I have concluded that the problems with the photos I took over the last several days are due to a couple of things. In the first session, there must have been just enough of a breeze and/or just enough of a wiggle when I clicked the shutter to blur everything, especially considering the long lens and the distance. I concluded this because in each image the shutter speed is plenty fast, so I have to attribute it to other things.
In the second session, some of the pictures are fine, but most are blurred. ALL of the blurry ones have shutter speeds slower than 1/100th of a second. Which means: camera shake, particularly since I didn’t use my tripod.
I think all of my problems, too, can be attributed to me forgetting what my photographer friend taught me last summer.
She taught me how to use the Manual setting on my Canon rather than relying on the Av setting. But these last couple times I went out, I thought I’d simplify things and I regressed to using the Av setting. I think that was a mistake. I should have stuck to using the Manual setting even though it takes a second longer to get ready the camera before I snap the picture.
After she taught me how to manually adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and exposure for each photo, I could tell a definite difference in my photos. Everything about them was better and my whole photography experience was happier.
Next time, I’ll keep the dial to Manual.
It’s just sometimes, especially after a long break, we all forget some of the basics that we thought we’d learned. Although the learning curve is shorter and quicker the second (or third, or fourth) time around, we need those lessons to be reinforced.
We can never stop making mistakes. But hopefully, eventually, we spend less time making the same basic mistakes over and over. And then we make room for new, more advanced, mistakes.
Of course, if you’re like me, you’re always trying new things anyway, learning new lessons, climbing up new learning curves, making new mistakes in order to learn. There is no learning without mistakes, and, if you play your cards right, no mistakes without learning.
As long as you’re learning from your mistakes, then I say… keep making them! Make as many as necessary to get where you want to go.
Wherever that is.
