New thing I learned about Photography!

I've been having too much fun with my camera, thanks Dad! He sent me a 50mm 1.8 lens. When I read my friend Laini's blog post in which she calls this puppy the "Plastic Fantastic" I was amazed that I owned the exact lens she spoke of. Thanks Laini for showing me how it works without making me have to read the manual!! Especially with cute pictures of her baby daughter to woo me into photography excitement.

Personally the most fantastic aspect to using the "Plastic Fantastic" is the fact it gets me to turn the camera off the AUTO setting. Yep, I am guilty of using AUTO on my D80 far too often. *gasp* But with this 50mm 1.8 lens I set it to Aperture priority and crank the F-Stop down to 1.8... then the magic starts... check out these shots I took at the beach, the top shot is the 50mm 1.8lens, the bottom shot it the 18-135mm lens that I normally use. My goodness - the difference!!!


The 50mm 1.8lens is great for portraits and those ever-so desirable product shots where everything in the background is sorta fuzzy and sparkles with light. Let me not lead you to believe I am bashing my 18-135mm lens... because its awesome. For one thing, the above shots, the top one (with the 50mm lens) is just that, no cropping - the bottom shot has been cropped considerably, the lens took so much more picture than just me and Tim (it just didn't happen to take a very good shot of me and Tim!) with so much more focus on the background. It was such an incredible day, the weather was gorgeous and this picture captured the beautiful sky. Check it out in original form:
Okay - so product photography with the 50mm 1.8lens will follow in another blog post when I have better pictures to prove its worth... but seriously - the portraits, its just amazing. Check out this one I took of Oleo the cat - this lens is notorious for taking good portraits indoors with crappy lighting and no flash = better portraits ?!? with the 50mm 1.8 this is possible, check it out:
heres a link to my friend Laini's blog post that inspired me and taught me whats up!
http://growwings.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-thing-ive-learned-about-photography.html

Learning to use my Nikon D80

I've been studying the manual, and reading literature about the D80 and watching UTube video tutorials... little by little I am learning how to use it.

One big hurdle is learning to use it with my indoor photo light setup... I used a paperweight from my grandma Bergstrum's old collection... the glare is pretty bad but it was a good process of not using the AUTO funtion and setting the apperature and shutter speeds manually... then I tried to set the white balance... this I will have to spend some more time studying, becuase I am not sure what I did :)
Then I went outside, it was lightly raining, so I took the tripod and an umbrella and the lens hood...
The glass discs hanging from my tree looked so pretty dripping and spinning in the rain.

Cameras

New camera arrived yesterday. I am a bit overwhelmed at all the buttons and slowly learning how to use it. When I woke up to the rain I thought the magnolia flowers outside looked like teacups, all standing pretty and catching rain. All I want to do is take pictures and play with my new camera... there is not enough time in the day! That is frustrating. But it is so wonderful, I coo at its capable lens and sheer potential.
Everywhere I look there is something fun to snap a picture of - Tony made an origami snail out of a dollar bill.
I thought this dyeing tulip looked like abstract art... I like the colors and the way the petals folded on themselves as they dried up and shriveled.

And kitty is always fun to take pictures of... although yesterday he wanted to be pet rather than have his picture taken, he is giving some love to the legs of a folding chair here in this picture.