I like to shoot flowers, and I began doing so the first day I had my camera. After a few months I had really mastered the art, and began looking for something more challenging. That’s when I discovered the photographic possibilities in birds! So I shot birds like a nut for a few months. Then I took all my great images to my extreme photographer friend to show him what a great master I was.
BIG MISTAKE!
His bird pictures were about a hundred times as good as mine. I could see the smallest components of each individual feather. His flowers were all two-dimensional. I could tell because the entire blossom was in perfect tack-sharp focus every time.
So I went home pretty discouraged about the whole prospect of ever being able to actually take a decent photograph. The bar had been raised, and I was definitely well below it. For months I took photos, and for months I hated pretty much all of them. And then something unexpected happened. My wonderful wife told me that she could really see improvement in my work! You could have knocked me over with one of those little feathers in my friend’s images.
That got me motivated to do more, and last weekend I went out to shoot flowers again. I began by setting my aperture at f16, and observing that there was simply not enough light with the camera in programmed auto (P on my Nikon
At first the flash didn’t help me much because it wanted to set the shutter speed at a 60th of a second, and that’s too slow for hand-holding a 200mm lens. Finally, the neurons fired and I realized that I could ALSO control ISO and shutter speed myself! DUH!
So I put the camera in Manual and set the shutter to a 250th, at f16 and ISO 400. Now I the had depth-of-field I was looking for! I got a couple of pretty nice shots, and that encouraged me further. I grabbed the Sigma 50-500mm zoom telephoto and changed the shutter speed to a 500th and the ISO to 800 (just below the intolerable noise level) and took a couple of shots. SWEET! I got crisp in-focus shots with no shake. A new world!
