Thread: vacation picture blues

we got back from ireland last night, had a great time, felt like we had the country to ourselves, took a lot of pictures. kind of bummed about them. i have a canon rebel xsi and i brought the less expensive f1.4 50mm that's out there, a very expensive 200mm f2.8 which i bought mostly for planetary imaging, and the 18-55mm kit lens that came with the camera and which i used the most.
my wife brought a kodak z712is, and her sharp eye for detail and composition, and her pictures are way better than mine. crystal clear, sharp, even with the optical zoom cranked all the way out. that camera just takes a great picture.
i don't know if i had mine set up properly. the diopter thing threw me a bit, and i don't know if i had it set for glasses or no glasses. i'll be happy with some of the pictures after i fool with them a bit in Elements, but hers don't need much more than cropping. plus, the macbook has a photo editing program that is apparently much simpler to use than Elements. no opening of many little boxes, just sliders that are right there.
i've take photos for a long time and find that the more i shoot, the better the eye is. i shot 234 pictures, didn't even dent the battery level. she shot almost 200 and went through 4 triple a's.
no such thing as keep it simple with me.



this was at the burren birds of prey. it's been sharpened, cropped, levels fooled with a little and saved as a gif. i like the canon because it can be used 100% manual and i was shooting for the blurring of the wings.

this is her shot of the same bird, unedited, except for being saved as a gif.



on another note, we looked for antique shops and razors and hones and i was surprised that there didn't seem to be an excess of antique stores. fun time though. back to the real world tomorrow at 5 am.

Like that second picture,,,beautiful bird,,,,thank you for sharing your photos.

just discovered that in-camera sharpening was set to 0. also read a lot about the sweet spot of different lenses. i used an olympus om-1 for years and years and found the transition to digital to be not easy. i retired the om-1 because of the convenience factor of downloading pictures to the computer. the dust seals have a reputation of disintergrating and i bought a replacement kit, but lack the nerve to install them.

I'd love to see more when you're ready to post. Where did you go in Ireland?

we stayed in spidall and went to roundstone, clifden, galway, moycullen, atherna, and a couple of towns to the south of that, cliffs of moher, drove around the burren, ballyvaughn, kinvarra, bunratty castle, had yeat's tower all to ourselves which was kind of cool. if uncle sam is good to me this year at tax time we'll go again. i stopped at the optometrist the other day and the vision in my left eye is not what it was, and that's my dominant eye. new glasses coming this week
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Sounds like it was a great trip. My father lived in Ballyvaughan and as a child played on the Cliffs of Moher. Even though I'm an Irish citizen, I've never been there. I hope to be going soon.