While visiting my friend Melinda yesterday, I had to confess to her that I had done almost no exploration of the custom setting features of my new camera, my Nikon D800. She was happy to explore the menus and to make changes to settings she thought would help me because many of the options available on the D800 are also options that she has on her Nikon D7000. Because of the similarities, she was comfortable sorting through and making suggestions for changes. One of the settings she added was the view finder grid display which I was happy to have added because superimposing a grid of the rule of thirds is helpful, especially since I’ve noticed that too often my tendency, in the excitement of finding a good subject, is to place that subject dead center. The grid will remind me to take a breath and compose my shot with more thought.
With no thoughts of what to photograph today, I went outside into the yard eager to use the new camera tool, the viewfinder grid, and find something interesting. As I looked through the viewfinder to compose some shots, I realized that the grid in the camera viewfinder is NOT a grid of the rule of thirds. After considerable research on-line, including at Nikon’s site where they tell us that some Nikon cameras have a viewfinder grid that IS an overlay of a grid of the rule of thirds, I have no idea what the Nikon grid is in the D800. It does not appear to me to be the Divine Proportion also known as the Golden Rectangle or the Fibonacci (I love that name) Ratio which is another artistic composition method similar to the rule of thirds but without the evenly spaced three by three rectangular grid. The grid in my viewfinder is divided in half horizontally and vertically, then each of those is divided, but not evenly, so there are 16 divisions instead of 9. So I am confused and think that I might turn off this feature until I can figure out how to use it effectively. Also, I learned that some of these ratios seem to be available in Light Room as overlays for cropping but I don’t know if they’re available in Adobe Photoshop. Something to research on another day.
So, this is a long-winded way of saying that I cropped today’s shot and I have no idea whether I cropped it using the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Rectangle, the Fibonacci Ratio or the Divine Proportion. I just kept moving the cropping tool until I liked the results. I was focusing on the lavender when this wasp flew into view. It’s the most interesting shot I took today.
Focal Length 300mm
Aperture Priority
ISO 100
f/5.6
1/250
WB – Sunny
Cropped
What a fabulous photo! That bee just hovering there, the creamy bokeh- bee-utiful!
Yes, the gridlines don’t use the rule of thirds. I always assumed they were there to keep things straight. On mine, there is pretty close to a vertical rule of thirds indicator- where the roundish part ends. Sorry if I led you astray! I still think they are very handy- I had them on my D5000. It wasn’t on the D90??? But I do think a rule of thirds grid would be handier!