So the camera has been bought, all that remained was the small matter of learning to use the damn thing. I mean honestly, does something designed merely to capture light need a dozen buttons and, apparently, limitless configuration options ???
The Pentax K5 (like most other SLR cameras I’d imagine) does have an idiot setting. Turn the selector switch to the little green square and it sets auto-everything, to the point that if you press the shutter and the camera’s not happy with life it’ll point blank refuse to take the photo….
The first venture outdoors was into Oughtibridge Woods with my more-or-less willing model Grendel the Labradoodle. I got to use the camera, he got to run about, everyone wins.
And we found out exactly how good the photos on “idiot mode” could be. I mean it was much more luck (and the camera’s intelligence) than judgement, but this is one of the first shots I took..
I mean, how the hell am I EVER going to top that ???
The Spring time woods are a happy hunting ground for the trainee photographer, it’s unfortunate that the more you read about composition, exposure and light quality the more difficult it becomes to get the final image to match themasterpiece you see in your mind.
Ahhh, for the days when just being in focus was enough 
The other bugger is that the quick snapshots often come out better than the photos that I spend time composing. Here we see the fearless Squirrel hunter getting ready to launch himself after something or other. Now experts may have another opinion (and if you do, keep it to yourself) but I really like the pattern of the tree trunks and the way they’re lit from one side.
Out and about there are loads of things that I look at and think “ooohh, that’d be a good photo” only for the final shot to be a bit, well, crap. A frost covered field is a white blob, a solitary tree is a splodge on the white blob, and so on.
The frosty morning did give me a chance to put some of the depth of field theory into practice using the 100mm macro lens.
This little plant shoot was only about an inch long and I took loads of photos of it, experimenting with different settings, to see how the changes effected the final photo.
Lots of really crap shots resulted. And it was chuffing cold on the knees.
The nice forestry people had left some nice photogenic piles of logs lying about too. Well I’m sure they must be photogenic, not that I could make them look like anything other than, well, a pile of logs.
At least it’s a digital camera, so the hundreds of photos I took didn’t cost me anything It was interesting, finally, to begin to get some sort of nascent eye for the composition. This was made easier by the fact the logs weren’t going anywhere. All of the books talk about patterns being a good thing, circles are a pattern, right ??
After photographing the logs from one side, which was in shadow, viewing them from the other side showed things in *ahem* a whole new light, as you can see from this macro shot.
Anyway, I’m not too bothered about the composition and lighting yet. I’m just settling for things being in focus…