31 Days of my XTi | Day 8 -Shooting in RAW

Hello folks! I thought I'd touch on something super easy to do on your camera, which is changing your image size/quality. I prefer to shoot in RAW + L now that I am out of using full auto mode, mainly because it gives me so much more freedom in the digital darkroom. I have been able to save some images that I may not have been able to if they were JPEGs. Of course, getting the shot right straight out of camera is the best thing, but for those of us who stumble upon a moment you have to get and your settings are just a little off RAW can be an image saver. It won't magically transform everything, but it's an option. From what I understand RAW stores the image as the pixels, and you have to use a special program (like Adobe Camera Raw) to process the image.  When I upload my images into Photoshop Elements it shows me 2 images in the organizer, and often they look slightly different, the RAW one is usually lighter. If your camera came with a disk it will most likely have ACR on the disk.
So here's how you change your image quality to RAW:
Press the menu button to the left of the screen.
Under the first section (it has a picture of a camera and 1) the first choice is quality
When you select it there's  a whole table of choices, so choose RAW +L or just RAW.

*Just as a side, your files will be considerably larger when shooting in either RAW choice-I make sure to delete any photos I don't want, or make sure they are moved to my portable hard drive to prevent bogging down my computer*

Like I said I prefer the first, but if you are just trying it out and taking shots you may want to keep I suggest it. That way if you decide you don't want to be bothered with this RAW business you will still have the pictures in JPEG.

If you don't already shoot in RAW, go try it out and leave me a message with how it went! If you do shoot in RAW and have anything to add please share!

J.O.Beezy!

I have been kind of lazily looking for a job the past few months, mainly because I don't want to go back to work full time.  However, I do need to establish something for when I go back to school because then I have to work for experience and to help with bills since hubs won't be able to work quite as much.
Well I finally got in at a large hospital system that I've been applying to on and off for like 6 years! Can I just say that now that I've been offered a position 4 other departments have called me to interview with them in the last week?? I haven't had this many calls from them in the past 6 years combined. I am so excited though! The position that I am accepting has EXCELLENT benefits, the hours are great, and it's not too far from home. The only thing that is sad for me is that I won't be with my kiddos as much, but I feel like I need to go back and keep my skills current before I start nursing school next year. So I suppose it's bittersweet...the financial stuff is great, the emotional stuff makes me sad. We'll see, I just keep reminding myself it's not like I'm signing a contract, if I miss my babies too much I can always go back to total SAHM-ing.
On the other hand I'm excited to go to work...to talk to other adults on a regular basis, and to be doing work (outside of my home) that is meaningful to me.
Any thoughts or wise words for managing working full time with 2 kiddos? I could use some pointers...

31 Days of my XTi | Day 7 - Using a Remote

In order to get good use of your camera, you have to take some good pictures of yourself in my opinion. I am always the one behind the camera, and seldom get into shots. So I looked on ebay, one of my favorite places to find some things pretty cheap, and ordered a remote for my camera for about $3.50 (including shipping!). I was prepared for it to be a piece of garbage when it finally got here, but it works great! And I was finally able to get some decent shots of myself without as much running back and forth to look at the screen. It's very simple, no programming needed. You just push the self-control/timer button (second one down on the right side of the screen) and then the right arrow to the picture of the timer. If you don't have a remote you would just press the shutter and wait for the timer to time out to get a picture, but with the remote you just point it toward the sensor (left side of the camera when viewing from the front) and push the little button to your hearts content! I should probably also mention that the remote is good for avoiding camera shake when you are using a tripod with slow shutter speeds, but so far my selfies have been the most fun. ;) My hello picture to the right and my blogger profile picture are both results of the first day I tried it out. Go look it up, very inexpensive fix for those of us who always want more toys!

31 Days of my XTi | Day 6 - A-DEP

Last mode in the creative zone: A-DEP!
I had never even tried out this mode before starting this project, so yay me for sticking to learning something new about my camera!! I had to go to the manual and my favorite XTi book to learn some more about this mode, and here's what I've summed up after reading and trying it out:
A-DEP makes sure that all of the subjects in your photo are in focus. The camera detects your subjects when you press the shutter half way, and denotes them by blinking red focus points over them. If it hasn't chosen the right ones then you move around and half-shutter again. From my manual it seems this is best used when all of your subjects are not on the same plane(people are not all standing in a straight line, for example). I probably could have used this on a couple of shots of my daughter, I did some pretty close shots of her face but because her head was tilted one eye was in sharp focus and the other was not.
Here are my tries at using this, even using A-DEP it took quite a few tries before I felt all 3 were in focus, but after doing the same(well, almost) shot in full auto I can definitely see the difference.

I also found that in A-DEP I couldn't use the flash, where in full auto the camera forced the use of flash.
Did you try this mode out? Have any suggestions or tips? Leave me some love folks!!

31 Days of my XTi | Day 5 - Shooting in Manual

Yes, I was a day behind, but with this post I am caught up!! Yay me, especially with all the exciting things that have been going on around here.
Up next on the wheel, M-Manual mode! The dreaded mode to some, only mode to others. I have yet to master it's usage, but practice, practice and more practice is all I can suggest here.
Here are the basics:
You have to set your aperture and shutter speed independently here. To set the shutter speed just turn the dial. To set the aperture you have to hold down the Av button(upper right next to the screen) and turn the dial. How do you know if your shot will be exposed how you want? Press the shutter half way, and look at the exposure meter. When I first tried this I thought I could just hold down the Av button and spin the dial to change it like you can in Av/Tv mode. Well turns out in manual mode it's an indicator, and you have to change your shutter speed and aperture to get that little line to move into the correct exposure. Another option-if it is available to you- is to move into an area with more/less light.
Here's where knowing the exposure triangle comes in handy. If you have an idea of where you need to be, you don't have to keep randomly adjusting and pressing the shutter half-way to see if it's right a million times. I think this is what turned me off of manual initially, and I felt like I was hot stuff using Av instead of full auto anyway. Except there's so much more freedom! If you aren't looking for a perfectly exposed shot, or you are trying to re-create a photo you've seen and know about where the settings should be you can tweak the settings without having them changed by the camera to what it thinks is right. I'm not posting any examples on this one because every shot EVER could be an example, but do go to the link about the exposure triangle if you need to, and just experiment! Some of the shots I love most are not technically perfect, but they still capture a memory and ultimately that's why I do it.

Changing it up a little

I finally got around to changing the blog up a bit. Two reasons really...because I am easily bored looking at the same thing(just ask Hubs who gets to help me rearrange our furniture monthly), and because I will be linking it to my business site, so I want it to be pretty too. I got this blog design from Nymphont, and then just adjusted my header I already had(made by me) to match the color scheme until I can find the time to make something new.  Best parts about it, it was FREE and it was very easy to install!
Next exciting thing happening over here is that I downloaded the trial version of Lightroom 3. I am so excited to get started trying to use it! I anticipate that at the end of the 30 days I'll buy it, especially since they have an awesome discount for students. Right now I use Photoshop Elements 7 for editing, and while I am no where near knowing the ins and outs, I know I will need something more upgraded in the future to streamline my workflow. I am STILL working on getting proofs together for my parents shoot from last week, and the thing that is taking the most time is saving various versions, and making them uniform. If I could apply some changes in batches(like I hear you can in lightroom) I would have spent probably 2 hours less on it last night :(  Nonetheless, I am still very happy with the shots I have chosen for proofs(about 20 of the 160) and I can't wait for them to see my work!

31 Days of my XTi | Day 4 - Aperture Priority

Hey there! Day 4, and we're looking at the next creative mode on the wheel..Av-aperture priority. This is my favorite to shoot in, because it adjusts the shutter speed based on the aperture that you set by turning the dial. I love LOVE bokeh in my photos, and this helps me get it pretty easily.  If you didn't already know this: bokeh is that blurriness you see in the background of a picture, when the subject of the photo is in focus and the background is not. I just set my aperture to the lowest number it will go to ( low number=wide open), and the camera does the rest. The lowest number you can get depends on the limits of your lens, and the lighting available.  Sometimes bokeh can be challenging to get with a kit lens, but that's a topic for another day.
Here are my examples:

This one was taken at f 3.5 1/100

This was taken at f 22 1/6

In the first shot nothing behind Baby Que is in focus, and in the second you can see detail all the way back.  It really all depends on what kind of effect you want, and what your subject is. If you decide to give this a try leave me a comment and tell me how it went!