Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Photography Frustrations!

With the rising temperatures, I finally got out and went for a walk through the Meaford cemetery.  It's a beautiful, peaceful place, easy to walk around because they keep the roadways plowed (or snowblown), and I hardly ever see anyone else there.  Not only that, but you enter the cemetery through a quarter-mile of beautiful woodland.  It's large enough that it's nearly a 45 minute walk to circle it (at my slow pace), my first serious walk since my surgery in December.

I park just outside the gate, and enjoy this long walk down the road to get to the cemetery itself.

Beech leaves and snow-covered spruce branches along the way.

The road borders a very steep hill, an old glacial shoreline of Lake Algonquin, so you look down into the canopy of the forest below, all snow-covered.

I thought this row of trees was interesting - but as you can see, the photograph is slightly blurry.
When you get to the cemetery itself, there's a small chapel along with other facilities.

This photo, taken back in December, shows you how large it is; you're still only seeing a small part of it here.

Yesterday there was a lot more snow.  I love the snow-caps on the graves, but the snow is deep enough that you're not going in search of individual graves at this time of year!

In some of the more open rows the gravestones are almost covered, snow about 18" deep on the level.

They also have a lot of big old maple trees which will make good photos in their own right.

I heard a tapping as I headed back to the car, and looked up to see this pair of Hairy Woodpeckers high in a White Ash tree.

Meantime, I managed to snap at least 75 photos as I walked.  Since my auto-focus has failed, I was focusing manually, and I was really quite pleased with myself.  I knew some of them would be blurry, but I thought I was doing fairly well.  Then I loaded them up on the computer screen, and realized what a disaster my focusing efforts had been!  They were virtually all too blurry to use.  I deleted about 65 of the 75!  Needless to say, my malfunctioning lens has now gone to the camera hospital to see if it's worth repairing.  I'll be using my iphone camera or our little point-and-shoot for the next 2 or 3 weeks.  At least I did have a good walk!


22 comments:

  1. Razem frazem on the lens! These shots are lovely though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cemeteries with a lot of large old trees are interesting places. Good luck with the lens. Sometimes an element comes loose in a lens, but it could be a lot of things other than that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wonderful pics. About all I use now is my little point and shoot, but it has its own shortfalls. Such as no eye view finder. Not being able to see the screen in bright sunlight. And it is so hard to get on a bird in flight with it.

    But the one thing, it is always with me. In my purse, in my pocket. I seldom leave the house without it and it is usually in the store with me. But then so is my phone.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Before going Digital all my bug lenses were manual. Going DSLR everything was Automatic and before you know it the Lens can't decide what to focus on. While the lens is getting fixed using a point and shoot becomes an alternative but they take forever to take the picture. From the time you depress the shutter to the time the picture is captured the point and shot changes from Scenery to Macro. ???? The Joys.
    Be Safe and Enjoy your Recovery!

    It's about time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No matter you did get some nice photos. I got rid of my big camera and now only use my point and shoot not as good as your pics but works for me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You have a good amount of snow. I hope you get your camera back soon, either that or buy a new lens. I have one that is fussy...sometimes it will auto focus and sometimes not...I use mainly my point and shoot in the winter :) I walked around the yard today, it was warmer here but a new storm is coming in tomorrow:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Whatalottasnow!!! The lens, fixable? or a new one? Hope you get some slow walks meantime.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hope you can get it fixed. The pictures you used look good to me! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I haven't had an issue with the camera....as such, just the human handling it. Numerous times I have turned off auto-focus to take a picture of something and then forgot to turn auto-focus back on. Of course all subsequent pictures were blurry when I downloaded them. Frustrating!
    Hope you get it fixed soon, but in the meantime......these don't look too bad to me.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Know what you mean by the difficulties of manual focusing. Doesn't work for me either and I too end up with blurry pics. Auto focus does a way better job than I can. It's those aging eyes of ours.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Beautiful photos! There sure is a lot of snow there. I have the same problem with my Nikon D5200....the autofocus is gone so I've been manually focusing but with my cataract and floaters I have to delete a lot of pics due to poor focus! It's frustrating. I will be interested to hear how you make out with getting your camera repaired (or not). There are no camera shops here that do repairs so not sure what I'd do about getting it repaired somewhere else. I use my iPhone a lot! Take care.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sorry about your lens. I hope it can be repaired. The snowy scenes at the cemetery are pretty. I like the cute chapel. Happy Wednesday, enjoy your day!

    ReplyDelete
  13. it must have felt GREAT to get out and walk, your pictures are beautiful!! healing thoughts for your lens, that's always a bummer!!

    ReplyDelete
  14. The pictures you did include are lovely, so thank you for taking that walk. My camera has to go to a hospital too since I can't seem to get the lens cleaned with the tools I've purchased. It is so frustrating having to do a spot touchup in 5 or 6 places before posting pics. I'll use our powershot and camera phone for the most part.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Winter photography is always a challenge. Everything is so bright and then you are standing there in the cold. I do like the trees, blurry or not.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I've rarely been successful using manual focus. I think my eyesight isn't good enough! Good luck with your camera repair.

    ReplyDelete
  17. The cemetery is a quite a bit bigger than the two I walk around. What a cute little chapel.
    The only camera I use is a point and shoot.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Cemeteries are indeed peaceful, quiet places to visit and for that very reason often harbour Long-eared Owls in the winter.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I find the cemetery a very nice quiet place to walk

    ReplyDelete
  20. how beautiful the stones look with so much snow on them.... a beautiful and peaceful place to walk....

    ReplyDelete
  21. I really enjoyed seeing your photos. So much snow! Had a nice cooling affect over here in a Aussie summer!
    I rarely use manual focus, and rely heavily on my autofocus. My eyesight is not good enough for manual focus.

    ReplyDelete