Thursday, March 12, 2015

Fish Face

Whenever Wally takes my picture I look like a manatee.  Or as Marco said, ready for rehab.  It's been a little hard on my self esteem.  

So it was great to learn from Monika Olsen in our digital photography class (at Acalanes Adult Education) why I look like a manatee - and that it's an artifact of the camera, not a personal failing, or a reason to schedule plastic surgery.

This is Carolyn's deliciously steaming fish without the zoom, just getting close with the camera.
Note the fish-eye effect? (pun intended)
Here is the same shot but standing back a little and using the zoom: 
Magic!  And the manatee face explained.  

We learned a lot of other stuff too - mostly what I learned is except for the zoom there is nothing a point-and-shoot camera can do that the iphone can't do better. 

So I am now the proud owner of a Nikon P530 with a 42x optical zoom.  Oh and I also learned to turn off the digital zoom.  It does nothing that you can't do better on your computer later.

I chose the Nikon because it's light and relatively small.  Will my photos improve?  Stay tuned.

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