This year for Christmas, Dug and I gave each other a new camera. In case you care, it is a Canon digital Rebel XTi. Of course, we had to "open" it early. Got to have it out and ready for Christmas morn.
And, of course I had to spend the last half of the afternoon trying out the different features as I read through the owner's manual. Yes, you read that right. I'm an owner's manual reader. Always have been. Not knowing exactly how something is supposed to work is a source of mild anxiety for me. It's an inherent defect with a, well, how do I put this?...anal personality. I don't want to get something to just work, I want to know how it was designed to work. What exactly am I supposed to do? None of this, "I'll figure it out as I go." There might be some key feature I'm missing if I don't read every word.
Anyways...I tested her out. One of my favorite self-portrait styles is the use of a fish-eye mirror. I love how they look. So what better prop to use than a silver Christmas ornament? At first it didn't work. A self-portrait in a reflective surface can not use a flash for obvious reasons, but without the extra light, the picture was blurry. So I read about ISO settings and found that if it was high enough (say, 1600) I could take a picture in low light without a flash...blah, blah, blah, technical camera stuff the internet told me that I don't understand...and the results? It worked!
The picture at the top of this post is actually the reflection from the Christmas tree ornament! The original is below. Can you believe that the resolution on the camera is good enough to get a picture similar in quality to the camera I had been using previously, but from a reflection off an ornament!! It's amazing! It's preposterous! I took the picture, zoomed way in and cropped it. Now, of course the picture is grainy, one of my fingers looks like it has elephantitis and my hair is, well, a bit horrifying to post on the web, but who cares?! It's from an ornament, for goodness' sake!!! Needless to say I'm a bit pleased with our purchase.
Click on the picture to really appreciate it.Now I'm off to read a tutorial that will hopefully explain all that photography jargon from the manual that went waaaaaay over my head...
1 comment:
ohhhhh that is very nice trisha. that is the camera i was talking about at the book club meeting...it is the one I have been looking at too. your pictures will always be incredible now...yay!! so glad you opened it early, that is so the way to go!
Post a Comment