I started off the week slow, as the week prior I was on with work. Sunday was my recovery day before going back for 2 days into work. My energy was low, my mood was down, but it was time to look up to the coming 10 days off straight!

New Camera!

After months of putting money to the side for a new camera, the time had come!

I learned my new hobby of nature photography on a camera. An old camera, but it did a beautiful job. And being so low megapixel, made me learn how to be careful about my composition and getting the correct settings on the camera to begin with. Because it was no where near as quick as what a modern camera can do and no where near as forgiving.

I worked hard, saved to the side for my new tool, and got myself a and a couple of good lenses.

Featured Image
Sony A7R V - Photo courtesy of Gadgetsin.com

With 10 days off work, I started on a high practising photos with the new camera. Loads of new settings to figure out on this thing, but on the second day I already went out and tried my luck on macro photography by combing 100 images using a focus bracketing technique, which I could never have accomplished in a reasonable time with the old camera, and then stacking those images post-processing using software called Zerene Stacker.

Here is my very first attempt of focus bracketing and the end result fully edited from raw: Close-up photo of a small, light brown mushroom with a slender stem growing out of lush, vibrant green moss. The background is softly blurred in shades of green, creating a peaceful forest atmosphere. The lighting highlights the mushroom’s textured cap and the fine details of the moss below, capturing the delicate beauty of fungi in their natural habitat.

And here is my second attempt, this one was only 47 images: Tiny orange-brown mushroom growing from moss on a tree trunk, with a soft green background and delicate fern-like moss cascading down the bark.

I was also amazed with how much detail I was able to get out of a photo of a .

Test Bird photo. Little fellow cropped in.

This photo was taken on day 1 with my camera using the wrong lens for the job. A Welcome Swallow is no more than 90g in weight. They are tiny little birds (like sparrows) and zip around so fast hunting for bugs.

My camera was set to 1/4000 shutter speed here with a 105mm macro prime lens made for (obviously) macro photography and detailed portraits.

The original image is about 6 x the size of the one you see, and the bird is tiny in the original image. This image was cropped to where you see it now, and still managed to capture enough detail to identify the bird.

I’m really pleased. And obviously this is me coming from a really old camera and getting my hands on something game changing. Photographers that have always kept their cameras up to date would not notice such a jump in detail as I have.

Artvo

On Saturday, I took the family our to Docklands to visit and the ring afterwards. The kids had a blast!

Artvo is a 3D art exhibition that you can pose within and when photos are taken, they look like you are part of the scene. When we went, all the art was in fantasy style. It enabled the kids to have fun, while I played around with different settings on the camera. I ended up with more than 1000 photos to pick from. Then I had to edit them, as I wanted more than what the JPG’s offered! I picked 84 or so photos from the lot.

A majority of the photos were actually because I had the camera setup for burst shooting. I felt like the paparazzi with the mechanical shutter going off so fast!

Task Progress

Having come off night shift and being able to get myself into some kind of daily routine has seen me successfully complete a majority of my daily tasks I set out for myself.

I ticked off 71% of my tasks for the week, completing 30 out of 42 tasks over the last 7 days. Not a bad effort.

Other Stats

Total Observations this week: 0 Total thoughts posted this week: 7 Total Photos this week: 3

Looking at the stats, I can improve on the observations for one. I know I had more than zero, and actually posted 11 observations over at iNaturalist. I just haven’t added them to my personal database! So I can go ahead and fix that going forward. All I did was post them to iNaturalist, and what I really want to be doing is noting down more scientific detail about them and keeping notes for myself and paying more attention to what it is I am looking at.

As for thoughts, those are just the amount of short posts I made on my blog and other linked social media. Not so concerned about that stat, but it does show me how active I’ve been sharing things with others, which are not photographs.

Photos are the amounts of photos I have edited and shared online. It doesn’t account for how many photos I have actually taken and edited, which this week would be somewhere over 100. I will pick my favourites for sharing!

Conclusion

Once again, thank you for reading this far, and as always, comments are welcome. I enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions. Makes it feel less lonely out here on the inter-webs.