This morning

[Shari]

I took this today on my walk home from the gym. I used the Showing Off video. One thing I want to ask is - when using the smart blur tool down at the bottom it says quality and mode. The quality was on low and I left it. On the other one I did I changed it to high. Is this important and why would it be on low? Again just wondering. I like the outcome of the pond.
Shari
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1LaAe7Bd7X9bdt0weyVFrEQuxJWWI1

[Spyder]

It affects how well the blur blends into the image, the low setting is the fastest, the highest setting takes longer on a larger area but gives the best result.

[Wendy]

Hi Shari ...

That was quite a complicated tutorial and you have done well with it ... your image looks really good. Well done :)

Wendy

[w7vp]

Hi Shari
Is the camera you used for this picture the one in your gallery? Can you tell me what the settings were from the meta-data? I took a shot the other day of a climber at Mt. Index through the trees and the camera captured the foreground trees and blurred the background like your picture is blurred in the distance and I wondered if that was intentional for you in this shot since the foreground is so focused. In my case it was unintentional since the camera settings caused the focus to be near rather than far and caused the depth of field to be too narrow.

Yes we will be coming to Vancouver soon and I will let you know when we do. We would love to meet you. David (my son) and his new wife were at Squamish for a few days enjoying the good (but cold) weather.

Bill

[Shari]

Hi Bill - you know I do not know a thing about cameras. As a matter of fact in the daytime I usually leave it on automatic. After I left that pond area and was taking pictures of some of the Italian statues I noticed I still had the camera on the setting from taking the tulips last night in the condo. Anyway here is what the short version of the meta data says - ISO 200, Exposure 1/340, shutter 1/338, F-stop f/5.60, aperture value f/5.70, focal length 23.10.
If you need anything else let me know. When I originally got this Fuji Finpix 700 I got it for the size of camera but I was going to take some classes because I know nothing of taking photos. Now I realize I wish I had a camera with a larger zoom than 3x and when I decide to get that camera I will take some lessons and learn more about taking photos. Right now I mainly use auto and my challenge is putting them into Elements and trying to do something.!!
Another beautiful day in Vancouver - too nice to be at this computer - will have to join husband and dog in a walk (and some photos).
Shari

[w7vp]

Thaks for the info Shari. The f-stop may have been set too wide for the depth of field. That happens to me if I am not careful about the settings when I take the shot. Most of the time auto is perfectly fine but where you want to get a wide depth of field the f-stop needs to be very small, like f-11 and above. That can be done in aperture prioirty mode by presetting the aperture at a small opening. The light for the duck picutre is perfectly adequate for that purpose and the camera will slow doen the shutter automatically to assure the right exposure.

It is beautiful here too, but very cold. It was minus 10C here this morning.

Bill