After a couple of setbacks in a row, we finally made it to Tucson to pick G’s camera up from the repair shop. We paid a whoooole lotta money for them to do a thorough cleaning of his D3400, and dropped off my D3200 for the same. This part of the world is insane for dust, and once it gets inside the camera it’s no bueno. Besides, it’s kind of like a car: for a good camera, periodic maintenance is a must.
With my camera out of hand, I borrowed G’s D3400 yesterday. It’s his backup since he bought a more fancy-schmancy D7200 a few months ago, so it was no big deal for me to borrow it. It’s a big brother to mine, anyway – a couple of years newer, otherwise nearly identical.
More about the swap of cameras later.
The featured image at the top of the post isn’t from Catalina park – but I liked it anyway, so ya get a freebie. It’s unedited other than for size.
We didn’t come home on the Interstate, electing to take a backroad we’d stumbled across (so to speak) recently. It was such a nice, peaceful drive, it will most likely be our preferred route when driving to Tucson again, too. With Mount Lemmon off the itinerary due to time and other constraints, we also decided to make a side trip to Catalina Park. The area is smaller, an easy drive, and didn’t require a significant detour through downtown Tucson on a Friday afternoon.
Y’all… it’s rained lately. Like, a LOT of rain, more than I’ve seen for at least a couple of decades. And I’d forgotten how green the desert gets after real rain like we’ve had this year.
I didn’t edit the saturation to bump it up for any of these. I did reduce saturation for a couple of them.
I tried to edit an out-of-focus line of barbed wire from the cactus blossom pic but couldn’t get it all. Still happy with this batch – and no camera shake. I used a cut-down pool noodle, sliced along one side, as a cushion on top of the drivers’ side window. Then braced my zoom lens on top of it to shoot. HUGE difference!
If you’re thinking these are a lot deeper colors and so on, you’re right. Part of it is the rain, obviously, but part of it’s the camera swap. Considering the extent of color difference in the snaps I got using G’s camera vs mine, I’m asking him to help me reset a couple of things on my camera, once I get it back from the shop. Once I know where to make the changes, I’ll fiddle with it until I get it like I want it.
beautiful photos of cactus and cactus flowers,
Thank you, Terri 🙂
This is an excellent set of photos, Lea. Aside from the color saturation, I really like the way you composed each shot. That is more important than camera settings, because you can’t just push a button to change it. It says more about you as a serious photographer than some setting which changes the color palate. Well done! I’m glad the noodle trick worked for you. It certainly shows, as these pics all feature much less blur than some of your previous postings. (Or perhaps it’s the noodle + faster shutter speeds, which I wouldn’t be surprised to hear given how much bright sunshine is evident in these.)
So yeah, well done I say! Bravo! Made my morning, it did 🙂
Wow – thank you! That’s a huge compliment, coming from you. I tell myself I’m a rank amateur. I AM an amateur – but glad to hear I’m getting better!
You certainly are 🙂
It makes an enormous difference when 95% of my attention isn’t on trying (unsuccessfully) to hold the camera still.
You ain’t kidding. Most photos that people think are out of focus are actually fuzzy because of camera shake (even with VR). I’m glad you found a stabilization method that works for you!
In my case I KNEW it was camera shake, but for a number of reasons, a tripod didn’t really provide the solution I needed. Thanks so much for the video recommend – it turned out to be the perfect fix!