Lillie Park

My friend Ken called me the other night and said he was stopping by a park on the way home from work and would I like to join him for some picture taking.  Since he was a major motivator in getting me to make the switch from the Coolpix 3200  to a digital SLR, I decided to join him before I headed out to a meeting of the Ann Arbor Camera Club.  

In the 5 months I have had this camera I have taken over 20 percent the number of pictures I did in about 8 years with my old camera.  That is, I've taken over 2000 pics in 5 months.  In the 8 years I was using my point and shoot camera, Nikon Coolpix 3200, I've shot 9156 images.

A big part of of the reason is that I am able to do things like this.  One of my big loves is macro and closeup photography.  With my point and shoot camera, I was unable to get get images like this.  I've taken a couple of closeups with the camera before, but here I was able to take some time and really work with the lens.  Next time, I'm going to use a tripod.

Thistle

A yellow flower of some kind.  I guess I'm kind of surprised that there are still flowers in bloom this late in the season.

An unknown purple flower.

A thistle still in bloom.

A thistle with a spider web.

Purple Loosestrife.  I think I would have liked this better if I had more detail on the flower.

The low sun was bringing some amazing detail in the leaves.

Sunlit leaves.

Wild grape.

Some small berries.

While Ken was taking a picture of some Queen Anne's Lace, I noticed this dandelion on the ground.  I decided to see what I could do with it.

I zoomed in a little closer.  I wasn't getting the detail I wanted. 

Finally, I switched to my macro lens.  I was able to get more detail, but I still wasn't getting what I wanted.

Here, I got most of what I was aiming for.  Only part of the flower was lit by the sun which was pretty low by this point.  I was hoping to have enough depth of field to get the whole flower in focus, but I was in a very awkward position and was shooting with out a tripod.  There was also an intermittent breeze.  This meant that I had a bit of problem keeping it in focus.  Next time, I'll remember that I have a small tripod in my camera bag.

The Queen Anne's Lace.  I didn't get the look I was hoping for.

Another shot with a bit more depth of field.  This closer to what I was hoping for, but not exactly it.  Its a bit tough to gauge fine detail on the LED screen.  The flower was dancing around in the wind and moved it a bit off center.  I'll have to work on this a bit more. 


With this post I am now caught up with my photo excursions.