Faux pas

While scrolling through various articles, tweets and IG posts about photography it became quite clear that there’s a major photographic faux pas – using your digital camera in the automatic mode. Que ç’est embarrassant!* Obviously this didn’t apply to me – I have been taking photos in the professional mode. Or, what silly me, thought was a professional mode. It turned out that P on my #Nikon D90 camera stood for programme, which meant that there was only a smidge of a difference between this mode and the automatic one (facepalm moment).

I thought, the time has come – I need to expand my comfort zone to the next letter (I think it’s S for shutter), and so I’ve signed up to a course on how to use my digital camera. An experienced photographer, a small group and a beautiful location of the Westonbirt Arboretum made it very appealing. And so did the camping trip we had planned afterwards (btw, love their fish & chips Fridays).

I hit the bullseye with this course – I’ve learnt four new things about my camera thanks to our teacher Graham. The photos below are taken following his advice.

How to use  + or – to improve the light in your photo:

I should have probably stood with my back to the cloudy sun, but wanted to see what happens. Turned out, I couldn’t see much in this photo.

Thanks to + or – option I was able to improve the light, should have gone for a lower setting, but still looks better than the other photo. At least you can see the berries!
And then I went wild! Kept on pressing and scrolling to see what happens. Not great, but at least now I know.

Improving composition & adjusting White Balance (WB):

I wanted to capture the path, but something wasn’t right.
Who would have thought that a bush would make such a difference to the composition.

Add WB set for cloud (it was a cloudy day) and what an improvement!

Using manual focus – my macro lens didn’t want to cooperate with Nikon in automatic mode, and so I’ve switched the lens mode to manual and, with trembling fingers, took these photos. It was worth it! By the way, I was told to increase the shutter speed, so that also might have something to do with the final result:

So, after the course it was time to put the knowledge into practice by playing with other modes (like A and S), using different WB and generally having fun. The photos below were taken near our camp site, at Hayles Fruit Farm:

Sunny morning, pic taken in A mode, WB set to sun light
Sunny morning, pic taken in A mode, WB set to cloud
Sunny morning, pic taken in A mode, WB set to indoors – this gives a feeling of a summer afternoon
Sunny morning, pic taken in A mode, WB set to automatic

In A mode again, apparently it’s good for landscapes (?) but with a shutter speed of 1/2500
Still in A mode – I guess it’s my P mode replacement – but WB set to cloud (on a sunny day). What a beauty!
Same location, a few seconds later but with WB set to auto, still in A mode. And such a different outcome!

*To be honest I’m not that bothered by memes and sniggers when taking photos in the automatic mode. The technology is there to be used, as simple as that. Just look at my IG, full of photos taken on my phone, which, until this course, was much better than I at deciding the various modes and settings.