Photography

Gonna throw this here for now. If this becomes an ongoing thing, maybe we'll look into giving photography it's own sub-forum. Anyway...because of some recent conversations, and reading my camera manual, I decided to try taking some pictures in the RAW format. Digital cameras take pictures, then add a bunch of filters and software tweaks for optimal quality, then compress the pictures into JPEG, JPG, or some other relevant compressed format. RAW skips all the tweaking and modifications, instead just saving the picture exactly as the camera sees it. This is useful if you want a LARGE, many pixel image that you can tweak manually in software and keep the original image quality! UNFORTUNATELY, when I rotated the picture in the Picasa downloadable software, it saved as a JPG, so I lost the RAW capabilities, but I still think my camera did an awesome job!


I missed the moonrise, and it was dark enough when I got out that I had to do some tweaking with camera settings. I got a lot of crap, then remembered my camera has a nightime mode. I auto-focused on the moon light beams on the water (light enough for auto focus to lock on), then swung the camera up between the water and the moon. Now if only I had seen that damn sign in the viewfinder!!! With the nighttime mode, the shutter speed is slowed way down to let more light in, and that's why there is so much visible even in the sky! I'm really glad I'm getting better at making sure I'm braced on whatever is close before taking long shutter shots, otherwise this would have been a complete mess! Of course, a newer camera with anti-shake would have less issues, but isn't that kinda like cheating?

Interstingly, I was on the other side of down the evening this was taken... I remember the contrails. Funny thing, though, from the other facility, the contrails didn't cross; the one on the left curved toward the right one, and then about halfway up (at the point where they cross in the photo) it kinda curved away. Or was it the opposite?

Anyway, ain't perspective fun?

Perspective...aperture...depth of field. All things to play with on a camera. Found something a few weeks ago, and have been meaning to try it but keep forgetting. Rather than trying to explain, I decided to share the 'instructables' page from which I learned. This is just neat!

DIY Bokeh Filter