It started to snow this morning in Blarney shortly after 6:30am and it has snowed continually for the last few hours. There’s a nice white coat on the grass and trees but the roads have turned to slush making them somewhat treacherous. They’ll be a lot worse if the snow freezes so I hope it all disappears nice and quickly!
Telecom Éireann was the state telecoms monopoly until other companies came into the country some years ago but in it’s current state, Éircom, they still own most (all?) the copper phone lines that go into homes here.
I’m not sure of the history of the Telecom Club in Cork, but I have been in there. A few years ago I took Spanish classes there for about 3 months until my interest waned. Don’t take that for a sign of how you’ll do with your new year’s resolutions. 🙂
After a trip to Gougane Barra where I photographed the usual suspects we stopped in Inchigeelagh and took a walk by the river. Near the end of the walk this tyre hangs from a tree into the river where I presume kids jumped into the water when the weather is slightly warmer than it is now.
This’ll be my last post of 2012 so happy new year! I took over 10,000 photos this year which is a recent record. If only I could find time and motivation to work on more of those photos so they’ll see the light of day..
Part of the Christmas display in Bishop Lucey Park, Cork. The covered over the decorated the fountain in the park. Beautiful. Huge crowds going there every night from what I saw.
Christmas is upon us again and the lights and decorations are going up around the city. This is on Patrick’s Street, Cork a few days ago when we wandered around.
The Sun shone on the underside of the clouds this morning, lighting them up in a blaze of glory. Moments later the gloom had settled in, the Sun disappeared and an hour later the rain had started. Ah well.
Fog covers the village of Blarney at the merest hint of a calm chilly morning and today was no exception. These are the trees across the road from my son’s school.
It’s a beautiful frosty morning so I couldn’t resist the urge to take a couple of shots of this driveway up to Blarney Castle. You may even recognise it from the WordPress theme Twenty Ten.
If you have an external flash (and this even applies to the onboard flash but that’s a lot weaker) for your DSLR try shooting with the camera in manual mode and let the flash light the scene for you.
Canon flash units use E-TTL to figure out what power to use, Nikon and other manufacturers use something similar. In the bad old days photographs had to figure out the right settings with a light meter but now the tiny computer in your flash does the job automatically. This means you have a lot more freedom with your camera.
Instead of shooting in Program or auto mode switch the dial to M and change the aperture to F8, and the speed of the shutter to match how wide your lens is (or faster if you’re hand holding, try 1/50th of a second to start). Try shooting an indoor scene with objects at various distances. Do the same in Program mode too. You’ll probably find that objects that are blurry in Program mode are in-focus in manual mode!
By shooting in manual mode you’ll have more control over the depth of field, that is the area of the scene that will be in focus. F4 means that only a narrow sliver of the scene will be in focus but F8 broadens that. This is why those family portraits you shot in Program mode had some blurry faces in the background!
Many lenses produce sharper and better looking images at a certain aperture setting. F8 is widely suggested as a good starting point but it depends on the lens in question.
Unfortunately changing the aperture means less light gets to the sensor but your flash will do a good job of compensating for that. It can’t cope with every aperture setting or scene so experiment and get to know your equipment.
On Canon cameras Manual mode is better than Aperture priority mode for simple flash photography. In Aperture priority mode the camera adjusts the shutter speed for the ambient light and doesn’t use the flash in this calculation. In a dim room this will result in a long exposure. The flash will illuminate the subject but the background will be exposed for too. This is of course a valid way of taking photos but you have to be prepared for some camera shake, or you can underexpose the image on purpose to reduce the shutter speed. Long exposure shots with a flash produce some great looking action shots too, but be sure to set the 2nd curtain sync correctly! Here’s a good comparision of 1st and 2nd curtain sync.
I haven’t bowled in the Coliseum, Cork in a long long time. I’m pretty sure the last time I bowled was in Wii bowling, perhaps at an Automattic meetup even! Nice way to spend an hour though.
What’s your highest score? I think mine’s somewhere around 240.
Aperture
ƒ/3.5
Camera
Canon EOS 40D
Focal length
18mm
ISO
640
Shutter speed
1/25s
Close
Ad-blocker not detected
Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.
uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.