I went over to Fort Harrison State Park this morning, more to see what was going on than to do any serious shooting.  The light on the hillside across Delaware Lake was inviting so I set up to shoot in that direction.

I was so wrapped up in composing and shooting that I wasn’t paying much attention to the camera settings.  Where I usually shoot at f/11 in a focusing mode that allows the camera to pick where it will focus (normally the closest object), here it was at f/5.6 and focusing was set to a point off to the right, roughly where the dead tree is at the right of the image.  The focusing point was left over from a shoot a few days ago.  None of this mattered much for this particular shot.  The distance was such that I had enough depth of field and even if the camera had been free to pick where to focus, it would likely have focused where it did anyway.  On top of that, I intentionally overexposed the scene by two stops because normal exposure produced a rather dark image.  Correct exposure and where the camera would focus quickly became very important.

A blue heron flew across the lake to give me the opportunity for a great shot.  It was coming in from the left and cut right across my field of view about 20 feet away.  But the camera was focused off to the right (not very evident in this shot, but it was).  And the shot was two stops overexposed. 

I looked at the camera settings after the shot.  That’s when I saw how the focusing was set.  As you can see in the image, Photoshop did a good job recovering from overexposure but if the image is out of focus to begin with, it stays out of focus.  I try to remember to put the camera back to my favored settings when I shut it down, but sometimes I forget.  Oh well.

The rest of the morning produced some OK shots.  Here is one.

And here is a black and white shot.  It worked much better this way than in color.

My camera is put away for the present and I have checked it twice to make sure the right settings are in place.  They are.