New Camera - pictures of Lumpy cat

So over the years I have posted my pictures on this blog, sometimes more regularly than recent times, and I've also blogged about being a partially sighted photographer Well I have started a new journey with my photography. I have taken the plunge and got a proper digital SLR camera. A Nikon D7200 no less. I had resisted for a long time convinced that I needed the large digital screen, that digital cameras have, to be able to take photographs. My Nikon V1 camera meant I could have all the benefits of a digital camera with a digital view finder and try different lenses and different settings. The trouble was that after a number of years I had two lenses which broke and there just wasn't anything new coming out for the camera. It was like Nikon had forgotten about their V1 camera. Maybe they thought those customers who wanted more would just move to a DSLR.

Jason let me have another go with his digital SLR and I found that I could see through the view finder. What had seemed difficult before now didn't so much.  My eye sight hasn't got any better in the last few years so that's not making the difference. I think the difference is that I have now spent the last 6 years taking photographs and getting used to composing images through a small square. Even with the digital view finder and screen I would regularly take pictures which contained things I had no idea were there. I love taking photos of flowers and often I don't spot the insects or bugs on the flowers until I'm processing the photos on my computer! Often I use the zoom to look for bees using my ears to seek out their direction. I know that I must miss plenty of things other photographers wouldn't but when I do track down that bee using my ears and my zoom it's like finding rare treasure. I am sure the thrill is just the same for those photographers who capture a rare mountain lion.

Speaking of rare mountain lions. I have been using my tabby cat Lumpy as a model for some of my first photographs. So far I am finding no problems using the view finder, once I worked out that red rectangles mean it's not focussing and black mean it is. (My old camera had black meaning not focused green in focus.) Sometimes depending on the background the black squares don't show up too well but that's where being able to choose where I want the camera to focus gives me more control.

The camera has so many settings it's quite a job getting my head round it all. I downloaded Thom Hogan's guide for the Nikon D7200 to discover it had around 1000 pages! Thom Hogan does a great series of guides to cameras which are well worth checking out and buying if you have a new camera or are considering a new one. A little daunted by all of the detail in Thom Hogan's guide I also started watching a YouTube guide for my new camera by Tony and Chelsea Northrup They also have some snappy videos on YouTube which describe general features of digital photography right down to very basics. Jase has also been a real help, explaining things to me. I am not a patient student but he is a very patient teacher!

But it would have been useful to know when Jason changed the camera settings after borrowing it to test how it was working. He set it up to his usual settings, which is to slightly under expose everything. I didn't know this and went outside to take some pictures of Lumpy. It was a very dull day but not so dull that I shouldn't have been able to get a brighter shot of Lumpy than the one directly below.

Lumpy the tabby cat walking towards me - under exposed

When Jase got home from work I said to him I was worried the camera had a fault as it couldn't manage with low light even when I adjusted the aperture, shutter speed and ISO. It was then that he remembered what he had done! He had set the camera to take pictures at 0.7 of an F stop below what the camera was set to. So this under exposed all of the photos I was taking, making them look gloomy.

Of course I was able to adjust this once I was processing the photos. The picture below is after I adjusted it.  

Lumpy the tabby cat walking towards me - brighter this time

 Yesterday I started to practice changing how the camera focuses and took this photo of Lumpy sitting on a box in the garden. I focused just on his face and in particular his eyes.

Close up of Lumpy's face his eyes narrow

I'm lucky that Lumpy is a very willing model when he is in the garden. I have taken pictures of other things other than Lumpy, which I will try and share later in the week. I went to St James's Park in London to take photographs of the birds there. You can always check out my photos on Flickr which I upload regularly.