Photographing crocuses

[Paddy Tobin]

Mark,

Regarding your posting what you describe as a poor photograph to try to get comments: I think most people using the forum would not comment on your photograph so as not to be rude or hurtful. The fact that you post is the more important thing and people enjoy that. The occasional poor photograph is no big deal and people will think that it was the best you could  manage in the conditions in which you took it.

I hadn't taken note of the photograph, by the way, which one was it?

Paddy

[Paul T]

Mark - I thought the programme might be faulty so I downloaded the latest version from the Canon website. No improvement. However, I think I may have found a way to produce a decent image using the 'Export Image' programme. What puzzles me is that the first few images from this camera which I posted were made using the Canon email programme  & those were OK. Computers are mysterious beasts.

Gerry,

Better late than never with a response to this....... possibly you changed a setting somewhere after your first few images that were OK, most likely something in the save area which sets the resolution of the saved files.  With most of the packages around, changes to this sort of area are inherited the next time the package is used.  I have an "advanced" area within the package that I use, and one of the settings within it is as a percentage of resolution (i.e 100% resolution makes huge resulting files, while 10% makes crappy grainy results).  I am wondering whether you have accidentally set something like this while you were still investigating your package with the camera, and that it has then stayed as a setting so you get the grainy photos.  Installing the newer version of the package will likely import the settings from your old version, so quite possibly it has inherited the resolution change when you installed the newer version of the software.  I don't have your software that comes with the camera so I can't comment on it or help you find the setting you may have changed, but it sounds most likely that that is what you have done.  When I was first messing around with settings in the package I use I found out the hard way that this sort of change can make a BIG difference to everything I save after that, and it did take me a while to remember exactly what it was I changed so I could fix it. 

If I were you I'd be trying to get another piece of software to try before thinking it is you camera that isn't producing good enough pics, because by the sound of it your camera should be doing a good job.

Good luck, and I hope this is of some small use. 

[mark smyth]

Here's a series of photos of a Crocus to show how the angle can show of the flower or be wrong.

[Gerry Webster]

Paul - many thanks for your reply. As regards my early pictures, like Hillary Clinton, I misremembered.  In fact the Canon software is more-or-less useless for producing smallish, good quality email images, a fact more-or-less acknowledged by Canon when I contacted them to get some help. They should stick to making cameras ( I'm very happy with mine). I have an old Adobe programme ('Photodeluxe') which came free with some hardware & although it's a bit laborious to use it works perfectly so I'll be using this from now on. 

[David Nicholson]

Here's a series of photos of a Crocus to show how the angle can show of the flower or be wrong.

I'd be proud of any of them!

[mark smyth]

David can't your camera take close shots?

[David Nicholson]

Yes, it has a macro and a super macro which is supposed to focus from 4cm from the object

[Paddy Tobin]

Mark,

Does your camera allow you to select various apertures?

Paddy

[mark smyth]

No it's basically a point and shoot
http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_Camera/IXUS/Digital_IXUS_900_Ti/

[Paddy Tobin]

It's a good exercise to see which viewpoint best suits the flower or the view of the flower you most wish to capture. The change in point of focus and background are also interesting.

Paddy

[mark smyth]

It wasnt the best of days for photography making the camera change focus quite a bit

[HClase]

My Coolpix 5400 allows focusing down to 1cm (partly why I bought it), but it does give a fisheye effect this close up.  I would also have difficulty with the automatic focus and Mark's first few angled shots, it seems to like a reasonably large perpendicular flat area to focus on and good light.  My eyes aren't that good for manual focusing on the small screen either, so I often have to give up, or guess and take a series of shots at different distances.