Can I call it that? Does that sound vain? I hope not. Anyway, this is where I plan to address tips and questions that my pals in blogland leave me in the comments.
First up today – in my Faux Studio post my friend Alissa suggested that if your subject is wearing a hat, turn your camera upside down and use your pop-up flash to fill in under the brim so you can see their eyes. Here is my experiment.
On the left, I used the flash in the normal fashion. On the right, I turned my camera completely upside down so the flash was on the underside of my lens. See the difference? A handy tip to have in your bag if you need it in a pinch.
Next, in my copyright symbol post, Laurie asked where to use the alt + 0169 feature to get the symbol. I have used that trick to make the symbol appear in my Typepad body of text, in Adobe Photoshop, in a regular email and in a Microsoft Word document. I am under the impression that anywhere that you can type text, you can use this trick to make the symbol appear.
In my Program Mode post, Jeannette encouraged me to try to shoot in Manual mode more. I wanted to let you all know that I do plan to go there eventually. For some reason, I’m still struggling with remembering the details of shutter speed and aperture. Why? I don’t know. My brain is old and it’s lost some of it’s glue. Here is my plan (at least today). I plan to shoot in TV for awhile while I get the rules of shutter speed to take root in my brain. Then once I’ve got that mastered, I want to switch to shooting in AV mode until I get aperture cemented in my brain. Then I hope that I’ll have enough experience on both to make the jump into pure manual mode. I’ve tried manual mode a couple of times in no pressure settings and I can’t seem to get all my facts straight to shoot a correctly exposed photograph. But that is where I hope to be eventually.
I wanted to say thank you to all of you who take the time to leave me a comment. I find them incredibly encouraging.
While visiting other sites in my weekly Best Shot Monday game, I saw that Alissa (same Alissa as above) had a great silhouette picture on July 8 and I asked her how she did that. Here is her answer-
"The silhouette is not so difficult once you figure out the technique. For these I set the camera on Program Auto, and simply exposed for the sky rather than the people. It makes all the difference in the world to let the focus point land on the sunset, and as long as the focus is set on infinity the whole thing will be sharp. It also helps to have a strong back light, like the actual sun and not just light from a sun that’s gone below the horizon. And it helps to be below your subject–I was lying on my stomach and they were about 15 feet in front of me.
If the foreground comes out just the tiniest bit light you can select it in photoshop and bring it down with the curves function, but I guess that’s cheating. I didn’t need to do that with these–they were dark enough to begin with!"
So, a little while ago, my toddler was standing in a dark room looking out a bright window. I grabbed my camera to see if I could practice the technique. Here is what I got. Not nearly the cool scene she had, but it was the best silhouette opportunity I’ve had since I got her note.
Thanks, Alissa!
And to end this post… here is what the mailman brought me!
I just love Ebay. I ordered two DVDs – one about getting to know your Canon Digital Rebel and one about getting to know your Canon Speedlite 430EX. I am not sure how much the one on my camera will offer me because I’ve been reading the manual extensively and learning a lot from that. However, I’ve read the manual on the Speedlite and all the bells and whistles are lost on me. So, I’m hoping these two DVDs will offer me some deeper information than what I already know. That thing in the middle is a Gary Fong Lightsphere flash diffuser for my Speedlite to help correct the "flashlight" effect you sometimes get with a Speedlite. I plan to play with all of these items and review them for you here.
Thank you all for coming to visit my little blog. I hope you get something out of it. I know I’m delighted to hear from each of you when you leave me a comment or send me an email.
