Shutter Speed, ISO & F/stop...

Wowie, the photography lesson was very interesting and I still have lots of terminology whirling around in my mind. It ended up being a private lesson since one person was sick and the other two never showed so that was good for me! Three hours is plenty though and I was quite tired afterwards...

We mainly worked in the Av-mode with aperture, deep and shallow depths of field etc. (I told you, lots of terminology!) I now know that what I would like to achieve with some of my pictures (focused object, very blurry background) cannot completely happen with the lens I currently have (an 18-55mm). I would need one with a lower F/stop. Below you can see the examples that I took last night. The upper two were taken with my camera and the lower two with the teacher's lens which had an F1.8. There you can cleary see the more blurry background....

The difference between the pictures in the left row with the pictures in the right row (darker versus lighter ones) is the difference between sizing. The darker ones were taken in RAW (better quality, more detail) and the lighter ones in JPEG format. (again, more terminology, you can see why my head was buzzing!) I was quite satisfied with the JPEG format so that will be fine for general shooting. If i want something very special I can always switch to the RAW format...

So this afternoon I went outside and tried some of my new techniques on the Ranunculas (spelling?) that are starting to bloom right now. To be honest, I didn't see much of a difference between the AV-mode and the Automatic Macro- mode so I guess I must have something right...  `wink`

 They  all looked pretty nice to me!

All in all I now at least understand some of vocabulary better than before and got a lot of practise with all the different settings and dials etc. I think it will just take a lot of practise, chatting with other photographers and more reading of manuals and books to get better at this form of art & technology.

What FUN to be working in a new medium!  {smile}