Tag Archives: camera settings

Bad Start to the Day but Things are Looking Up

10 Replies

I unwillingly made my way downstairs this morning. Though I had an ambition to do some work, I had a conflicting ambition – I would have quite liked to stay warm in bed. It was a chilly night. This summer is taking me back to the summers of the late 60s and early 70s. I remember that some of them were quite poor, and all the talk at that time was about climate cycles and a new Ice Age. How things change.

It started badly in the kitchen when I tore a pair of  teabags apart to make myself a cup of tea. One tore and released a cloud of tea powder all over the floor. This is doubly depressing – a whole teabag wasted, and its contents revealed to be a long way from the lovely tea leaves of my youth. I always joke about the contents of teabags being low quality floor sweepings, but what I saw today seems to confirm that.

Broccoli Soup taken on “Food” setting

I’m probably wrong. I’m sure that tea merchants across the world will tell me they use the best ingredients in their teabags, but it just looked depressing.

I have just made broccoli soup, as you can probably guess from the pictures. It came out quite green compared to the yellowing florets that actually went into the pot. The Food setting on the camera didn’t do it justice this time, I had to use the Landscape setting. That enhances green but the soup is still actually greener in real life than it is in the pictures. I may go back to photographing flowers. At least the colour rendition is accurate.

I used a stock cube today, as Julia complained about the lack of seasoning in last night’s pasta bake. As a result, the soup tastes quite salty. This is annoying. After 30 years of not using salt in cooking I have grown quite sensitive to salt in things like this. In general though, it tastes quite good and I am about to have it for lunch.

Pale grey version

 

Almost off white

Once again, the camera fails to render the colour accurately.

 

A Day Brimming with Promise (Part 2)

7 Replies

Before blending

Sub title – Cameras Do Lie

It’s just after 11am and the soup is bubbling away. I will blend it in a few minutes and add the whole beans. While I was preparing it I realised I’d forgotten to put garlic in the Italian vegetables I’d made earlier. Fortunately, we are English and probably won’t notice. It’s not a very English ingredient, despite the fact you can sometimes smell wild garlic when you walk in the woods.

I became diverted by Facebook. I was looking at the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire page when I drifted off and started searching for other coin sites. I wandered into a strange world where spelling and intelligence seem to be optional.

After blending, using the “Food” setting 

It’s like a hellish version of WP. WP has writing and pictures and comments, just like Facebook but WP also has people of wit, intelligence and interest. And they can all spell. Or they can at least use a spellchecker, as I do. FB just has people.  And even then I’d have to compare them to the generally accepted definition of “people” just to be sure.

One of them, commenting on a picture of Nottingham in the 1950s, rambled on about the good old days when everything was British made by British people etc . . . For “British” I think we can probably substitute “white”. Of course, if you think about it we have never grown tea, coffee, sugar or chocolate in this country. The reason we needed rationing in 1939 was because we imported so much of our food. The days of self-sufficiency probably came to an end some time in the reign of George III. I really must look that up.

The moral is don’t go on Facebook if you want to get some work done.

Or simply don’t go on Facebook.

And if you are really determined to get some work done, don’t keep chatting on WP – it’s just a way of delaying things.

Here are some soup pictures taken using different camera settings. All the same soup. All taken within a couple of minutes. The brightest is actually the most accurate. The greyish and beige ones are typical of all my cameras – they really seem to hate colour.

Beige

Greyish

Proper colour

 

Amongst the Lawyers and the Perverts

22 Replies

There there must be something interesting to say. But I’m struggling to think of it. It was just another morning with another 18 parcels to send. I have finally managed to get control of the Pink Camera. I seem to have altered all the settings when I was struggling to format the card last week.  The flash is now switched off and the focus allows me to take pictures of items that are less than 30 inches away.  Considering that I spend most of my working week sitting at a desk taking pictures from less than 18 inches, this is a positive development.

We had corned beef hash for tea tonight, with plenty of vegetables and even shredded greens, It was both decorative and nutritious and I’m feeling full of vitamins. There was a woman on TV tonight who was taking  over £80 worth of vitamin pills a month. Most of them were not necessary, It seems that the NHS recommends Vitamin D supplements for use in winter as we don’t have enough sunlight in the UK to synthesise it.

I am, I confess, no wiser about all this after reading the Government advice. That’s the trouble with this sort of thing – too many people with no scientific knowledge writing blogs on health. People like me, in fact.

Last night I read a blog about what someone had found when looking herself up on Google. Well, I couldn’t help it, I had to look. There are 17 pages of Simon Wilson – a blogger, several lawyers, a number of sportsmen and two sex offenders. I’m not even the most famous one in Nottingham. I’m on Page 11. I’ve had this name for 64 years and the best I can do is Page 11. Even one of the sex offenders gets better billing than I do. I may have to change my name . . .

Floral Tributes by The Lions in Nottingham. Photo from Julia’s phone. Header picture from the same source.

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire - dramatic setting

One Tree, Four Photos

13 Replies

The featured image shows a tree at Gibraltar Point yesterday. I have used the “Dramatic” setting, which could easily be labelled “Melodramatic” as it always reminds me of the words “It was a dark and stormy night…”

The one below is the one my camera took with its normal setting. Having just checked it I see that “normal” means it’s set for fluorescent lighting (which is what I use when taking pictures for eBay. This may account for the slightly lifeless colours I have been noting recently will dull weather.

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire - normal setting

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire – normal setting

The next one is the same tree, and the same photograph as above, but with the computer’s “auto correct” setting applied.

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire - auto correct setting

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire – auto correct setting

I’m not clear what it actually uses for reference. In this case it hasn’t made a lot of difference. I have tried it on other photos at times and it does make a considerable difference, but I didn’t think to save original copies to compare the two. I only actually started thinking about this a few minutes ago when I auto corrected a couple of beach photos, which seemed to consist of moving them from Lincolnshire to California – the difference in sea, sand and sky were that significant. It did not, however, change any of the subjects into youthful, bronzed lifeguards, as you will see when I eventually use the photos.

I did, as you may guess, take three photos for use in a blog post, the fourth is an afterthought. The fourth uses a setting called Pop Art, which brings all the colours out and always reminds me of a 1970s colour postcard. I have used it before with some posts, mainly when I’ve been at the seaside.

I’m sure the postcards that used this colouring were labelled Photochrom, but I’ve just looked it up and found that it was a completely different process according to Wikipedia, so I may be getting confused.

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire - Pop Art setting

Tree Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire – Pop Art setting

Personally, I like the stormy picture, as it suits the skeletal tree, and I like the Pop Art setting as it reminds me of a day at the seaside. From the point of view of it just being a photograph with no context, either of them are reasonable tree photos.

From the documentary point of view, neither are accurate – there was no storm and the day was not that bright and sunny.

However, it was a bit brighter than the other two settings imply, which might be partly down to me having the camera adjusted for fluorescent light.

Having started off to compare a few camera settings I’m now starting to wonder if any photograph is reliable, particularly with so many ways of manipulating photographs being available.

How long, given the current state of technology, before somebody comes up with an app that inserts Elvis Presley into a crowd scene every time it detects more than twenty faces in the photo?

Or even better, inserts a photograph of Derrick  J Knight holding a gherkin – we could call it the Where’s Wally? App. (That’s an in-joke for regular readers of Derrick, who has introduced the slang term wally into the culinary vocabulary of a wide range of his WP readers.)

 

Sunset

23 Replies

I have frittered my night away and now have seven minutes to keep my new plan (two posts a day for a fortnight) on track.

It was light this evening. At 4.00 it was still almost daylight where it had been srak at tat time only a few weeks ago. This state persisted until I finished my shopping at 4.45 and walked out into a beautiful evening. The day had gone by that time but the sky was still bright with the remains of a sparkling winter day.

There was enough pink in the sky to bring the clouds to life, and depending on which way I was facing, or how high I was, wisps of cloud streaked the sky, or gathered in hollows to bathe the city buildings in a pink halo.

I eventually got home and was able to take more photos. My camera did its best to average out the colour, because that is what it is set up to do by the scientists who designed it. But it couldn’t completely remove the beauty.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Another attempt

I tried some of the special settings – moonlight, sunset, pop art, but they have  atendency to alter rather than accentuate. The moonlight setting removed even more colour, the sunset a setting didn’t seem to make any difference and the pop art setting tended towards the garish end of things. I had thought of using the expression “gilding the lily” but the overall effect was like being hit in the face with a high-vis jacket. whilst standing under floodlights.but they mainly make things look garish

This is some sort of lesson in the use of modern technology to remove all that is good from our lives. Or add much that is tawdry.

Call me old-fashioned, or even a Luddite, but the modern taste seems to be for change rather than improvement.

Looks like I’ve missed the target, but I’d rather develop my theme than cut it short for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline. I will add some photographs now and post about 20 minutes late. Twenty minutes, in my flexible world, is not worth worrying about. Or even 30…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Garish & tawdry. The fact that it is blurred is the least of this picture’s worries… 

 

Messing with Camera Settings

9 Replies

I seem to have pinned a featured post to the top of the blog. This was an accident and I can’t seem to find a way to unplug it.  This is partly because I am not good with WP and partly because the typeface on the rickety netbook is very tiny and difficult to read. It should be possible to increase the font size.

For further comments on the situation see the above comments on ineptitude and small typeface.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The “Dramatic” setting

The photos show Harlow Carr Gardens using the “Dramatic” setting. If the weather forecast had been correct this could have been what the weather looked like.

Fortunately, the weather forecast wasn’t accurate, but I think I probably mentioned that before.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The “Dramatic” setting

We had a lot of parcels to send this morning in the shop – many of them being 50p pieces.

You need to be very organised when sending out multiple orders of this sort, because they all start to look the same. We had orders for Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Falklands, Ireland and St Helena.

I don’t have any pictures at the moment, but will load some for tomorrow.

Idle Hands

7 Replies

During the week I discovered a new setting on the camera. It actually has a setting for taking selfies. I’ve been taking selfies for years without realising that. When I tried it I found it made no difference at all. However, it did help to pass the time.  Then I tried using some other settings. Most of them didn’t work.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

My Quizzical Look

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

There aren’t many settings that work well

Welcome to my Breakdown 2
Welcome to my Breakdown 3
Welcome to my Breakdown 1

 

I’m sure I have a use for these…

Sunday Sunbeams in Sherwood Forest

20 Replies

I went out this morning looking for sunbeams, and even managed to get a few pictures, though they weren’t as good as the ones I saw last year when I didn’t have the camera with me.

The header picture is taken with the Pop Art setting which peps up the colour a notch or two. The sunbeam picture below is taken on the normal setting and is, as you can see, much greyer.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Gorse in Sherwood Forest

I then carried on a bit further and took pictures of bluebells and litter. I didn’t actually intend taking pictures of litter but I was concentrating on the bluebells so much that I didn’t notice the litter until later.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It was, in other words, a mixed morning.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Sunset Today and Plans for Tomorrow

19 Replies

I have a busy day planned for tomorrow. Drop Julia off at work, read some blogs and then head off to the launderette. I’ve searched out every scrap of clothing in the house and managed to last almost a month, but we now need clean clothes.

I also have to go shopping, take some photographs, research some posts, start the cooking for next week and sleep in front of the TV. That last one isn’t so much a plan as a statement of inevitability. Like white hair and wrinkles, it’s an unavoidable part of becoming an elderly gentleman. Women are different. Women are more industrious and less likely to snore through an entire episode of Bargain Hunt. Women are also more likely to spend their time in front of the TV rustling things during the quiet bits of programmes and talking over plot points. Well, I know at least one who is…

I tried taking pictures of sunset. As I left the supermarket the sky was quite dramatic. As I reached the car the light was fading. And as I started photographing, the camera “corrected” the sky despite me using several different settings to compensate. It may have been because there was so much light in the car park. Whatever the reason, the clouds should be darker, with fiery red showing through the cracks.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Sunset over Basford

Ah well, time for bed now – back to our routine of early starts tomorrow.

A Pun for Punks

4 Replies

We saw this nicely laid hedge while we were at Carsington Water, I’d been looking for a good example for a couple of weeks because I wanted to use the “Punk” setting on the camera. Here it is.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Punk Hedge

I thought a nice punky picture of a laid hedge would be a good chance for a pun, as in Never Mind the Billhooks.

For those of you unfamiliar with hedge laying tools and punk rock here are the links. This probably indicates that it’s not really strong enough as a pun, but it’s a slow day.