I had very good experience in photography and capturing some memorable events using CyberShot digital camera. I thought DSLRs are the next level cameras which I have to upgrade myself with. I was believing that DSLRs are more intelligent and automated cameras compared to CyberShot.
I decided to buy an entry or intermediate level DSLR camera after reading some articles, watching vidoes and blogs. Did quite a bit of research and ordered Nikon D5200 from an online store.
It was in 2013! I bought my first THE Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. FEELING PROUD! 😎
After few days, I got the package. Soon after glancing through the manual I and my office friends planned a 2 day trip to Coorg.
First Pic and First Thought
As I clicked the below pic with auto settings, I reviewed it by zooming in and out, looking at the corners. Some questions quickly passed inside my mind. It looks bit dark? Background is sharper but not the people. How should I make it more sharper?
I quickly took another pic immediately after the above one. From the same place towards the right there was a train passing by and I wanted to capture it hoping for a stunning output. I saw the train through the viewfinder (Eyepiece). I pressed the shutter button, heard the sound of mirror moving up inside the camera (I love this sound 💘).
Now I am very much excited to review the pic. I pressed the Playback Button and saw the preview in the screen. “Wait a minute, where is the train? I zoomed it. It is so small and blurry. Hey! didn’t I capture it properly or aren’t my lenses working (18–55mm VR default lens)? Might be some settings I need to adjust.” These thoughts run quickly passed my mind. After few seconds I said to myself “Lets see later!…” Little bit of disappointed face I ignored these thoughts for some time.
We had our breakfast, with little bit of self motivation I made myself to feel happy and built more excitement of holding THE DSLR camera. I joined my friends and left to Madikeri via Mysore. On the way I started exploring my settings based on the thoughts and few clicks which I took at Adigas. Also, took some pics inside the car and checked every pic for the brightness, sharpness and blurry areas.
Here I took another photo inside the car. Again too many questions, appearing one after the other in my mind. “What is happening here? This pic is so dark. No sharp areas. Why there is so much of haze. No contrast between dark and light areas?”… After few minutes, again I ignored these, by consoling myself that there are some settings which I need to take some time and fix it.
Yes! It is working!
We stopped in between at a fuel filling station at Yelawala, Hunsur road. I shot one more pic (below) using inbuilt flash switched on. My thoughts “Yes! this is much better and it is working. Sharper than the earlier and background is blurred, subject is in focus.” Now, with some sigh of relax. I just dropped all my doubts.
We took again a pit-stop near to Hunsur. Now with Sun helping with good lights and my camera in auto mode (without flash) I clicked some more pics. This was sharper, clearer and had sufficient light. My thoughts converged into one question “Well, the previous pic I took had the subject nearer and the background was blur. But why is this pic not similar to the previous one. Car and my friends are in focus and Why there is less blur in the background? Background is pretty much clear. Might be because of automatic mode. I was curious to know more details replicating auto mode settings in manual mode”. Keeping again all my thoughts aside, pleased with the recent photos, I enjoyed the drive till Madikeri with my friends.
Evening pics of the day one!
As soon as we reached our guest house in Madikeri, we freshened up and got ready to take a look around the town. I carried my camera and took some snaps outside our guest house. As there were some fog around, I enjoyed the scenery with couple of shots.
We went towards town and I captured some more moments until the sunset. As, I was clicking and viewing the photos, same doubts kept occurring in my mind. How to keep a setting constant always so that I do not want to keep on changing the settings? Auto mode will add noise when light is less. My thoughts and questions are now becoming limited to make sure always keep constant settings and make picture look stunning.
We returned back to our Guest house and had a good dinner and some serious business talks 😂.
Day 2
My 2nd photography day. I was very excited this day as I had some experience on day one but did not learn anything other than lots of doubts. This day I wanted to capture some landscape, city, birds, flowers etc. I had lots of thoughts on how photos should look. If it is birds, then I should freeze while it is flying. If it is a landscape, then all corners should be very sharp. If it was foggy and cloudy, then I should capture entire scene panning from left to right, etc.
We went to Tibetian Monastry also called as Golden temple near Kushalnagar (Bylakuppe).
As we entered inside, I saw this bird, Guineafowls on the lawn running within 2 meters of area. I desperately wanted to capture the running / moving bird. I kept my camera in auto mode and started clicking. I zoomed my lenses and realized that I cannot get a closeup shot (With too much of quick irritation and anger, I thought this is because of the basic/intermediate camera limitations). I took around 10 photos of the bird in action. Among these 10, the one below is the best pic I could show you. All other 9 photos were blurry as the bird was moving fast it was leaving a blur trails / movements in every stills I captured.
Another pic which I imagined to be very good as soon as I saw in thumbnail was the below pic. Also, there were other pictures which resulted in bad light and noise (too much of grains). I wanted to focus on the monk who is sitting exactly opposite to me and all other monks I wanted to blur them similar to the 5th photo from top (Karthik in frame). But my thoughts, lens and camera were not in sync. I could not capture what I wanted. The holy book which they were reading was under focus not the monk😫. By this time I thought all photos has come good, expect the dark one which I can brighten up in photoshop.
Now, after the visit we came back to the car and I started reviewing the photos. The photos of bird and monk, which I had the best hopes were turned to be the worst ones. With too much of disappointment and unhappy about the DSLR, I missed my old Sony CyberShot T100, which was 1 Million times better than DSLR. Anger, disappointment, frustration filled inside me and I was demotivated to capture any more pics using this DSLR. I also felt that I wasted around 40K (rupees) to buy this useless camera. All the photos I captured keeping the exposure set to 0 in the exposure scale, thinking DSLR will fix everything by itself (Exposure Scale -3 — -2 — -1–0–1–2–3) and I will get the best pic. But my expectations on the DSLR camera settings were completely wrong. At this point of time I do not want to say I was wrong, but I would rather blame on the maker of DSLR camera. 😏 I should fix this some how! Not to waste 40K worth camera. This frustration made me to read all about DSLR cameras. What is ISO, focus points, focal length, aperture etc. One weekend I sat in my room, using a tripod I started taking photo of one subject with multiple settings. This day I understood how to capture photos in manual settings by adjusting ISO (to be less noisy), bring the object in focus by using focus points and the limitations of zoom for 18–55mm lens. I took around 60–70 photos to understand this settings. Believe me, 60 to 70 photo is very less to learn capturing photos using DSLR. If you are new and bought a new DSLR camera and frustrated with your initial photos which are not upto your expectations then sit aside for couple of days do take around 300–400 pics or even more and understand every detail step by step. No need to hurry! There are lots of knowledge out there in internet.
Many more to come! Too much to learn and a long way to go! Keep reading, commenting and liking my page in facebook and Instagram@ bimbacreations999 Visit www.bimbacreations.in for your photography requirements.
Comments