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A selection of today's photos where I'm still playing, and learning, and hopefully improving

What I have noticed is that I need to clean the lens before every shot and focus better.

Need a shade or something for the live view, any recommendations ¿?

TTFN from Granada, Spain

Chris

[BigMackCam]

Some encouraging results there, Chris

I notice you've used fairly high shutter speeds... 1/250s, 1/500s, 1/800s etc. Unless it was particularly windy, you should be able to drop your shutter speed to around 1/60s. That will let you use a much lower ISO setting, which in turn will significantly reduce the amount of noise in your images.

Regarding the fibres and dirt visible in the pictures, I doubt this is on your lens. My guess is this is debris on your sensor. Do you have a bulb-blower? If so, give the sensor a careful blast with that and test again.

[chris.britingles]

Hello Mike,

Yes, it was a bit breezy and I´m still learning and still haven't, as of yet, got total control of the camera. I´m just enjoying my precious free time and my new obsession hahahaha.

Yes, I have a blower and it was a combination of material on the lense and on the sensor but they are all now sparkling clean and ready for their next outing, (this time I'm leaving the wife at home, you know the reason or at least you can imagine I hope).

I´ve ordered some extension tubes from fleabay so I´m going to have a play with them as well, it'll be interesting but I think that I might need to buy a prime 50mm from what I´ve seen on youtube. Time will tell and with Macro it´s nice to have something to play with when a student doesn't turn up, I can play with all sorts of things and see how they turn out, plus get used to it at the same time.

One thing I did notice, is that I really need something to shade the Live view screen because I can`t see anything in the REALLY bright Spanish sun, I just can't win

TTFN
Chris

[BigMackCam]

Yes, it was a bit breezy and I´m still learning and still haven't, as of yet, got total control of the camera. I´m just enjoying my precious free time and my new obsession hahahaha.

It's the best way to figure things out. So glad you're enjoying it!

Yes, I have a blower and it was a combination of material on the lense and on the sensor but they are all now sparkling clean and ready for their next outing

Good news. For what it's worth, the odd bit of dust or dirt on the front of the lens won't make any noticeable difference to captured images. Dirt on the rear element might, but it would need to be pretty severe. The artefacts visible on your image were more likely to be on the sensor, otherwise they wouldn't have shown up so crisply

One thing I did notice, is that I really need something to shade the Live view screen because I can`t see anything in the REALLY bright Spanish sun, I just can't win

If that's the worst you have to contend with, Chris, I'm envious

Seriously, though, I'm considering getting a Hoodman LCD loupe for my DSLRs. In addition to shading the screen, it's helpful for manual focusing, and a lot of my lenses are MF. There are other solutions too, but you might want to check out a loupe...

Enjoy!

[chris.britingles]

Hi Mike,

I had a class cancelled this morning, so I had a surf on both Amazon and Fleabay and came across these:

3" LCD Viewfinder Extender 2.8x for Sony NEX-5 NEX-3 NEX5 NEX3 camera | eBay

Tiltall más pequeño de 3 pulgadas Profesional pantalla LCD Lupa con Eye Cup suave y protección de la pantalla: Amazon.es: Electrónica

Is this what you were talking about¿?

Personally I prefer the fleabay one but being a glasses wearer the other might be better for me when it comes to focusing but I was amazed at some of the prices.

TTFN

Chris