New Tricks
As I’ve written about a few times over the last five months, I have started trying to take photography more seriously. I had bought myself a tripod in September but hadn’t used it.
In addition, having finally downloaded and read the camera’s user manual (only four years after buying the camera) I found out what a lot of the icons on the menu wheel meant. I had read the details on the panorama setting with interest and had tried a couple of times to do panorama photographs on my last visit to Leicester. Only for it to keep failing as the setting doesn’t like motion in more than one direction, and try as I might I couldn’t keep the camera moving from left to right only, there would always be some vertical motion as well, at which point there would be a little error message popping up saying ‘do not move the camera in more than one direction’.
So last weekend when we were going out on a trip to the Knepp estate, I took the tripod with me to look for an opportunity to try and do a panorama shot. And it happened when we got to the path at the bottom end of Knepp Lake. There was a wall by the side of the road, a perfect height to put the tripod on, and a wide expanse to be able to pan around. The lake used to be the largest lake in Sussex but has been reduced in size over the last century.
I hadn’t even tried to attach the camera to the tripod before now. There was a sudden panic that the screw might not be the correct size, but that was not an issue (thankfully). What did surprise me was how deep the screw actually is. It doesn’t look to be a deep hole in the base of the camera, and the screw on the top of the tripod stand looks miniscule. But it was six or seven complete rotations to get the camera tight on the tripod.
I settled the tripod on the wall and chose the panorama setting and pointed the camera at the far-left side of the vista before me. I pressed the shutter button and started the panning motion. Only for the recording to stop only halfway across. I did it a second time and got to about three quarters of the way through. It was a case of third time lucky, and I got the speed of the left to right motion correct and had a completed panorama of Knepp Lake.
The first two attempts were deleted, and I unscrewed the tripod and stored it back away in my bag (a new bag with specific tripod holding compartment / straps is a future requirement) and then shuffled off to catch everyone else up.
Yesterday there was a second outing for the tripod and the panorama setting. I was up early to get into town and be in Crawley’s County Mall as they opened and got myself up on the roof of the top parking level to get views out over the town from there.
Getting the tripod steady wasn’t as easy, the wall is a lot thinner, and has a rail over the top, so there were some of the motion in two directions messages on attempts. And I was getting another message, as in an effort to get the whole of the panorama in I was moving left to right too quickly. I did end up with double digit panoramic shots, not all of them complete. But instead of deleting those with blank space on the end as I had for the ones at Knepp, I didn’t delete them. Instead, it dawned on me that I could use the editing software to remove the blank space, and just have shorter panoramas.
Something to bear in mind for the future.
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After years of prevaricating, I have finally gotten around to self-publishing some books. I now have three books available. The first is the novel “Where The Lights Shine Brightest”, this is available on Amazon at
Next up is a collection of drabbles, three hundred and sixty six of the little hundred word stories, under the title of “A Drabble A Day Keeps The Psychoanalyst Away”, this is available on Amazon at
Finally, there is an autobiographical work, released under my alter ego of Kevin Rodriguez-Sanchez, which covers a two year period in the early noughties when I lived in Manchester — “Five Go Mad In Manchester”. Again, this is available on Amazon at
They are all available as paperback or eBook. And if you have Kindle Unlimited then they are available on there to read whenever. Please buy / read / leave reviews.
