Understanding the Threesome

I have been madly snapping pics over the weekend, trying, in vain, mostly to get my head around the photographers threesome; F/stops,aperture & ISO. How they relate to each other & affect the way a picture turns out.

This reading also lead me to bokeh & discussions on this technique- I am way too much of a novice to have much of opinion or to even profess to even know what is or isn't acceptable as a bokeh example, but I do know what I like & what appeals to me.

There were many opinions on different forums about it & some quite heated discussions-some interesting pictures & some, that to my untrained eye, just looked like a complete picture out of focus.

So when is a blurred image, artistic & when is it just a blurred image, and probably should be given the delete button? Its all very subjective & very much in the eyes of the beholder.

I've trolled through many an album in my quest to find what constitutes a great picture or just a very ordinary one-my pics, in the main, fall very short of fantastic shots and the vast majority should be given the delete button-but I do know I have to keep on practising to get any better, if I'm ever going to get a really great pic!

I've played with aperture & shutter speeds-left the ISO alone at this stage- and had a lot of pics that didn't work & a few that did-looked at my depth of field & generally played around, this is the wonderful thing with digital, you can takes lots of pics & just get rid of them-no expense or waiting to have them developed to find none of them turned out. Oh, how I remember those days.

I've chased bees around the garden-boy are they quick! & found lots of bugs on lots of flowers-it's truly amazing what you see with a macro lens....so much more at another level that we pass every day. Even the minute centre of a geranium is quite amazing & barely 2mm in size!

Hopefully I'll understand how the threesome works at some point in time, in relation to camera settings..... in the mean time I guess I can just set it on auto.

Madly Snapping!

Week 3 of the photography class was last night. I am learning so much about my camera-let's hope its enough to get me by with the big cameras on Saturday, when I attend the Red Balloon day out with a professional photographer, for travel photography.

Each week in my basic digital photography class we have been given homework & not all of us produce the correct pics either! Last week I got the people pics right, but didn't get the night time, no flash one exactly how the teacher specified-all in the interpretation! Maybe I can do a better shot through the week.

No more pics on auto....lots on Program Mode & adjusting settings. I was surprised at the number in the class who had never turned their camera sideways to take a portrait shot! At least I had done that, many times.

We've taken pics without the flash, changed ISO's, changed the white balance, EV changes, learned about DOF & moved on to file types & sizes- boy have we covered some ground- the whole class has been great fun & informative & hopefully at the end of all of this I'll be taking much better photos! I find I am understanding my manual a whole lot better as well after doing the class.

I've added some pics to the blog, of a few I've taken over the past few weeks-let me know if they look any good or not! After all this time of having the camera I've finally figured out how to do a decent macro shot on it- the geranium buds are VERY small!

This last one was taken in the dark, with no flash,long shutter opening & no lights! Amazing- I did use a tripod!