Sage Advice

sage sketch

Nostell Priory Lake: A pair of mallards makes careful progress over an expanse of ice between two areas of open water. After a minute or so the female decides that it will be quicker to fly.

Focus on Teapots

teapotWe spot our friend Roger in the cafe, so naturally the conversation comes around to photography. Focussing on a teapot, I ask him how I can get over the problem that when I use my bridge camera, a Fujifilm FinePix S6800, on macro setting I have to get in so close that the proportions of my subject get distorted: the spout looks jumbo sized.

teapotsYou need use a bit of zoom, suggests Roger. That works, the spout is now in proportion with the teapot, but, with my shaky hands, I’ve got a problem: the zoom magnifies any camera shake and the smaller aperture of the lens means that the camera will be selecting a longer shutter speed, again increasing the risk of blur.

FujiFilm FinePix S6800I tell Roger that I’m considering upgrading to a camera with image stabilisation and he tells me that my camera probably has that as an option. He drills down through the menus and sets it to always use sensor shift image stabilisation. It’s a well hidden option and looking back through the settings menu, I can’t now see where he found it.

Depth of Field

rosemarysageBut it works. I hand-held the camera for this shot of rosemary in a stone trough in the courtyard. Introducing a bit of telephoto to a macro shot results in a smaller depth of field than I’d get at the wide angle end of my zoom lens, throwing the background out of focus and giving more emphasis to the subject.

I use the photograph of the sage as reference for my sketchbook page for today. I’m reading a couple of books on botanical art so I decide to try drawing in 4H and then HB pencil before adding the watercolour, lightest shades first, which in this case is the pale yellow of the stipples on the leaves.

lemon yellowsI’ve just replaced the Winsor lemon in my pocket watercolour box. As Winsor lemon is no longer available I went for cadmium lemon.

herbThis green-leaved herb looks like marjoram or oregano. I cropped my original photograph to show this detail because I couldn’t get in this close with the macro. There’s a limit to how far you can zoom in before the auto-focus ceases to work. A red box marked ‘AF’ appears centre screen. I found that I had to zoom back out a little before the auto focus would work successfully.

 

Cameras

cameras

bags
Camera bag, A5 and 11 x 9 inch art bags.

I upload photographs from my little Olympus Tough or the FujiFilm FinePix bridge camera every couple of days. When they’re not on my desk connected with USB cables to the computer they’re in one of the bags hanging behind me.

Sparrowhawk by the Pond

FujiFilm FinePix S6800

I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY to try the zoom on my new camera, the FujiFilm FinePix S6800, the day that I bought it (14 August) when a Sparrowhawk made a kill in the back garden.

At full zoom, 30x, I struggled to keep the camera still but as the Sparrowhawk seemed so intent on picking up every scrap of its kill I had time to get a tripod set up and I took about 20 minutes of film.

I missed the kill itself and missed filming the moment when the hawk finally flew off, perching briefly in next door’s sumac. It left only a few feathers, not enough for me to guess what its prey had been.