I don't know if I'm unusual, but I often use a camera's ability to select the focus point for me. I work on the assumption that it will focus on whatever is closest to the lens. If I'm photographing a group of sheep then the sheep nearest the camera is the one I want in focus. Saves me moving the focus point around. The camera does this just fine. Except... Whatever focus mode it's in if you touch the screen it switches to single point. Either my thumb is too big or the camera is too small but it was forever going into single focus point mode when I didn't want it to. It also defaults to 1/60th when in aperture priority and auto ISO. Once I realised this (after far too many shaky shots) I stuck it in shutter priority and stopped the motion blur. High ISO noise wasn't too bad lifting detail out of shadows at higher ISOs is not a good idea.
The tilty screen does make lamb-level shots easier, and using a camera with no viewfinder can be useful for candid shots of people. Although I prefer using a viewfinder even close up.
Playing with a couple of frames which didn't stack up in colour I found that black and white conversions worked OK as the noise isn't as distracting as it is in colour, and I think there's a perception that detail can be lost acceptably in black and white as it is using grainy film.
With enough light the high ISO shots are fine in colour. It's dingy environments where things start to go down hill. I'll give the camera a go at an agricultural show and see how it fares there. For indoor work it's back to the search for a tilty screen camera.
The sale itself didn't hold my attention for long. It had stopped raining too so I set off to stage two. Having got rid of my very-ultrawide lens I was going to be restricted to 18mm at the widest to take some indoor shots. I tried using available light, but ended up shoving the dreaded flashgun in the hotshoe and bouncing it off the white ceiling. It helped even though the space was quite large. I'm not sure how the toy camera would have coped.
On the road again and no sooner had I arrived at the sheep dog trial than the rain came back. With the strong wind blowing it looked like it would soon blow over. When it did I got out of the car. Took two snaps and got back in teh car. It was bloody freezing! With all the dog people huddled up in their vehicles there wasn't much to photograph anyway, so I buggered off home.
Apart from wrapping up the shop pictures it felt like a bit of a wasted effort. Although learning the limits of gear is helpful as it stops me trying it in situations where I might have a chance of some different pictures. The ones I got wouldn't have been any better as pictures no matter which camera I'd used.
Back home and the culling was easy. Half the auction pics were blurred beyond my level of acceptability. A load more got dumped because I'd been shooting in burst mode and they were no more than duplicates. Then I finished off the Blurb book and ordered a copy as a proof before the latest discount code ran out. With that done I searched around for a way to reduce the size of a PDF file I'd made for a trial A4 booklet/zine and with that done uploaded it to an online PDF print service. Making hard copies is something I'm trying to do more of. Either book/zine things or plain old prints now I've found an album which makes it easy to change the contents as a sort of portfolio.
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