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Nov. 9th, 2007 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI hope the remote shutter release I bought on Ebay for my camera shows up before MFF. I didn't think it would show up before Windycon, though I'd kind of hoped it might. Maybe it'll be there when I get home today. Who knows.
I need to do more shooting with a smaller aperture. I think my pictures will look a little sharper in general. I keep opening the aperture up pretty wide so I don't have to switch to faster film or use flash, but I wonder if that's causing general quality problems. I was trying to shoot at f10 through f15 or so in Gary instead of open to 3.5 or 4 and I think my pictures there came out a little bettter because of it. I wish I could afford a nice fast general use prime. Say, f2 at 30mm or 40mm?
I'm still having trouble with capturing some of the bright, vibrant colors that I see in front of me. In the post office in Gary, Indiana, I saw one of the most beautiful things I've yet seen in an abandoned place. Rich earthy browns in the wooden blocks that once composed the floor, thrown into piles by frost heave. Soft living greens in the mosses taking their sustenance from those old tree-bones below them and the water dripping onto them from the wide ceiling above. Warm, tranquil yellows and oranges from the sun, just beginning to set, shedding it's light through the broken panes of a tall, dignified west-facing window to cast a brilliantly contrasting rectangular pool of gold on the floor of the ruin, highlighting the beauty of nature reclaiming her land.
Yet my pictures are just...flat. Washed-out. Dull. If I turn the saturation up to maximum under Irfanview, it approaches what I saw with my naked eye, but still it's not quite the same, and tweaking the settings that much, I think, loses me some quality in the image. I wish I knew how to get those colors on, so to speak, film. Do I need to cary a gray card and set a custom white balance? Do I need to shoot in Raw? I wish I could go back again and spend an hour or two shooting that same scene in all the different ways. But I'm sure that, with the change of the weather and the seaons, it's gone now. I'll just have to do my best to learn well enough that I can capture the next scene of beauty that I have the serendipity to encounter.
I need to do more shooting with a smaller aperture. I think my pictures will look a little sharper in general. I keep opening the aperture up pretty wide so I don't have to switch to faster film or use flash, but I wonder if that's causing general quality problems. I was trying to shoot at f10 through f15 or so in Gary instead of open to 3.5 or 4 and I think my pictures there came out a little bettter because of it. I wish I could afford a nice fast general use prime. Say, f2 at 30mm or 40mm?
I'm still having trouble with capturing some of the bright, vibrant colors that I see in front of me. In the post office in Gary, Indiana, I saw one of the most beautiful things I've yet seen in an abandoned place. Rich earthy browns in the wooden blocks that once composed the floor, thrown into piles by frost heave. Soft living greens in the mosses taking their sustenance from those old tree-bones below them and the water dripping onto them from the wide ceiling above. Warm, tranquil yellows and oranges from the sun, just beginning to set, shedding it's light through the broken panes of a tall, dignified west-facing window to cast a brilliantly contrasting rectangular pool of gold on the floor of the ruin, highlighting the beauty of nature reclaiming her land.
Yet my pictures are just...flat. Washed-out. Dull. If I turn the saturation up to maximum under Irfanview, it approaches what I saw with my naked eye, but still it's not quite the same, and tweaking the settings that much, I think, loses me some quality in the image. I wish I knew how to get those colors on, so to speak, film. Do I need to cary a gray card and set a custom white balance? Do I need to shoot in Raw? I wish I could go back again and spend an hour or two shooting that same scene in all the different ways. But I'm sure that, with the change of the weather and the seaons, it's gone now. I'll just have to do my best to learn well enough that I can capture the next scene of beauty that I have the serendipity to encounter.
