Saturday, June 24, 2006

An evening with flowers

We visited the Singapore flower show held annually at Resort World Sentosa on its last day.Our main reason for visiting was to take some beautiful snaps of flowers.
On any other day flower show won't interest me that much but now it is different.We were keen to take pic so we were excited .When it came to flowers the place was below my expectation.There were sculptures of different animals like rabbit,hen , pig etc made of flowers but there were not many varieties of flowers.I couldn't find any exotic varieties of flowers ,maybe I had high expectations.But overall the flower show was pleasant on eyes.

Since this is a photography section I should be concentrating more on how we took pictures.After learning the basics of photography the next thing to learn would be- when to use what combination to get the best result.

We now know the different modes available and the basic definition of ISO,shutter speed and aperture(the 3 main pillars of photography).What differentiates a pro photographer from a beginner is when to use what combinations.

Till now we used to try all the modes all the time without actually knowing much about it. The main disadvantage with this is even if you happen to get a good picture you will not remember how exactly that picture was taken.So today we decided to use only aperture mode.


While taking the pic of flowers its necessary to highlight them so that background is blur.We choose a larger aperture (smaller f stop) and went near the flowers to take the snaps although everything was smooth .

Sometimes if you are too close to the flower the camera just refuses to click. Well after bit of research we found out that there is nothing wrong with the camera ,it behaves that way because it cannot focus.So in such cases we should use manual focus(we have to learn using that now!!!) ,or stay farther away from flower and try to zoom in rather than going very near to flowers,or buy a macro lens(this is an expensive option so its ruled out for time being).


The second problem was we were unable to focus where we initially set out to focus. I will explain this in detail because its been very irritating trying to fiddle with this feature.If I look in the view finder my camera has 11 focal points. If I press the camera button the focal point which is near to the object will blink in red indicating that the subject has been focused.But with flowers the camera was not focusing where I wanted it to focus that's why some pictures are not as sharp as we expected it to be but fortunately they are pleasant on eyes.

As a solution to this we figured out that we should enable only one focal point . This is done by selecting a pic marked as [ . ] in the AF option.It will take some time learning all this small details.

Below are some of the pic we took

These are very small flowers which were surrounding a tree. I had to bend down to take this shot.The light in the background is from the bulb which was lit at the root of the tree because it was getting dark.

40mm, f/5.3, ISO 100, 1/30 sec

Some variety of flower .

DSC_0921


I don't remember how I took this pic !!!


35mm, f/5, ISO 3200, 1/25 sec

Twin flowers lit by background

55mm, f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/60 sec


This is a very interesting picture. I dint use any editing tools. I captured the bottom of the flower which was lit by bulbs placed near the trees and the background is the sky at noon.Sometimes it helps to take pic in different angles.

55mm, f/5.6, ISO 3200, 1/160 sec


We came across this flower accidentally.It caught my attention because it was single flower and odd one out among pool of tiny flowers.
DSC_1039
18mm, f/4, ISO 720, 1/30 sec

Orchids are there everywhere in Singapore

55mm, f/5.6, ISO 3200, 1/30 sec

This structure was the main attraction. we could have taken pic next to it but there was a huge queue and standing in the queue was the last thing i wanted to do.



Logo of resort world Sentosa made from roses



Cute Rabbit
DSC_0949


DSC_0846


This is what I meant when I talked about focus.The center of flower is not as sharp as I had expected.
DSC_0755
55mm, f/5.6, ISO 250, 1/50 sec





These were called illuminating mushrooms. you know why !!!

26mm, f/4.2, ISO 500, 1/30 sec



4 comments:

Pk said...

HeyLo!!

Good to c u working on ur blog..way to go!! Few suggestions... remove this dark black theme..juist imagine reading an article on flower show, seeing such beautiful-colorful snaps with a black background takes the show away!

Next, focus a bit on grammar correction madam :P. If nothing then atleast put your entire article in word and check grammar :D

But overall, good work! Keep it up...

Chaithra said...

Thank you sir !!! Will look into your suggestions

cosmic_wanderer said...

Chaithra and Naveen,

Some very beautiful pictures, I would say buying that DSLR was not a bad idea at all :) .

I am planning to get one this Christmas as well, and I am sure that I would be shooting in Automatic mode for a really really long time until I get to learn all the bells and whistles of that thing.

Keep shooting and keep sharing.

Cheers,
Shrijeet

P.S. Following your Blog now

Chaithra and Naveen said...

Thanks for following our blog.

Even I am still shooting in auto node and bit of aperture mode.

Graduating to shooting in manual mode is going to take lots of time and patience which I don't have !!!

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