Saturday, December 29, 2007

A Christmas Tree and an Olympus FE300



Tonight I've been experimenting with my new camera, the Olympus FE300, taking photos of Mary Ann and Jackie's Christmas tree. What better subject could there be, after all? I haven't been too impressed with this camera so far, but tonight I'm a little happier with it. Naturally - nice tree photos=happy Patsy.




This Santa was on Kim's packages a few years ago when she did red and white paper- it was a striking combo.






Mary Ann like hummingbirds and someone gave her these really beautiful ornaments.



These snowflakes were my package ornaments last year - red paper with silver snowflakes on it.





I made these gingerbread ornaments one year for everyone. BC was a little guy at the time and I had him write everyone's names on them. It's a nice little touch. Unfortunately, I can't read the year on this one. I think it was 1998, but I'm not sure.



To be fair to the camera, I haven't had time to experiment with it too much so far. These photos were taken on the candle setting. The only thing I'm not thrilled with about that setting is that it won't take high resolution photos on that setting. I'm guessing that's about the grain. So, I don't think prints would be possible, but for the blog this is great. And I haven't experimented with prints so can't say that for sure.



I'm not a professional photographer, nor do I play one on TV, but I do happen to know one. Perhaps Greg will weigh in on the intracacies involved.




1 comment:

Ace Jackalope said...

I bet you're on target with speculation about the "candle" setting. It probably sets the ISO really high, in which case higher res would be wasted because of the noise level.

You might try setting the white balance on "incandescent" and shooting on high res at the lowest ISO at which you can hand-hold the camera (or use a tripod or other brace). It's amazing how still you can hold a small camera with no vibration, even at one or two seconds. And it's digital, so you might as well try a bunch of times and play the odds.

Most "incandescent" settings seems calibrated for household lamp bulbs and Christmas lights are warmer so subtract some yellow and a bit of red in Phototoshop until it looks right. Compare those results to what you get on "candle" and I think they'll be more worthy of Christmas decorations....which, btw, should be run on our blogs until at least Epiphany to make up for lost time during the ice storm, don't ya think?

I knew you did.

Stop nodding "yes" so fast - you'll get whiplash.