Another day... whoosh!

[byslantedlight]

I swear I only just got up this morning... but I also remember rushing off to go and do a conservation stint at Stourhead, where I spent the morning covered in dust, but perfectly happy helping to give the Pantheon a deep clean... And I promised pics if I could, so...

Not a particularly promising day for it - and it was warm and steamy under all that grey cloud too, not nice an autumn-cool yet... But Stourhead is rather pretty even under dark skies, so never mind! The Pantheon from across the lake - you can just see the autumn-tree already turning beside it...

And here we are inside the Pantheon! I thought I'd take advantage of some dramatic lighting and take pics of the statues - but when I saw this first one I blinked (ack! Don't blink! *g*) - doesn't she look like she's setting off up the ladder to get on with some cleaning?! I liked chummy with his wee fig leaf and wild boar head too... *g*

But this was my cleaning job - wooden benches from the 1700s - they're not in bad nick, considering! *g*

And this is the job that I would have liked best - cleaning up high instead of down low! I like ladders! Oh well... *g*

And then the Pantheon was all shiny again... ...and I was completely and utterly matte - and absolutely shattered! It was surprisingly hard work, and I came home and collapsed, ended up having a bath - ow back! - and then had a really deep-asleep nap!

But the really good news? After a rush trip into Bath yesterday, I am now fully equipped to bug you even more again with random pictures... *g*New camera! This pic was taken from my back door step... *g* It's not quite as solid-feeling as my lovely D40x, but hopefully I'll get used to it... and I'm going to try and work out my controls properly this time, and use them more meaningfully, so I shall record here that this pic was taken with:
- my 70-300 lens (pic info tells me it was taken at 300mm focal length, which is true cos the lens was extended all the way *g* No tripod though, so a bit blurry...)
- camera set to shutter priority (where it chooses the aperture - 5.6 this time, and I choose the shutter speed). When I left it on automatic, I was getting a completely burned-out white moon, but playing with the shutter speed gave control over the light (as it's supposed to do... *g*), and the best result seemed to be from 1/400 sec. So it's taking longer to let the light in, which means it can record more subtle nuances of it.
- I love that in the pic info from the camera there's a blank space for "Subject Distance". Actually, it was about 238,855 miles to the subject... New Camera didn't do a bad job, did she...? *g*

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I went for the Nikon 5300 in the end. I was going to go for the 3300, but I rather fancied the multiple exposure option - I remember playing around with that on my old Pentax K1000 - rewinding the film and hoping you'd got the amount right... *g* I used to do early photoshopping too - scissors, and photos of photos, and - voila! My brother was walking on the moon!

I played around with the settings a bit on my D40x, but I didn't pay conscious attention to working out what I was doing with shutters and aperture and so on - and I've forgotten what I should remember from all those years ago! I tend to get distracted by the other elements of composition... but I'm going to make the effort this time! What I really want to do one day is be able to take those pics that you can stack to show the Milky Way stretching across the sky... mind you, I'll need a telescope too... *g*