Thirty Days of Christmas Joy Week 3: Gaining Confidence

Really having fun with this 30 day challenge to develop my photographic skills.  Love the twinkling lights of the Christmas season.

Day 15

Exposure ISO 200 f/22 for 10 seconds at 18 mm

Day 16
New ornaments on the tree. Highlights from our Summer 2017 vacation: Niagara Falls, Hershey, Cooperstown & Gettysburg.

Exposure ISO 100 f/29 10 seconds at 32mm

A reflection of the Christmas tree

Exposure ISO 250 f/29 30 seconds at 38mm

Day 17
From our Mississippi River adventure in 2016 - Paul Bunyan and Babe, and our Peabody Hotel duck is hiding in the background

Exposure ISO 250 f/4.5 1/10  at 44 mm

 Day 18
The reason for the season glowing in a nearby yard

Exposure ISO 160 f/14 1 second at 75mm

Day 19
Meteor shower night - we rode out to the cotton patch to get a clear sky view to look for meteors.  We saw a few, but didn't catch any on film.  We got lots of stars and an airplane streaking through. Amazed by how much shows on film that we cannot see with the naked eye.  A lot of tricks still to learn about getting these types of images in focus.  Nevertheless, a win for getting my settings right before taking the first shot!  ISO 1600 worked great -- just didn't catch any meteors.  Then I played around by increasing ISO to 3200 and then 6400 to see how much noise and light would result.

So how does this fit into my Christmas themed 30 day challenge?  Stars -- the Wise Men followed the Star.

Exposure ISO 3200 f/3.5 for 30 seconds at 20mm resulted in an overexposed image, so exposure was reduced in post-processing

Day 20
Captured these gorgeous colors on the way out the door this morning.  The moon was still visible.

Exposure ISO 800 f/4.2 1/100 at 36 mm

Exposure ISO 160 f/22 for 30 seconds at 52mm

Love the colors in these church windows!

Exposure ISO 800 f/4.5 1/8 44mm

Feeling so much more confident setting up shots in manual mode.  I have reduced the number of shots it takes to get a keeper.  Doing a much better job of reading my gauges in the viewfinder.