Quickshot X3000 Lens

When I picked up a lone plastic camera lens from a cluttered basket at a local thrift store, it gave me an idea. I rummaged around some more, found the corresponding camera body (a plastic Quickshot X3000), and purchased them both for 75¢.

Once I got home, I cut away as much of the extra plastic from the lens as I could manage and then held it up to my Nikon SLR camera body to see if I could take photos that way.

The pictures didn't turn out very well at first, and I realized that I needed to get the lens closer to the sensors on my camera. All it took was a few more tweaks to the lens and to my camera settings, and I was happily snapping away, taking milky, soft-focused photos of a few items I found around me.

ceramics on the mantelpiece

two outdated Polaroids

beige wedges

piggy bank

my purse a.k.a. camera bag

lacy shirt

brown heels

pink heels

the purse

the view out the window

Who knew that a broken plastic camera could be so much fun?

Churchland Baptist Church in HDR

This morning, this historic church in Chesapeake became the subject of my first attempt at creating an HDR image. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and it involves digitally blending multiple (bracketed) exposures of the same subject to combine the best elements of each of them.

The first frame is more or less normally exposed.

The second frame is underexposed, capturing detail in the brighter parts of the picture, i.e. the clouds in the sky here.

The third frame is overexposed, ensuring that detail in shadowy areas will be visible.

Then the three (or possibly more) frames are combined to form one image that shows detail both in the bright and dark areas of the scene.

Churchland Baptist Church in HDR
Fun!!