Nemos Phototgraphy

Sunday 8 March 2009

I have been experimenting with the settings for megapixel, and extra zoom, and then saving them on the C1 and C2 positions..... During a trip out yesterday, to Midhurst, in West Sussex, I had a chance to test them out, with the pictures you see today. The settings I used were as follows

ISO 200, Aperture priority, spot focus, with Q-AF, intelligent exposure, and Auto stability.

I have done some calculations to work out the approx distance from the camera, to show the capability of the camera to find and focus on a very distant object, even though they were all shot free standing, and hand held.

The buzzard, I estimate were about 300 feet (possibly up to 400 feet), and obviously at that distance, you would not expect to see detail in the feathers, but it is possible to make out the markings on the wings and the shape of the bird, thereby enabling identification of the type of bird that it was... I have not cropped the picture......Not spectacular in terms of photograph quality, but to me it is the thrill of actually capturing the birds, as much as getting the "perfect" shot.

The Crow, he/she was at the top of the tree, and the estimated distance from camera to subject here is about 50 feet. I have not cropped the picture, but used Irfanview, to adjust the colours, and present the subject in better contrast, as I was shooting into the clear sky background, it presented the camera with an over exposure situation.

The chaffinch was flitting around the trees, and singing his heart out... it was tricky to get him in a good position without loads of branches in the way. Again, I estimate him to be about 4o feet high in the tree. You will know which one`s are the crops, and you can see there is quite a good bit of detail in the birds feathers. I have adjusted the contrast and colouring using Irfanview, because , again, they were shot into the sky...

Now the zoom levels.... on the Buzzards, I used maximum zoom available, i.e 21.4 X optical zoom, and then the full digital zoom on top of that making it a total zoom of 85.5 X.

The crow , and the chaffinch, I think were just on Optical zoom of about 20 X.....