I can’t express how little I know about DSLR cameras and taking pictures. I’ve always been a point and shoot girl. When Shelly and I went to the Arboretum to take pictures, I got frustrated with my manual focus ability. No matter how I turned the lens the focus of the picture never seemed to change.
Fast forward to last weekend when I broke down and bought the book ‘Nikon D3100 for Dummies’. When the ‘for Dummies’ books first came out I was completely opposed to them just because of the title. I broke down and bought one a year or so ago and found that they are actually well written.
I’m not even through chapter one yet and I found out why manual focus wasn’t working for me. I was using the wrong dial to attempt focusing. It makes sense now. When I was trying to focus the object was getting closer or farther away. Turns out I was turning the zoom barrel instead of the focus ring. Major oops! <<insert laughter here>>
Today I took my camera to Wilmont Park to try manual focus. Yea! It works! Now the problem is that all the pictures turned out black. I guess I need to finish reading chapter one. 😉
Below are some pictures I took with the auto mode. The day was too nice not to take any pictures at all.
Later…
I also thought I would attempt taking some pictures of the Super Moon. How silly of me? Did I really think I would get any decent pictures based on my total lack of knowledge? Turns out I got one that was ok and when cropped in you can see some detail even though it’s a bit blurry (the last photo is an auto fix trial…I loved the abstract look of it). I know it’s not even in the ball park of being decent, but it’s a step…a very small step.
Back to reading my ‘…for dummies’ book.