Another Field Trip

Nice day but windy today. Decided to take another field trip, since I was on my own for lunch anyway. Drove down to Lady Bird Lake, in Austin, to check out the ducks at Lou Neff Point.

Had a couple of features I wanted to try. (1) Some of the scene settings. And (2) Exposure bracketing.

I like the knarly trees that haven’t begun to bud yet. Just a tangle of bare branches. The park has a number of them. Took the monopod along and snapped a few trees. Tried the “Landscape” scene selection. The results did seem a bit richer in color.

The information stored with the image (back at home on the computer) indicates what settings were used. I only took minor notes, and then verified the actual settings back home.

The water and the ducks presented a different problem. Had a lot of reflection off the water, from the overhead sun. I tried different shots with the Exposure Bracket setting. The +0.3 EV (slightly over exposed) produced a better photo. This is probably the result of the reflection making the scene look brighter to the photometery system.

I can also bracket +/-0.7 EV. But the higher bracket gave a more washed out image.

Looking over the lake to downtown Austin let me try out “Landscape” mode. The pictures are darker than I want. I tried out White Balance (WB) bracketing. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I tried WB on a tree full of berries. This produced some noticeable differences.

One final experiment. Most of the trees are still bare branches. There is one, however, that is covered with orange/red berries. Very colorful. I took some photos with the “Macro” scene setting. Gave me a very nice blurred back ground, i.e. short depth of field, so a single cluster of berries could be isolated.