There is a pin oak tree in my front yard. It was sprouted from an acorn by a family friend and given to us when it was about 18 inches tall. That was probably 7 years ago. Now it is a very good producer of acorns.
The reason for the pictures was not so much the acorns or the tree but to test my Sony NEX-5 camera. I have blogged elsewhere here about acquiring this new camera. Well, Sony has already brought out a newer version. Very slight differences, directed a little more toward the pro users. Not enough to trash this one. Sony and all the other brands have discovered the pros like this format camera as their backup.
I have been a little concerned about the quality of the photos and about the stock lenses I purchased with the camera. I haven’t been totally satisfied with overall sharpness and depth of field I was getting when I wanted both of those attributes to be stronger.
I think I have learned what I was doing wrong. The control I wanted was in the camera and its software but hidden from the pro user. They also disguised the name of the feature I wanted. Sony built the camera for consumers. One of the features for consumers is a softened “look” to the photos in standard mode. Depth of field is very narrow as the aperture is programed rather large to keep shutter speed up while using rather low ISO settings. I need vivid creative style to get the sharp defined pictures I want. I never used a camera I had to set the style.
So I set ISO to 400, selected Vivid and reset a few other values here and there.
So I tried the new settings and literally went nuts. I hope you like the Fall acorn pictures.