On my Christmas list was a tripod for my camera because once winter comes and the dark night starts way too early my photos start getting bad.  I’m faced with countless photos ranging from way out of focus to just on the shaky side and I’m stuck trying to pick the best ones.  Forget natural light because it’s dark by then.  I did have one person say just turn out the lights you’ll be fine.  It was dark.

My lovely husband went a step further and bought me a light box kit!

I was so excited to try this out and got the chance to yesterday.  My goal is to improve my photography skills so I can hold my own with Roger at Food, Photography, & France and Stefan at My French Heaven.  Their styles are what is in my head when I envision what I want my photos to look like.  My plan, once the tree is removed is to set up a mini photo studio in the round part of the parlor so when the natural light is available I can use it and when it’s not the box will be set up.  For the photos I took, the light is as it is shown above.

I took a few pictures in the window as finally we saw some sun!  The first one is in direct sun which can be very harsh but works for some things and the second in indirect light for comparison.

With experimenting I found it to be very interesting.  One, because I’ve never actually taken a course, I have a steep learning curve.  Not surprisingly my best photos are outside where it is hard to screw up nature.  Right now using automatic settings worked best.

But I played around the manual settings to see what happened.  I find I need to be more patient as the longer exposures came out blurry.  Turns out I’d set it up and click the remote without letting the camera stop moving.  I may have to get a sturdier tripod but I want to see if I can make this one work first because it is a good size.  So many photos were deleted in this experiment!  One thing that threw me was that on the manual settings the crystal was showing up yellow.

So with a bit more mucking about I found in the white balance menu a tungsten choice.  I clicked that and the yellow went away.

Obviously it is high time I downloaded the manual, ahem.  🙂  Just playing with it a bit yesterday showed me that this kit will be a huge help to me and I can’t wait work on the set ups for the photos for my posts.  Now perhaps I can translate what is in my head to the camera!