Getting used to an SLR

Over the last few months, I've been getting used to my new DSLR camera, and its been great fun. Just this week, I thought I would take some photos and video footage of various plants around our garden. I have just bought a 75-300mm lens, but I haven't really used it much yet, so I thought I would first share with you some of the stuff I have managed to capture with my 18-55mm kit lens.

One of the many reasons why I wanted the camera I now own, is because it is capable of capturing full HD video. This means that I won't have to buy a separate video camera. I have been experimenting with the video function for a while now, and I thought I would just share a few videos I have taken over the last few weeks. They aren't that great, but I'm still learning how to get decent footage.

I've found that the most practical size to capture the video is 720p, rather than 1080p, mostly because the file sizes are more manageable and also because most computers are unable to play 1080p video smoothly. Besides, on a small video player on my blog, the difference in quality between the two dimensions is pretty much unnoticeable.

The Alliums which have been growing near our bird feeders, have just finished flowering, but the video below shows one of the flowers a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, these flowers really attracted the bees...



Elsewhere in the garden, other flowers which we planted earlier in the year have also just finished flowering. We have had large areas of wild flowers towards the end of the garden (which we planted). Instead of showing you videos of these, I thought I'd show you some of the flowers from plants we didn't grow- basically, they're weeds...



And there's more...



When I had run out of flowers to video, I decided to get a quick video of the reflections on the bird bath...



Thats all for now, i'll probably post again either tonight or tomorrow with some more video footage. Anyway, enjoy any sunshine you get today, cause its looking pretty grey here at the moment!