The flashes only illuminated the feeder and bird, so the background is completely black--a very cool effect.
I stationed myself on my cool little collapsible stool with the other digital camera on a tripod all under an umbrella (that was a mouthful! :) to watch his favorite perch. He got paranoid if I got too close, so I could only count on my limited zoom. This pic captures his red/gold throat feathers well.
Finally, Dad tried setting the flashes on Multi mode, which makes them fire quick bursts of light (in this case 5) while the shutter remains open. You get a kind of ghostly image with the bird in several different poses. With a little more experimentation, we should be able to get more color in the bird, and less background.
My trouble is, I have so many hobbies--expensive ones! "Oh, but Dad and Mom, think what I could do with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT?!!" Ya right. :-) At least I can use Dad's equipment, even if I can't afford anything like it--yet. Hope you enjoyed the pictures.
4 comments:
Oh, oh, oh, amazing! you did it! Technology is sure a stunning way to capture God's creation, isn't it?
Thanks. Dad figured out how to get it set up, and I now know how--so I'll be playing around with this kind of stuff this summer. Technology is great--especially when it's called a Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D (Dad's dSLR camera). BTW, what kind of camera(s) do you guys have? From what I've seen, it takes some pretty sweet pics for a compact. I'm looking to get myself a small camera to carry around, and use it with a spotting scope when I eventually get one (like attaching it to a telescope for super-zoom). Canon has some nice ones.
I'm not exactly sure about camera stuff, but I think it's a Power Shot A300 Canon with 3.2 mega pixels. Does that sound right? Anyway, it's a pretty nice camera and I enjoy having a half decent one, ya know? But one thing that bothers me about it, is it takes so long to snap the pictures. People don't want to stand around waiting for your camrea to take something. Especially when I used the flash; it takes and age and a day to take it. Also, if I don't use the flash it usually comes out blurry. Maybe most cameras are that way unless you get a REALLY nice one though. For example a parent at a choir performance last year was snapping pictures left and right without pausing to wait... just "ching!" and the picture was taken! Anyway, never mind me, I'm having a "wishful-thinking" moment I think. :)
Sounds pretty nice (except for speed). The problem probably has to do with the processor and auto-focus. It helps to prefocus (press shutter release ('the picture button' :) halfway, until the little green 'in focus' box appears (i think it's green on Canons) Then push the button the rest of the way to take the pic. If you're pressing the button all the way the first time, the camera will get confused and take longer. Or it may just be the camera has a slower processor.
I'm guessing that parent wasn't using a compact? If you heard a "ching!" it was definitely an SLR (was it at the Christmas performance? I may have seen her) With the larger SLR cameras, manual focus is often used to take pictures quickly. On most SLR lenses, there's a manual focus ring along with the zoom ring--you operate MF pretty much like on binoculars. Once the subject is sharp, you can just snap pictures left and right, without waiting for the AF to configure. With compact cameras (like the Powershots) this won't work as well due to the lens size, and the fact that you can only aim through the viewfinder, you can't actually see what the lens is seeing. LCD screens often don't have enough resolution to make MF worthwhile.
How does your flash do? It seems like it would have trouble indoors, since it can really only project a few feet (max about 14). I mostly use a flash indoors, unless there's some kind of interesting lighting I want to capture. The trouble with flash is it tends to flatten values, especially outdoors. For instance, if you're taking a picture of a flower in the sun, it's best to let the sun do the lighting--the transparency and contours of the flower will really show up--whereas with a flash, you would get a much less interesting image. If there's plenty of light available, and the pictures are still blurry, there's a problem with the settings, or distance. In any case, your pictures seem to turn out great! (at least the ones you post... :)
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