Tales of Home [9]

I miss Tin.  We finally got a look at that wide smile and elegant nose, and with that she was gone.

(Edit: actually she posted for 4 more months, but then dissaparated...about the time Trump came in office. Hopefully the Amazon gig will bring her back.)

wow awesome pics petty

{{ Thanks Malick. Its the sunrises that keep on giving, I think this morning was my personal favourite so far-





















and just as I was finishing my shift, and everything had gone for red and orange to yellow and golden I noticed this big bugger making its way up the Clyde-





and to round things of, seeing as its spring, some daffodils }}

How them cruise boat thingies don't flip over is beyond my reckoning.

wowzer stunning colours, particularly love the golden ones.

Ah, actually all your trees don't have leaves yet.  That makes me feel better - our trees are blossoming now too before the leaves.  I notice now that not all of Petty's trees are leaved out either: he mainly had pics of evergreens.

{{Beautiful Az!

Halfy trees here area little bit behind the ones in Az's pictures, mainly still budding with new leaves just starting to unfold.

Nice piece from the Herald newspaper on my home town }}

https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/17564832.scotlands-insider-guide-dunoon/?fbclid=IwAR3R5Dd4G2rjSSk4cly-ZpU2vTRxJV6EWDJVADNCqA6cHg6GYgxPo3XrKnM

Is there an easier way to link to Flickr photos?

The Moon

{{ Cracking picture Lance, amazing level of detail

No idea about flickr, sorry, but for on here I use this site to post images- }}

https://imgbb.com/

Thanks Petty.

Trying to get in to some astrophotography but the sky is far too light polluted where I am.

Going to try again when the moon isn't out to add to humanity's footprint.

{{ Took some moon pictures myself last night, but was a hazy humid night here so my camera refused point blank to cooperate and focus on the moon so I had to go for atmosphere shots instead!





I did get a slightly more focused picture while out a walk yesterday however, an early evening moon. Nowhere near the detail you captured though Lance.





got a few other decent pics though this morning at work















And then when I did get home I found these two cheeky buggers back again!  


















And what the hell while I'm here, some snaps from that walk I mentioned taking yesterday, just to the Lochan, ten minute walk away from my front door. }}}

What camera are you using Petty?

{{{ Nikon d3100, with standard and a zoom lens





Second hand but good condition, bought it of Nagual in fact }}

Looks like a 70-300mm. Whack that on a tripod and you could get some nice clear, detailed moon photos.

Trick is to keep it on manual focus. Zoom right in, focus it then use the digital zoom and refocus it and then switch off the digital zoom before taking the shot.

If I have this right the purpose for the zoom is so you can pick something to focus on, then unzoom it to take the picture?

The digital zoom helps to focus but is never good to actually use to take pictures with as it often adds a lot of noise... like when you zoom in on your phone camera and it becomes all grainy.

{{ Yeah I have noticed that if the light levels are very low, even when the automatic zoom finds the focus it will point blank refuse to take the picture- just flashing up on the screen 'light level too low'.
However if once its got the focus I switch it to manual it will happily snap away without protest.

It does have a tripod, somewhere in the depths of Naguals barrel   I really must remember to prod him a bit about it   It also has a remote thingy (technical term!) that slots in the top, but I need a new battery for it that I keep forgetting to get     but that will be very handy for taking pictures without touching the camera- as ones like the lights at night reflecting on the Clyde (above) even when I have the camera solidly resting on something,  it needs such along exposure time that even just the act of pressing the button to take the picture is usually enough vibration to result in a blurry image. I think I took about 12 pictures to get that 1 reasonable one I put up. The rest were unusable.  

But any tips you have are very much appreciated Lance, always liked your photography and had your flikr page bookmarked since you first put up the link to it }}

That is why it is good to also focus in manual mode. Firstly because you are never 100% sure exactly what your camera has chosen as the focal point but also because it struggles to auto focus in low light or where there are similar colours (like grey foreground and grey background such as aircraft against clouds).

Changing your aperture (you probably have a minimum aperture of 5.6 on the telephoto?) will let more light in an require less exposure time. Also adds depth of field to to your photos.

{{There is a depth of filed option in the menu- single, dual point or multi.
I had a go with it in the pictures here with the sign, the owl and a few others. Need to get the tripod from Nagual though, as getting stuff like the moon at extreme zoom is still tricky without some blur as you can see, even using a manual zoom. }}

Nice alignment of sun and objects. The last two and the one with the seagull are particularly well posed.

{{ Thanks, been an amazing week or so of Spring weather here, must be global warming, its not normal! }}

{{ All this summer weather has brought the colour out round here, my blotches are particularly red and blotchy in the sun lucky for you these are not pictures of that! But there are quite a few of them Im afraid but I cut it down from the something like 200 I actually took to about 30. }}

Whoah, nice. We have the same stuff going on here but I can't be arsed to actually take decent pictures of it.