Sunday 22 February 2015

Camera Challenge 1

Katy at the Littlest Thistle is running a camera challenge, to help those of us who are photographically challenged to enhance our skills.

This month's challenge is to compare using automatic settings and using the pre-sets.

My camera is a Canon EOS 450 D, digital reflex, which I have had for about five years. All these photos were taken using the 18-55 lens.

Portrait

pre-set - portrait
auto 







 



The pre-set used the flash, even though this was outside on a sunny morning. The extra light minimised the shadow, especially noticeable in his beard. This would probably make a portrait more flattering by equalising skin tone and minimising wrinkles (I tried a self portrait, but flash and mirror don't mix!). I am surprised that the bush in the background is not more clearly defined in the automatic setting.

Landscape


auto

pre-set - landscape
The only difference I can see here is pre-set is lighter. I don't think this is the most inspiring landscape but the pre-set shows more contrast. 

Close up


auto

pre-set - close-up
Both photos were taken with the automatic flash which makes the background dark. Neither give the true colour. In the pre-set photo another orchid stem to the left of the subject is less defined than in the automatic, but that may be because I moved closer to the subject.

Action


auto

pre-set sports

I don't see much difference here either. However the automatic is lighter even though there were only a few seconds between the two shots. In both the drops are visible, which I hadn't expected from the automatic. I got a surprise, however, when using the sports setting because it's in continuous shooting mode. That's not necessary for a fountain, but I do use the manual setting "continuous shooting" when photographing my grandson's football matches; really useful for getting ball-on-foot shots.
Looking again at the original photos at 100% size, and not these .jpg versions, the drops are much clearer in the sports than in the automatic, where they are all elongated.

Well Katy has certainly set me LOOKING at my photos and also comparing the data. I hope that as this challenge progresses I'll know what I'm doing well enough to be less of a hit and miss camera junkie.

I'm linking now to

The Littlest Thistle

Click on the logo to see what fabulous photos other challenged photographers have made.


Happy snapping everyone

Marly.

PS

While I was crawling around photographing the orchid I couldn't resist taking a shot with a manual setting (Av 5.6) focussing on the very centre of the flower. No flash; the background is a net curtain and there's brilliant sunlight on the other side. The colour isn't right here either, but it's more realistic than in the two above.


3 comments:

Katy Cameron said...

Well done, and nicely analysed too :o) The pre-sets apply colour processing that's slightly different to the auto modes, hence some of the colour differences you've seen.

For the portrait one, I suspect the bush isn't clearer in auto because you filled the frame quite well with Sleepy (?!) and because of the space between him and the bush, the auto concentrated on him alone, and the aperture it chose threw the bush out (if that makes sense)

I think on the close up one the focus in the preset one hasn't actually hit the white tip of the flower, so the focal plane is further back. It looks like it chose a pretty wide aperture for the shot, hence the nearest petal isn't really in focus. That's the thing that makes all the presets and auto modes risky, you never quite know what they'll chose to focus on!

Ruth said...

Love your analysis of all your shots Marly! Those flowers are gorgeous but Happy Dwarf is great fun!

Sheila said...

I definitely see differences in yours that I didn't in my own. This is interesting isn't it.