Saturday, July 3, 2010

Now That's Just Boring

I have a fancy, expensive camera.  I've taken over 6,000 pictures with it and have been generally pleased with them, but I could have had the same results with a $150 point-and-shoot from WalMart.

It came with an instruction manual.  I started reading it when the camera was new, but discovered that my brain does not process information the way it did 20 years ago.  By that, I mean 20 years ago Brain absorbed information like the proverbial sponge.  Brain seems to be saturated now and only drips random information by mistake.  Like any old memory, capacity is insufficient to run more complex equipment.  I can still walk and chew gum at the same time, but I miss hair appointments.

Sisters joined a camera club and invited me along to the monthly meeting.  We attended both the photo shoot at Smut & Eddy's and the club meeting and I enjoyed both.  The other members are concert musicians while I'm tooting away on a kazoo, but they seemed friendly enough.  Some were a little too friendly, but that's not my story.

This seems to be going the long way around, doesn't it?  I'm going to connect it now, so don't give up on me.  The photo editing software that is the program de jour for these masters makes some really funky things happen to their pictures.  Sisters and I pooled our money and got the program and we've been playing with it.  The object of the game is to have over, regular, and under exposed photos of a place or object and combine them into one.  There the magic begins.

I have been taking a photo I already have, changing the exposures, and working with it that way, but it ain't the same.  At the photo shoot, the masters had their tripods and fiddled away like doctors in surgery taking their pictures.

Back to the drawing board for me.  I got out the manual and found the part about changing exposures.  My camera is supposed to be able to set a range of exposures and take three pictures, one right after the other, with the three different exposures.  After following three sentences of instruction, written in clear English, about a zallion times, I still haven't figured it out.

See? Memory full, next level!

1 comment:

  1. I guess I ortta rummage through my camera book to see if mine will teach me how to do that trick too...By the way I think we kazoo players have more fun :)

    ReplyDelete