Practice and Learning

One of the things I am determined to do this year is make better use of our camera. We have a couple point and shoots that are light and easy to carry when traveling but I am not talking about those. We own a Nikon D70. Jim bought it for himself a few years ago. It can take stunning images if you know what you are doing with it. I believe that it is the best camera we own for taking product images for my shops but I have barely scratched to surface on how to use it to my advantage.


The technique I have been working on the past couple days is using depth of field to show off an item. The shot above is inside and badly lit I know. What I was pleased with was that the little vase it the star and the background it softly out of focus. I love to read but you have no idea how long it took with a strange new vocabulary in the camera manual to make this happen. FStops, aperature, focal points and so on until I just got the camera and started taking pictures. The little vase was even taken without a tripod so I am surprised at how clear it is.

However the real problem started when I didn't want a picture of an itty bitty thing sitting on a coffee table. Using our regular lens for the larger things like my shawls just wasn't happening. The background just wouldn't fade away like I wanted it to. I may have been able to stick with it but instead I decided to try something else. Looking online about how to get this type of image I saw different lenses mentioned and I knew we had another lens that Jim always told me was for landscape shots. So I figured out how to change the lens without breaking anything, put a shawl on Miss Molly, got out the tripod, set up the mannequin on the patio and backed up about 15 feet. I am so excited! This is the kind of image I have been looking for and trying to learn!

Take a look and let me know what you think. Today after practicing some more and getting some different poses this shawl will be my second item listed on Art Fire.