Wimpole Hall

xyphic · 20 Aug 2006 at 22:54

Went down to Wimpole Hall today and took loads of pictures (as usual). Still getting to grips with my 350D, but I'm pretty pleased with these. All are simply resized with a bit of colour correction and level tweaking.

C&C welcome.

1. Wimpole Hall

2, 3, 4. Flowers from the walled garden

5. Apples on the floor. I liked the colour and composition of this one, but focus isn't in the right place. Annoyed at that one!!!

xyphic · 20 Aug 2006 at 22:55

6. Lavender (again, focus is slightly off -- would have been better on the bee)

xyphic · 22 Aug 2006 at 23:18

I also visited Milton Country Park for the first time in a while. The weather wasn't great -- overcast for the most part.

These were the conditions I had to deal with:

Milton country park is sat just behind an industrial estate in a town to the north of Cambridge. It has two lakes (one of which is pictured above), with various wildlife:

There are plenty of trails to follow, some of which are through grassy areas (where on a sunny day in spring there are rabbits and squirrels aplenty, unfortunately on a cloudy day in late summer, none to be seen!) and others through wooded areas:

When the sun comes out, so do the insects. You can see plenty of damselflies and dragonflies:

xyphic · 22 Aug 2006 at 23:19

Not sure what this fellow is going to grow up to become, but he was in a hurry to get somewhere:

Thanks for looking. Comments welcome as usual.

xyphic · 24 Aug 2006 at 17:08

The DOF on the flowers isn't huge as it was very overcast and I had was shooting handheld, so had the lens pretty much wide open (from what I recall anyway!). The focus was on the centre of the flowers so they're pretty sharp but the edges of them are a little blurry.

While we're here, anyone know what kind of caterpillar it was that I shot?

xyphic · 25 Aug 2006 at 00:20

Thanks for the comments!

For shot 5, again it was overcast so I was already at a reasonably high ISO settting but still needed the lens to be almost wide open. Hence there's a very shallow DOF and unfortunately the focus is about a third of the way in from the left. Would have looked better if the focus were in the centre (as it looks blurry as it is).

It's all a learning experience -- hopefully the next lot will be better still!

[edit]Was actually only ISO 200, should have tried one at 400...[/edit]