One of the advantages to walking to work is that I get to take advantage of the frosty mornings when others are still in bed (you know who I mean!) or are sat shivering in their car.

I have taken quite a few frosty leaf pictures in the last couple of years, but I never tire of them.  This leaf was sat all on its own on the footpath – it is probably not there now, begging for its photo to be taken.  The sycamore/maple family of trees certainly provide their fair share of pretty leaves.

What I liked about this is the way that the frost had muted what are otherwise quite bright leaves, the frost on the tarmac and the contrast between nature and man-made surfaces.

I took the shot with my compact set on macro mode and the settings chosen for the early morning light were 1/30secs at ISO80, f/3.2 and 6mm.

My Canon S90 has a setting for low light, so I thought I would experiment and try it out despite the fact that it was a bit miserable and damp – no reason not to take pictures I thought.  The leaves on the pavement, and the pavement itself, were glistening in the rain – perfect photo material.

Basically the camera bumps up the ISO setting to 3200, but (considering my love-hate relationship with this camera) I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the picture that I got.

These leaves were lit by the yellow of the street light, so I adjusted the temperature a little in Lightroom to reduce the yellow cast, but other than that this is pretty much how it came out of the camera.

The resulting settings were ISO3200,1/50secs at f/2.0, 6mm.

I have taken pictures with a lower ISO with this camera in much better light and not had them anywhere near as sharp – definitely a setting worth playing with.

I took this picture with my compact (Canon S90), ISO80, 1/500secs at 15mm (almost).  In Lightroom I changed the camera calibration to Landscape, a tip I recently picked up from a vodcast which made the blues and greens more vivid.

I took the picture with my compact camera, but cropped in close as the centre seemed to be fairly sharp.  I like the brightness of the petals, and the slight clash with the yellow parts of the centre.

Taken at 1/160secs, f/4.0mm, 6mm, ISO80.

The camera was on macro setting, 1/80secs, f/4.0, 6mm, ISO80.

I found this group as I was wandering across a field after looking at some other mushrooms.  I thought that taking the group from above would make for a different shot, usually mushrooms, as with many other plants, are photographed from the side.  There were so many shapes, sizes and colours all crammed together, that I thought it was quite an interesting group – even if there are some bits of grass and dandelion leaves muscling in on the action.

The part of the picture that I am not sure about is the large mushroom in the top left hand corner, maybe it is a little too large?

I took this with my Canon Powershot S90, set at 1/30secs, f/4.0, 6mm at ISO80.

I therefore took advantage and went for a walk in the sunshine this lunchtime.  I took lots of pictures (even more than I took on my way to work), but when looking at them in Lightroom, this one caught my eye.  It is of a seed head from a greater willowherb plant – these are the pink flowers that spring up on all the roadsides.  However, I had not noticed before how intricate the seed head is when it has just opened.  They look a little like spider webs, with the fine parachute held between the prongs of the seed case.

I just wanted to share my new discovery with you – it is amazing what you find when you start taking pictures.

The photo was taken with my S90 at ISO80, 1/320 secs at 6mm, f/4.0.

Last week was different.  There was a brilliant sunset the week before, and the weather (as you may have noticed) has barely changed, it has merely become  hotter.  So, with James suffering from a cold that I accidentally (honest) gave him, I was at leisure to stop on the way back.  With hindsight I should have taken a larger camera, but there is always next week.

Has the picture turned out as I had hoped?  Using the idea of the picture being able to reflect the mood at the time, then I think it does.  The foreground could be a little better exposed, perhaps a little more fill light is in order, but I like the colours, the reflection of the sky in the canal, the sweeping curve of the path and the position of the narrowboat on the left.  The sunset is even in the top third of the picture!

The settings used by the camera (Canon S90) were 1/100secs at f/4.0, ISO 80 and 6mm.

As you can see there is a substantial difference in the quality of the photo with the standard sharpening (in the middle) proving to be the better of the three.

The sharpened version seems to be the worst, suffering from the low light making the picture noisier.  (I set the camera on automatic (and macro) and let it choose its own settings.  Interestingly it chose a slightly higher ISO setting for the standard photo.)

Today I took a trip to Ryton Organic Gardens to test drive my new camera, and, predictably, it was the macro function that got the workout (there isn’t much in the way of landscape to photograph at this time of year at Ryton).  To make things even better the anenome blanda were flowering (one of my favourite spring flowers) and they were being visited by bees – another favourite photography topic of mine.

The S90 has a lot of features that make it a great point and shoot, but which I will possibly never use.  I set the camera onto macro function in the program mode and kept the ISO at 200.  The camera chose a focal length of 6mm, a shutter speed of 1/400secs (I don’t think the ixus would have been that fast) and f/4.0.

I think this picture is pretty good, I like the colours as they come out of the camera, and it seems pretty sharp.  The only thing that was misbehaving was the bee!

When I put it in Lightroom and zoomed in I was still pretty happy with the result – you can judge for yourself – the shot below is pretty much a 1:1 crop.

So, first impressions – when it comes to macros it produces the excellent images I have come to expect from Canon (although I have had a little bit of wandering focus that I will have to master).