Although I’d never admit it in an online profile of any sort I do like going for a drive in the hills - in this instance going up to the Adelaide Hills when they’re beautiful and green and lush.

Because we’ve had so much rain this autumn and even in the first week of winter, the hills are just gorgeous at the moment. On the weekend we visited some friends in the hills who have a bit of land attached to their property.

The trees in the background are theirs.

So is the chook shed. I’m surprised JJ didn’t go in there for a long time doing some chicken talking.

But he probably didn’t because they weren’t actually in their home, but nestled up in a nearby shed.

While we were there we noticed one of their sheep had a limp so we herded them into a small yard so the sore leg could be examined more closely.

I grew up on a farm that had sheep so I’m quite used to the ways of sheep, including them not wanting to go anywhere near a human  if they can help it.

On any country property that has a bit of room there’s inevitably something rusty. This is from a car that’s been cannibalised for spare parts.

I’d planned to head home for dinner but we ended up staying (not that late) so our drive home was in the wet, dark and cold but when I got home I lit the fire which I’d prepared earlier and had a quiet night at home in front of the fire - another thing I would never say in an online profile of any sort.

I don’t like to complain about the rain except for when it gets in the way of me getting wet or my clean clothes not being able to dry.

This morning I got some damp clothes off the line and lucky I did because it’s raining again now and it looks to be set in for the rest of the day.

We also did our first Scout bottle drive and it drizzled for a lot of it so those of us who didn’t have a rain jacket got a bit wet.

But I’m not complaining about the rain. We’re still on water restrictions here so any rain we get is welcomed.

There was a bit of a respite from the drizzle so I took some photos of raindrops. I love raindrops on leaves.

Oh, and raindrops on my bountiful crop of nearly ripe oranges.

Looks like this little creepy crawly is probably enjoying a leaf from my lemon tree.

The agave is always magnificent, raindrops or not.

I got my camera out before and had a play outside with it (subtext - I’m procrastinating from cleaning chores). I played with some settings and tried to get some interesting photos out of something I find pretty ordinary. I’ve mentioned before I’m a fan of the aperture setting so that’s what I used.

These photos were shot in RAW format and I played with them in the Photoshop CS3 RAW editor. Don’t know the exact name of it but the file extension out of the camera is CR2 and these open in Photoshop. I don’t know heaps about RAW but I do know that you can do a heck of a lot more when they’re in this format than you can when they’re in JPG format.

It’s enabled me to bring out a lot more detail in this photo than there was in the original and make it a bit more interesting than it was.

I included Monty below. She knows I was taking a photo of her. Again RAW helped me out here because it helped me to pick up more detail with her too. Because she has mainly black fur (although a steadily increasing amount of gray is appearing) most photos don’t pick up that much detail.

Now I’ve wasted just enough time that it’s nearly time to go do the school pickup. Procrastination is a wonderful thing.

Usually at Easter time I don’t go away with the masses for the four days. Last weekend we went to some friends holiday home for the Sunday night. We stayed about one day overall and it was lovely just to do that one day.

Their house is near Lake Albert at Meningie. Lake Albert’s water used to go all the way to the reeds you can see in the photo below. Now, due to the drought the water levels have gone right down.

We took our chairs and a couple of drinks to the shore level and sat down in readiness for the sunset.

The boys went for a swim in the water.

I noticed this rusted out 44 gallon drum and couldn’t resist taking a photo of it as the setting sun shone. This drum had rusted out because it used to be submerged in water. We also found a couple of empty beer bottles.

Who can resist having a mud fight?

The result of the mud fight.

And when some has a new camera (ie me) sometimes people can’t resist having a go with it so I end up in a shot. I’m  the one standing up at the back.

And I love this photo of JJ and his mate. JJ’s on the left.

I managed to get the sun just as it disappeared. Ever notice how quickly this actually happens? If you look away for a moment, it’s snuck down behind the horizon all ready to greet our northern hemisphere friends for their morning.

Yesterday was a gorgeous autumn day, sky was blue, a gentle breeze in the air, and it was warm but not too warm. After doing my cleaning chores I decided we’d go for a drive in the Adelaide Hills - something I don’t normally do unless I’m visiting friends up there.

We ended up at Gumeracha which has a giant rocking horse, a toy factory and a small park with some animals.

It costs $2 to climb up the rocking horse and it wasn’t until I’d paid and climbed up a flight of stairs that I realised the rest of the way to the top meant climbing ladders. Naturally I was wearing a skirt! I was all right going up the ladder but going down freaked me out a bit more and as soon as we both got down to the bottom JJ wanted to go up again. Guess what, we didn’t.

The little animal park had an assortment of animals from swans, peacocks, one sheep, ducks, a couple of emus and a few wallabies. The animals are really tame because they’re used to being given food from strangers who walk through their park with bags or little buckets of pellets.

I did buy some things from the toy factory which I’ll show off in another post. I could have spent a whole lot more money in there as there was some great stuff.

JJ had been complaining of feeling sick and hadn’t eaten his lunch so we went straight home afterwards. I wonder if the windy roads made him feel a bit carsick and sitting in the back probably didn’t help him at all. He feel asleep on the way home as I negotiated my way down Gorge Road pulling over occasionally so the faster drivers could go past me.

And then he wouldn’t let me take his photo - talk to the hand mum.

My whole aim had been to take some photos of the gorgeous autumn colour but I think I was a bit too early for the majority of it. I saw some autumnal trees but not many and it’s hard to pull over sometimes, and to see when concentrating on staying on the road.

I’ll be doing the I like walks along the beach and quiet nights at home posts next!

I’m getting THIS close to buying myself a DSLR camera. I’m still loving using my sister’s Canon 350D and am 99% certain I’ll get the Canon 450D. I went and tried one out today and got a price for it. I’m sleeping on it! Update: I slept on it last night and I bought it - the Canon 450D twin lens kit, camera bag, extended warranty, another SD card. Am charging the battery as I type.

Anyway, yesterday morning, the birds were making lots of noise in a tree I’ve got out the back so I dashed inside, put the zoom lens on my sister’s camera and went outside to take photos.

Even though it’s blurry I love this photo. The zoom lens I was using doesn’t have an inbuilt image stabiliser and when (not if) when I get my camera I’ll be getting a lens with an image stabiliser function. Now I know when looking at camera websites what IS means

Firstly, I wish I could say that I was trying out a DSLR camera I could actually keep. I also want to say that it’s my sister’s camera that I’m borrowing and not one I’ve been given out to try by anyone.

I own an SLR camera that I bought years ago, so it’s not the digital type, and because every shot I used went onto film which I had to pay to process I never experimented like I can with a digital camera. Since that SLR camera my first digital camera was a cheap Kodak 3x optical zoom which was kind of okay for two minutes but I wanted something with more zoom and more features and on impulse one day I bought a Panasonic 12x zoom. This camera has served me really well but I notice the lag inbetween photos quite often and I’d like more options available with different lenses.

Because a decent DSLR camera is costly, I thought I’d see if I could try one out, hence borrowing the camera from my sister. So I’m borrowing her Canon 350D.

When I first got it out the bag I didn’t really know where to start so I got out the manual and had a bit of a read to gain some more understanding. I said a bit of a read - I haven’t devoured the manual.

Things I love about it:

• The way it instantly automatically focuses and how obvious that is through the viewfinder.
• The way I can keep clicking the shutter button and it takes photos (worth mentioning again).
• It doesn’t take long to turn on.
• Having more options to take the type of photo you want.

I thought I’d dash outside this morning and take some photos using a different aperture setting. I’m finally starting to understand what effect this has on photos.

The lower the aperture setting is, the less of the image is in focus. This is fantastic if you want that depth of field, blurry background, or bokeh, as it’s called. I only learned that word a few months ago.

So I did some experimenting.

I took two shots of the same thing with different aperture settings. And this is the other thing about digital cameras I love. Back in the days when I used my non digital SLR I’d write settings down so if I particularly liked a photo then I knew how I’d taken it. As you can imagine that was very laborious. After taking the photos below I looked up the file properties in Photoshop and got settings from there.

This is the next door neighbour’s Jasmine which always grows over the fence into my place and desperately needs a prune. With this photo you wouldn’t necessarily know that because I’ve used an aperture setting of 5.0.

The photo below has the same subject but you can see more of the background because the aperture is at a higher setting of 29 and it’s easier to see how much the Jasmine has grown into my backyard from the next door neighbour’s and how slack I am at getting round to doing chores like this. Hmmm.

I did one more example, this time of the clothes line. Aperture setting was 5.6 and focus is on the peg. It looks like I’ve applied a texture to the background but I didn’t.

Here’s pretty much the same photo with aperture of 25. I find it all a bit busy and I don’t know what to focus on.

Obviously you’d want a higher aperture setting if you want more of the photo to be in focus, like a group of people, but for a photo to have a single subject you want to focus on and pop out, a smaller aperture setting is the go.

When I say smaller aperture setting, I mean the number. The smaller the aperture number, the larger the lens (aperture’s) opening is. I know - confusing. The way I see it is that the smaller the aperture number you use on the camera, the less you will be able to focus on in the shot and the larger the aperture number on your camera, more will be in focus on your photograph.

Below are some links to more explanations about aperture settings as I’ve explained it in really simple terms above without mentioning shutter speeds or focal length. I did, however, note that the smaller my aperture (or f-stop) setting, the quicker the shutter speed was. It’s something to do with letting the right amount of light in.

• Video explaining depth of field
• Depth of field explanation

I’m enjoying using the Canon but before I fork out the money for one of these babies I want to try out other brands. When I bought my first SLR camera I spent two hours in the camera shop before I left it with my purchase. I’d say that’s what I’ll do when buying a DSLR too. Although winning one would be ideal.