GARDEN BEAUTIES

Well, I felt the urge to go out and shoot something, just didn't have much time, so I found these in my backyard. I don' t usually shoot flowers, because, well, everyone does that. But it was good practice, and I am still testing the camera trying to decide if it's me or if it needs to be sent in. These were shot with cloudy skies, so there's no hot areas to clip really.... The camera did fine, it just seems to fail under real bright light. anyway, here's a couple shots for the day.

Here is an example of what I got the other day, these are right from the camera, shot on a tripod, same settings, location, I didn't move, and neither did he. One is fine (a bit dark) and the other was blown away.... it's hard to show here, it really shows when you look thru a dozen images or so, It looks like I could just darken the light image and match it, play with the exposure in RAW and come out with something good, but when I do, it bands, gets halos around the white edges, color fringes and really goes contrasty, it's strange the info just isn't there like it should be. I am going to go out and shoot a series of specific shots now tonight, thinking I may be going crazy, lol, hoping and praying it isn't the same thing again and it was something I had set wrong. Cross your fingers for me, and I'll post more on this later. I also have to dig up my reciept from the repair, so I can determine exactly what it was they fixed last time..... Thanks for your comments, keep em coming! Please!

TOADIES

So, last friday I shot the kids in the park, under pretty hot sun, got home, and as I was processing the photos, I noticed, my highlights are blowing way out, and I am having exposure issues... A year ago, something went out in my camera and I had to send it in for a rebuild, luckily, it was covered under warranty. Well, guess what, it's back, a year later... I am loosing detail in whites and the meter is not reading correctly. ARGH! Anyone wanna buy a 20D cheap? This time I am not under warranty, so I will see what Canon does, since it's a prior problem with this camera. The misfortune of buying the first release of anything, I got the lemon.

Having said that, to test my theory it was going out again, I shot these little toadies out in the full sun, in the 80 degree heat, yep, I see the failure, you may too, but the shots were really fun. I don't think the common eye would see the defects, but I do and it is making me crazy..... If I can hold off untilt he 26th of Sept, my back up camera will be back from Africa (my parents borrowed it) and I can send this one out, sigh....

Let me know what you think of my macros here, I had fun with these little guys... talk about hard models, there were two I was working with, try getting these guys to stay still to get perfect focus in such a shallow DOF! It was a blast.....


I took this shot for scale, I had to "pinch" this little guy between my forefinger and thumb to get this shot, he wasn't hurt, these guys are so small still, a little less than the size of my fingernail!

He turned as I snapped, and I was thrilled when I saw the image, thought it was a lost shot, but I loved the shadow coming thru the leaf!

Well, here you can see the exposure trouble a bit, no matter what I do, the blacks are underexposed, and this was RAW.... but I like how he sat in the leaf so I added it anyway.

another blown shot, or so I thought when I took it as he jumped out of the frame, I was tickled to see him all blurry, so I added this to show also.... It's so funny, sometimes, what you weren't trying for turns out great, this was fun for me.

Streeeeeeeeeeeeatch............

warty little toadie....... :)

FRIENDS

Here are the shots with my daughter, these two get along so well, it's so cute for me, I have photos of them walking hand in hand since she was 2 and he was 5... All the fun of angelic siblings, without any of the squabbling!