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Showing posts with the label manual focus

A Second Canon Lens

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The second of two used Canon lenses I had purchased arrived the other night and I had a chance to wander outside this morning to see how well it works on my Sony camera body.  Unfortunately, this second Canon lens is not nearly as fast at autofocusing as the first Canon lens I had purchased a few days ago so I'm a bit disappointed. I was hoping this lens would help resolve some of my longer telephoto woes but now I'm not so sure.  I'm definitely keeping that first lens that I played with the other day to use for landscapes, architecture, cityscapes, and maybe even some indoor wide angle photography. This telephoto lens... I don't know... I'm still undecided. The photos are contrasty and sharp which is quite impressive for such an inexpensive lens but the autofocus is so slow on my Sony camera body that I know it would be too slow for its intended purpose... wildlife photos. I don't need blazingly fast autofocus but I do need reasonably fast... acceptable..

Breaking Away From All Those Focus Points

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Most people (photography beginners who know very little about their cameras) set their camera to one of the many "auto" or "scene" modes (although, really, scene modes are also "auto" modes). Although using "auto" modes are the easiest to use, they are far from the most effective modes to use. An "auto" mode is one of the worst modes for getting the focus right where you want it to be. I've mentioned in previous blog posts that focusing on a tiny bird in a thicket of branches can be difficult. When you are using all the camera's auto-focus points, this can be an impossible task. In auto-focus, you are allowing the camera to choose what it thinks should be in focus. The camera chooses what it thinks would be the easiest to put into focus (to greatly simplify how auto-focus works). When trying to shoot a photo of a tiny bird in a thicket of branches, the camera will most likely focus on one of the many branches in front of th

Pulling Focus

I've really been struggling with attaining video quality that meets my own standards. Contrary to what most people may think, although there are some similarities between photography and videography, there are very significant differences. I'm pretty good with photography but videography is something I would like to learn to do just as well. I've had to learn about file formats, frames per second, how shutter speed affects video and is not nearly as flexible as in photography, and how to find correct exposure when locking down frames per second and that shutter speed. I've learned that there is vastly less flexibility in attaining correct exposure in video when compared to photography.  I've had to learn about post-production editing and that will always be an on-going process. I actually like this part of the video process but I could definitely use a new Quadro graphics card to help make things flow more smoothly throughout this process. (It's on my wish