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Saturday, September 10, 2005
misadventures with the nikon
Today was a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous day. Bright blue sky, puffy white clouds, temperatures in the 70's, the whole thing. T was home and I was out for a walk when I decided to sit down in front of the courthouse, set up my camera on its mini tripod, and take the time-lapse cloud-motion video I've wanted to take (with the courthouse in the foreground) since I got my camera. So I went to the library, conveniently located right across the street from my planned subject, and I got a few books. (Since apparently September is Kidlit Month for me, I got two E.L. Konigsburgs that I'd never heard of, along with The Secret Life Of Bees, which I keep thinking I should probably read, but never actually do.) I set things up and had a pleasant two hours of quiet solitude, during which someone played the bagpipes across the square at the funeral parlor for a funeral, which made me cry a little, because my ordinary day was someone else's really sad day, which is, of course, always the case anytime anyone has an ordinary day. Anyway. At the end of the two hours, I stopped the movie, took a few more pictures, and looked at the results before packing up to walk home.
Which was when I realized I hadn't locked the auto-exposure to match the first frame, so the whole Quicktime movie had this really annoying flashing sort of strobe effect as the exposure changed due to the (frequent) movement of clouds between myself and the sun. Nice.
Then just as I got home and thought about sitting down to watch the strobe-ish video clip, I realized that I'd taken it in a vertical orientation, which made for the best composition, except that it also made for a sideways orientation when viewed on the screen, since as far as I know you can't rotate video files with any of the software I have (read: anything free). The funny thing about this is that I had just read a discussion about this very mistake on a photography-related e-list, and thought, whew, I'd better watch out because that sounds very much like something I'd do. Apparently I was right.
THEN, sometime between my camera and the memory card reader, the video file and half of the photos I'd taken on my walk were rendered unreadable while they were still on the memory card. FANtastic.
Ah well. At least I got to sit in the shade for two hours and read, before I came back to a house where everyone has been a bit on edge all evening, mostly because nobody got enough sleep last night, what with girls giggling till just before eleven, and me reading until two, and the boys coming home from the observatory at three, and LT and his friend and C and her friends all getting up at eight to play. Oh, yes, I am so ready to collapse in a sea of oblivion and rejoice that this day is at least finally over.
Comments
Aw, I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. That really sucks, I hate it when that sort of thing happens to me. (Which I feel silly saying, I mean honestly what sort of sado-masochistic being would say, "Ha! It warms me to the center of my being that the day was a complete and utter failure for you! I can do nothing but laugh for joy when things of such a nature happen to me! What bliss to find mistakes in all we do!")
Posted by: jenn at September 12, 2005 12:08 PM
