My bloggy friend Melissa (aka The Blogger Formerly Known as Chickadee), is doing a series on getting the most out of one's camera. I'm not necessarily planning to participate. After all, the series is called "Using Your Camera Without Reading the Manual," and I like reading the manual. Okay, granted, in 2-1/2 years of owning my Olympus E-500 dSLR, I still haven't finished reading the manual. But it's kind of big and there's a lot there and I forget a lot of it so I have to keep backtracking and... but I do read it. Sometimes. So I don't need this series, but I find it interesting. (Actually I find nearly everything TBFKAC aka Melissa posts interesting because she is a good writer and a good photographer, but that's neither here nor there.)

TBFKAC's first installment in the series dealt with "moving out of the green zone". You know, as in putting your camera dial on something other than that green AUTO setting? (Actually, it's blue on my camera.) When I commented on something in that post, TBFKAC asked whether I was planning to participate in the meme or class or whatever you want to call it. The Using Your Camera thingy. My reply was in essence, "No, I am way beyond that." Which sounds arrogant, I suppose, but it's true. I rarely if ever use AUTO. Who buys a dSLR and then keeps it on auto?

(By the way-- chasing a little rabbit here-- everytime Hubz uses my camera, he asks, "Where's the Auto setting? Is it this A here?" No honey, the A is the Aperture-Priority setting -my favorite, by the way, and you really ought to try it. "No, I just want Auto. Where is it?" Um, doofusbrain honey, that would be this little blue word here that says "Auto". It's the same place it was the last 73 times you asked. "Oh. Well, I never see that because it's blue." This conversation never fails to amuse me.)

Anyway... out of idle curiosity, I stopped by TBFKAC (okay, that's getting annoying) Melissa's blog yesterday to see her okay-post-your-pictures-now post. In it she noted that "If you're way beyond the automatic settings, feel free to join in too." Huh. Coincidental wording, or ya think she was talking to me?

Well, I am usually too lazy to jumps through the hoops required to post pictures, and I am really bad at keeping up with memes or whatever you want to call them. So I am not promising to participate every time. But Melissa is my bloggy friend and friends humor each other, so what the heck. I'll participate this time. But I really don't have any great pics from the last few days, so I'm going to post some I took in June that go along with the theme. Also, I am going to be too lazy and/or arrogant to nab that cute little "Get the Picture" button.

Yeah, that one. I changed my mind.

(And yes, I know I'm a day late. That is to be expected. My epitaph will no doubt read, "I would have died sooner, but I didn't get around to it." Or perhaps just, "Sorry I'm late again.")

Okay then. Melissa encouraged her photo-tutees to experiment this week with some of the other auto settings this week, such as portrait, landscape, action, macro, or the "scene" modes. Now while I rarely use straight Auto, I do often use the selective auto modes. Especially portrait, because I like that wide-open aperture look. And although my personal challenge to myself the last 6 months has been to stop using them and use primarily the "creative" or manual modes, I do still use them. Just not as often. Well, unless I am being lazy or... okay, I still use them a lot. So can post a picture or two or forty-six using some of these settings.

I don't use my "Scene" modes very often, but I do like the Sunset mode. I took some sunset pictures at Lake Michigan last month and I used that setting. However, I forgot to use it for the first picture. I'm not sure what my dial was on, but it wasn't sunset. Here's what I got:

Kinda blah, right? Now here's one taken with sunset mode:

See the difference?

(Skip this paragraph if you are happy on auto or barely out of it or not really into photography. I'm adding this next part for those who, like me, are working on using the manual modes. It's possible --I'm not certain-- that the picture above was taken while not technically in sunset mode but still using the same settings. That's because I had a brilliant thought while sitting on the beach with my camera. Since I am trying to train myself to use manual modes more often, why not put the camera on sunset mode, compose the shot without actually taking it, make note of all the settings the camera decided upon --the shutter speed, the aperture, the white balance, the ISO-- then put the camera on manual and mimic the settings the camera used? That way I learn what settings work best for sunsets and I get used to making those adjustments myself. So I did that for some of my shots. Whether this was one of them, I couldn't say.)

By the way, here's the same shot, adjusted on the computer for contrast and cropped differently:

I know that has nothing to do with "using your camera", but it was kind of hard to post the other and not show you the "final version". And I have many more sunset shots, but I'm going to move along.

I have a great action shot from that same day at the beach, which I'm going to save for a "Wordless Wednesday" tomorrow. (Or Thursday or whenever I get around to it.. .) Because it's been a month already and I am old, I do not remember whether I took it using an auto mode or a manual mode because I did some of both. I can tell you this, though: when I do use an auto mode for action shots, it is often not "action" mode (the little running man on the dial) but portrait mode (the face). I find I get better focus that way, and because the portrait mode uses a wide-open aperture, the shutter speed is usually fast enough to stop the action.

Here's an action shot taken in portrait mode. (I am fairly sure about this because this pic was taken less than two weeks ago and the memory has not yet expired. Don't ask me about it a couple days from now, however; I'll look at you glassy-eyed and go, "Huh? How would I know? That was two weeks ago.")

On my camera, little-running-man mode doesn't give me any focus points, which is the main reason I don't care for it. Portrait mode does the trick nicely for a shot like this. I set my focus point on Spaz. He was a big target, so it wasn't difficult to keep him in focus even though it was an action shot. I think the camera did a pretty good job of stopping the ball in action here. The kid in the background is bothersome to me, but apart from that, I like this shot. (This photo, by the way, was framed and given to Hubz for his birthday the other day.)

Well, Melissa said to "tell us how you got your picture so we'll know how to do it too." That I have done, but now I feel like I'm the one trying to give a tutorial. Sorry about that, Melissa. I knew I wouldn't be a very good "student", but you asked.

That's more than enough from me for tonight. I'm off to get tomorrow's post ready... seeing as it's actually tomorrow already.