Day 5

Last night I set up my tripod and played. I have some red lighted balls that everyone makes fun of. Though, for some reason I just adore them. One of my favorite Christmas Decorations.
Here is a picture of how I have them decorated:



As I was playing around with my camera I thought I'd get a good photo of my lights.
Whenever I've taken Christmas Light shots they've never came out. So..I thought before I take the decorations down I want to see what I can do using the Manual Mode on my camera.

Having no clue what settings to start with, I just kept moving settings and see what it would look like.

Here is an example of my first attempts:



Manual Settings were:
Exposure: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture: f/4.0
Focal Length: 24 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did no

I kept playing around with the manual settings to see if I could figure out a setting to capture just the lights..no luck!

So I posted the picture on the group Canon EOS 450D (aka Rebel Xsi) on the flickr website and asked for help.

Michelle (a member of the group) gave me great advise. Lower my ISO and use a tripod.

I was already using my tripod so I tried lowering my ISO:
Whoolaaa!



Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 35 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

If you look closely there is noise. But for my first attempts at manual mode. I'm pretty pleased!

I think..reading, reading, reading...is getting me no where. Playing and being not afraid to move settings is at least getting a few results!