Some of my Favourite New Photos

I love tulips!  I'm from Ottawa, it's what we do.  So last weekend I was in Ottawa for my dad's concert and it was also the Tulip Festival and these are some of my favourite photos from the weekend.  Oh and my dad has a website where you can listen to his album at www.markevenchick.com if you want to check it out.

I played around with the shutter speed and lighting for the pink tulips and it was a really bright day also.

 I know that there are things in the way for this picture but I love how the light is coming off the tulips.

 I had set this one to a higher shutter speed and because it was so bright it cast a really cool shadow.

Most of  other flower shots I took with the little flower symbol on the camera.

These were take the night of the concert (obviously since there are instruments and stuff).  My dad's friend is a photographer and set all the settings for me

I like to call the first one "Ode to the Spirit of a Musician" because yo can see the shadows of someones legs.

 That's my dad's guitar.  Just thought I would take a pic of it

 My dad just got Facebook (his friend set it up for him and he has no clue how to use it) and he added this pic because he liked it.

I think two blog posts is enough for me for now!

Shutter Speed and Aperture

I have been having a lot of fun, and a little stress, about my new camera and have taken TONS of photos...so many that I have to combine two blogs into one.

So I started off learning about shutter speed.  Shutter speed is basically how long the shutter stays open while you take the picture.  The slower the shutter speed the more light that gets in ( I think) and is usually written in a fraction 1/1000 or whatever you have it set to.

This is usually what happens if you have a slow shutter speed (1/2) and it's sunny

You can barely see the picture because it lets in too much light

If you have a super fast shutter (1/4000) speed on a cloudy day you get this.

So it's important to learn to set the settings to the light.

I also learned a really cool trick with shutter speed too

So yeah you're probably wondering why I have a picture of my faucet.  I took this photo at probably a 1/100 shutter speed and it looks like well, a faucet, but check this out

Pretty cool, eh?  I set my shutter speed to 1/2000 and turned on the flash (which was the only way to make this work and TADA you can see the actual bubbles in the faucet!  I don't when I'll ever need or want a photo of a faucet but it;s still pretty cool.

The other cool thing I learned on my weekend trip to Ottawa was aperture.  Basically I think aperture is how wide the lens opens when you take a photo.  You can usually find it on your DSLR because it starts with an F, for example f/2, f/4.  I know that F stands for f-stop but I don't really know why.  In every day words if you have a smaller f-stop only one thing in particular will be in focus, if you have a larger f-stop everything you want to see will be in focus.  It's kind of cool because you can isolate something in particular and make it prominent.

Anyways in this case you need to pay attention to how the background branches are going in and out of focus.  I can't for the life of me remember the f-stop numbers though.

I also did a great example of how the apertures change effects pictures with these tulips.  Again you have to look at the background to really understand how the depth of field changes.

I also did a great example of how the apertures change effects pictures with these tulips

NEW TOY!!!

Okay so I have some really exciting news, I got a NEW camera.  A Cannon Rebel DSLR to be exact.  I got it last weekend from the Henry's outlet out in Mississauga last weekend, which by the way is a great store to get stuff.  They have an open box warranty which means if you buy an open box camera you get a free 3 year warranty on the camera and the case was half off as well.


So this is a picture of the old camera...which by the way is still an awesome camera

And this a picture of the new camera.

With lots of dials and knobs

And LOTS of buttons to play with

I'm actually a little scared of it to tell you the truth.  When I bought it I took it out of the box when I got home, looked at it, and then went out for a run.  I think my husband must think that I'm nuts because he just wants to start playing around with it right away, but I would rather take my time and learn about each feature for a but.

Next week...Shutter speed!