Marking time

Now I am home from taking a holiday I seem to be caught up in all sorts of "catch up" activities! No time to take photos or write in my blog! Sigh!
So I have dug out a picture I took in September last year using my son's 6 megapixel Nikon D70 DSLR camera with 18x200 lens

f 10 1/200 ISO 200 @focal length of 200mm

When I took this photograph I wanted to separate the seed head from the background of grass, this can be done either by using the aperture and selecting a wide aperture of 2.5 or similar - the grass is very close to the head of the dandelion. The 18 x 200 lens I was using only allows a wide aperture of f4.5 and that would not be enough to give the depth of field I wanted. The other way is by using maximum zoom (on a Point and Shoot with 10x or more) or by using maximum telephoto on a multi-focal lens like the one I was using.

Since I was using the "speed" priority - I set the shutter speed and the camera selected the exposure to suit the speed - I was unaware of the aperture setting until I looked at the EXIF information on my computer. It was necessary to set the speed so high because there was enough breeze to move the dandelion head and I was not using a tripod.

When using the telephoto (zoomed in) setting on a camera the shutter speed has to be your main concern, too slow and camera shake will ruin the shot.

AJ