It was only as I was poised to take a great landscape shot from the top of a hill I realised I'd left my memory card in the PC and the spare memory card on my desk. Aaaaaaaaargh...stupid, stupid woman! No memory card, no photos.
I was lamenting my predicament when hubby remarked that my son had his digital camera with him. I sulkily replied that it was a rubbish camera (£24.99 from TESCO) and that it would take rubbish photos.
Then I remembered what a fellow student had posted on the OU forum: There are no poor cameras, only poor photographers...oh well, why not, I was there anyway.
One small bribe later (it involved chocolate) and I had my four year old's cheap digital in my possession.
Now it might be a cheap digital but we had at least had the foresight to buy a 1GB memory card for it! Four year olds are not selective in their choice of subjects and we quickly discovered that nothing fills up a camera's limited memory faster than 30+ shots of said four year old's feet.
So I had plenty of memory to play with but the limitations of the camera became apparent pretty quickly. There are about two seconds between depressing the shutter and the camera leaping into action. My son has trained himself to stand stock still between pressing and the blue indicator light flashing. I now understood why.
Motion shots were not really going to be an option. It was all too unpredictable and after a few attempts at capturing my son leaping off a log I could see that my usually willing model's patience was wearing a bit thin...'MUMMY! I've REALLY had ENOUGH now.'
So I practised a bit of macro photography. I was pleasantly surprised to find that for my £25 I had (or rather my son had) this facility. Macro is a bit tricky using an LCD screen but I had a crack at it.
On our return home I uploaded the images to the computer. The quality of the images was adequate if not brilliant and there was a slight magenta colour cast over everything but I was pleasantly surprised how many useable shots I had.
I tweaked the best ones in Photoshop Elements...I removed the colour cast as best I could by adjusting the colour balance; brightened a couple which were a bit under exposed and toned down a couple which were over exposed. Finally I cropped to give the best effect. See what you think.
All photos were taken on a Technika SH-340T (£24.99 from TESCO). As a beginner's camera for a four year old I think it's pretty good!
I will conclude with Deb's handy photography hint no. 1. BEFORE SETTING OUT ON A PHOTOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT ALWAYS CHECK YOU HAVE YOUR MEMORY CARD / BATTERY / SPARE BATTERY etc and, failing that, drag your better prepared four-year-old along.
Father and Son
Sun Rays
Shady Path
Shiny Hips
Thistle Head
Teeny Fungii
Fallen Tree
Balancing
When is it my turn?
1 comment:
Lovely! I looked at the photos before I read the comments (I'm scrolling up from the bottom as I'm so far behind on your blog ;-)) and I wouldn't have guessed they were taken on a cheap camera. The macros look great!
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