Focussing on Objects

I had a busy summer but finally I am back and good, over the summer I took a great deal of photos with my D80, many of which I experimented with focus. The advantage of a DSLR is often you can focus easily on exactly you want to focus on using manual focus on the lens ring. I find this extremely useful in some of the photos I take, and I often leave the camera on manual focus because I think it can often give a better photo.

A (Chestnut?) horse

A poppy I found in a field during the holidays

A field of wheat showing the depth-of-field of the settings I
was using

Sorry!

Sorry guys I haven't really posted much on here recently, I had a number of exams in June, but now I've finished, so we're back to normal operation soon. I recently got Instagram, and decided to post some photos here just so it isn't a boring blog post. My phone camera is quite frankly awful, it's a low-res 3MP camera and the images are extremely grainy. Nonetheless, here are a couple I've taken and edited in Instagram.

Grass Shot

Hi everyone!

I haven't posted much in the past weeks, but here is a nice shot I took of some grass that I thought I'd share with you. I hope you like it, and I should be able to get back to my normal posting schedule next week (hopefully!)

A vibrant photo of some grass in a rockery

First Attempts at Photoshop

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I wrote my last post here, but I've been working on my Photoshop skills, and have some results. I am using Photoshop CS2 at the moment, and it seems to do everything I need. I'm still getting a hang of it so bear with. All of these photos have been taken with the trusty D80, but have been shot in RAW.

There are many advantages to RAW, for one, no detail is lost in compression, which is inevitable when using JPEG, and, as it is the raw image captured by the sensor of the camera, it is possible to recover some detail from the photo that may have previously been lost, for example, by adjusting the 'sensitivity' of the CCD. Anyway, here are the best of my first attempts at Photoshop.

Cliffs in Rottingdean (near Brighton) (unedited version)

Cliffs in Rottingdean (edited version)

Stones (unedited version)

Stones (edited version)

This photo remained unedited, as the camera was set to JPEG when I took the shot,  however I thought it looked quite good so here it is nonetheless...

Waves hitting the side of a walkway in Rottingdean, near Brighton

Beach Huts

I'm sorry I haven't posted up many photos this week, but the picture below I took yesterday with the D80, but I've modified it with the histogram in Paint.NET. It's been interesting working with the software, because previously the image was slightly overexposed, but shooting in RAW makes it possible to recover some detail that would be lost. I'll probably be working with Paint.NET over the next couple of weeks and I'll see what I can do.

The photo of these beach huts was very slightly overexposed, but it has been edited to recoup some of the detail

Long Exposure Shot

Went out this evening to take a couple of photos, found a conveniently placed roundabout, and this was the result. Really enjoyed taking these long exposure shots, once you get the camera set up, they're quite easy to pull off. If you're interested in doing something like this, I used an ISO of 320, aperture of 22, and an exposure time of 15 seconds, which should give you something to work with.

The long exposure shot captured using my D80 DSLR. Interesting lens flare from the streetlamps, and rather
confusing traffic lights ;)

Night Shots

Yesterday evening I managed to take the D80 out to try out some long exposure shots of cars and lights. It took a while to get set up, but after a while I managed to get the right settings for the light conditions, and got some fairly decent photographs (I think anyway!). Here are a couple of the best ones, let me know what you think. :)

The moon through a thick layer of cloud, taken with a
telephoto lens. 

Some cars on an intersection with a telephone box
in the background. I like the yellow indicator flashes myself.

New Blog

Hello :)

Hi everyone this is my new blog I guess. I come from London in the UK, and I enjoy taking photos, so I thought I'd post the best ones up here for you all to look at. I have a couple of cameras at the moment, but I use a Nikon D80 for most of the photos. Hopefully I'll keep this blog up-to-date and I'll use it to keep a log of the photos I've taken. Here are a couple of shots I've taken before, I hope you like them.

Photos

A boat at Chapman's Pool in Dorset, taken with an old cameraphone

A river near Twickenham in London, with a nice
reflection effect on the water

Some flowers taken against the sky using the Nikon D80,
overexposed - quite a nice effect I thought