Friday, February 26, 2010

Day 53: Experimenting, MJ style

My friend MJ (we've been friends for 25 years!) suggested I play with my flash by putting my hand in front of it while I take a picture. I did that with Seth in the bathtub, and I played with a CD that was on my desk, holding it under the flash and over the flash. None of the pictures turned out well enough to post, though. So then I started playing with my white balance presets.

This is a picture that sits on my desk. It's Ed and William, taken in the summer of '08 (he was 2). I took this picture with my auto settings, including the flash:
 
Then I took this one with the white balance "preset 1" setting.
 
 
Then I took this picture with the "preset 2" setting:
Interesting, huh? So then I thought I better look up in the manual to see what the presets are meant for. Turns out that once you select a preset (preset 1 for outdoors, preset 2 for indoors), then you're supposed to go further and select the conditions (shade, cloudy, sunny for outdoors; type of indoor light for indoors). I'm too tired to go back, but I'll try messing with it more tomorrow night. But in the meantime, I like the middle picture best, and it was on the preset 1 setting, for sunny conditions.

The more I know, the more I realize I don't know. I did finally order this book from Amazon and should be getting it on Monday. Hopefully that will help. (If I ever find the time to go through it!) The other thing I realized from this whole exercise tonight is that I have to write down what settings I'm using for each picture (like auto flash, preset 1, no flash, etc.). This is kind of a "duh" thing, but not something I really thought about before I started snapping pictures!


Dinner:
Schnitzel, green beans, dinner roll
We ate at 6:35. William ate all of his dinner. Seth ate a little bit of everything. I had the pork already breaded and ready to cook as soon as we got home. But it didn't taste as good as I remember it tasting the last time I made it. I can't remember what I did last time that would have made it better. It was still pretty good, though.

2 comments:

MJ said...

I'm kind of embarrassed to have my silly technique mentioned here. At least it gave you more inspiration to fiddle with your settings. :)

I love the picture on your desk--no matter the setting.

LauraC said...

Hey do you use flickr at all? It actually stores a lot of the information about the picture for you. You can also go to the picture in windows explorer and click "Properties" to see the information the camera recorded for you. I would try that before writing it down because it might already be doing it.

I took a photography class a LONG TIME ago in CHicago and it was with a film SLR. We had to write everything down then get the pictures printed then review the results. PITA!

I'm posting some pics I took last night with some lenses I am renting and borrowing. I can't wait to see where both of our pics are at the end of the year!