slight camera move while on the sports setting.

I like the stripes of the trees. I wish I would get the runner a little bit sharper into the focus. How can I do that? Well, I guess more practice and more research will help.

Found a great photo site on the web

This site has some great pictures .
Also it explains the settings that were used to take the picture. Good for a newbie like me.

Learn what your camera can do (part one of many)

I was playing around and I found out that the Nikon D80 Viewfinder was only showing me one point.

So here is the story on what you can do to set these things:
a) Make sure the selector on the left side of the lens (body) is set to AF.
b) Go to the menu, pencil icon, and set AF Area mode on
c) If b does not work (message states "This option is not available with the current settings") then you have the problem I had.

Check with your lens. Mine has two settings: M and M/A.
M means manual, A means Autofocus. My lens was set to M, which means that the Autofocus could not work. I switched it back to M/A, went to the menu and set Autofocus to a single area. Now with the cursor pad (four arrows) you can select the focus point yourself.

Bought a tripod

Today I bought a tripod. Although a friend told me about his very fancy one, I settled for a entry model.
I went outside to try some macro shots, as i always had trouble holding the camera steady.

Here is a picture of a dragonfly (picture is cropped):



60mm f/2.8G

A: F/5.6
S: 1/500s
Iso: 180

Experiment with the shutter speed

A part of the photography workshop encouraged us to play around with the shutter speed.

As we were in a nature reserve we had the chance to practice on some moving targets. One of the horses was so kind to run in front of our group.

Here are the settings:
Lens: 18-70 mm F/3.5-4.5G
Mode: Manual
Aperture: F/9
Shutter Speed: 1/13s
ISO: 100

And here is the photo:


Moved the camera a little bit to follow the horse. Next time I will try to get the horse more crisp. Maybe an even shorter shutter speed?

My equipment

I'm not writing this blog to impress others with my equipment, but rather to make it easy to compare. I don't believe that more expensive equipment will give better pictures (at least until somebody proves me wrong).

Camera:
Nikon D80

Lenses:
AF-S Micro Nikkor 60 mm 1:2.8 G
AF-S Nikkor 70-300 mm 1:4.5-5.6 G
AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:3.5-4.5 G

Wishlist:
Good flash
Tripod
Some filters

Now the wishlist will be filled in gradually. Although I will probably buy a tripod quite soon. Got some money for my birthday which needs a good excuse to spoil me. Filters and flash will come later when I've left the noob stage.

Starting my photo blog

Today I participated in a workshop nature photography. Oh man, I'm such a noob. What can I say - about 95% of my pictures are a failure. So I decided to spend some more time with my camera and finally learn (step by step) how to do things.

My objectives for this blog are pretty easy:
a) Keep track of my achievements (if any at all)
b) Share my experience and how-to's with others
c) Get some of my pics viewed by others

As the blogosphere lives by the gratitude of people, please comment, berate, rant and encourage me. The more we share the better we all become.