Hey!! Where did January go to? Last time I looked it was December and I was knocking around the North, annoying the neighbours and my sister.
To which end, she has retaliated by publishing a very rare photo of the probligo in the act of knicking her blackberries. To be fair, I was not the only one at it as the attached will reveal. Stephan, and the probligo’s sister are easy to spot. The Mrs probligo is a bit more difficult to spot among the brambles.
More to the point on the photographic side, I am beginning to find the limitations of my ability and to some extent the limits of the Lumix especially in low light and in HDR situations.
The immediate problem I have is getting the camera to accept ISO100 or anything else as the default setting. It is easy enough to build and grab one of the custom scenarios, but these seem to hold only for the next frame. Experimentation and consultation of the manual required because I am obviously doing something wrong. This impacts directly on the limitations I am meeting – especially when the camera insists on using ISO1600 and 1/50 instead of ISO100 and ¼.
What I need to do more than anything is to spend an afternoon on each of low light, HDR, high contrast, and polarising; brushing up the technique and knowledge on all is definitely required. Now that I have found a possible D&P resource for film (after my experience with one in Howick who “gave” me 2 prints of each frame at an additional cost of about $16 when the instructions clearly said “CD and Index ONLY”), I might take film and digital at the same settings to see what happens.
The first set topic for HCC is “Hot”. I was going to enter prints, but that was this week (early February) and I have missed. My attempts at getting digital for the same subject were foiled by weather – far too windy and cool. I had in mind trying to get the heat shimmer on the road as a basis.
(happy snap)
There was a fantastic opportunity at the Kohukohu ferry ramp but the tarseal was too cool and the wind was about 15k off the harbour which removed any remote possibility. The image of three semi-wild chooks standing in a “pool” of heat shimmer would have been quite neat but it just wasn’t there. In similar vein, I had thought of getting a “wild-west” scene at Waimamaku. We went over there for a brunch but again the weather was against any success – windy and cool. In fact, rather than wild west the country looked far more like Ireland after one of their wetter summers.
So the intention is to tootle along to the next meeting – on the 21st – as a refresher on mounting and displaying prints. The following week is digital entries and I will be going to that, perhaps with one or two to show. I will see…
