walkabout at night ... shoot like day
Yesterday evening I felt like walking about. I have not walked into the City for a while, day or night, and it is a shame, because I guesstimate my front door to be about 999 meters or so from the City center. Ten minutes at a saunter and I am at the Berkley Memorial, the heart of the City ... but it takes twice that time to walk back up the gentle hill to my chateau. Why do I drive the half mile into the City, drive around for 10 minutes looking for a parking spot, can't find any Free parking, so I drive back home and park the car, then walk back down into the City. Some crazy world we live in these days. Is it us or is it the world?
So minutes to seven finds me sauntering down into the City, with a weighty camera bag on shoulder. I though about carrying the monopod, but that was too heavy, so I am shooting "podless" tonight. I have now taken to shooting after dark without tripod or a sturdy support, and to make matters worst I am shooting hand held. In coming around to this approach I have readjusted some of my views on imaging, and can now accept, tolerate and appreciate, the images created using higher ISO setting, and more so from an 8 MP camera. The images made at the same ISO with a 15 MP or 21 MP camera is significantly different ... and I have to move in that direction ASAP. Of course there is software that can "fix" the high ISO images, but why worry, nothing is perfect, and it is so I like it anyway.
I do not smoke or drink [alcohol] and I believe that my nerves are good and my hand shaking is non existent, so I am supposed to be able to 'hand hold' my camera down to 1/10 of a second shutter speed and slower, but why push it. So the viewfinder scene determines the ISO setting used to give a blur free exposure. Of the 93 images only one showed blur, camera shake ... and the exposure was 1/4 second .. and there was no insurance shot. So I have to snap that again on another walkabout night. Surprisingly though other frames exposed at 1/6 second were relatively perfect.
I must say that I can live with the Canon EOS-20D and its matrix metering, which does a pretty good job even with light sources in the frame. I don't even have to HDR process these images, they are pretty good out of the raw converter ... and don't ask which one ... because I am not telling. Most of the images were made with ISO 800 and in a case or two the shutter speed was 1/100 second and higher. I should have readjusted the ISO down to 400, maybe 200, to get a better image, but what the heck, I am not a perfectionist. I will be walking about more at evenings now [for the exercise] and will don my photo backpack. There is nothing as good as being in the right place, at the right time, with a loaded camera in your hand.
So minutes to seven finds me sauntering down into the City, with a weighty camera bag on shoulder. I though about carrying the monopod, but that was too heavy, so I am shooting "podless" tonight. I have now taken to shooting after dark without tripod or a sturdy support, and to make matters worst I am shooting hand held. In coming around to this approach I have readjusted some of my views on imaging, and can now accept, tolerate and appreciate, the images created using higher ISO setting, and more so from an 8 MP camera. The images made at the same ISO with a 15 MP or 21 MP camera is significantly different ... and I have to move in that direction ASAP. Of course there is software that can "fix" the high ISO images, but why worry, nothing is perfect, and it is so I like it anyway.
I do not smoke or drink [alcohol] and I believe that my nerves are good and my hand shaking is non existent, so I am supposed to be able to 'hand hold' my camera down to 1/10 of a second shutter speed and slower, but why push it. So the viewfinder scene determines the ISO setting used to give a blur free exposure. Of the 93 images only one showed blur, camera shake ... and the exposure was 1/4 second .. and there was no insurance shot. So I have to snap that again on another walkabout night. Surprisingly though other frames exposed at 1/6 second were relatively perfect.
I must say that I can live with the Canon EOS-20D and its matrix metering, which does a pretty good job even with light sources in the frame. I don't even have to HDR process these images, they are pretty good out of the raw converter ... and don't ask which one ... because I am not telling. Most of the images were made with ISO 800 and in a case or two the shutter speed was 1/100 second and higher. I should have readjusted the ISO down to 400, maybe 200, to get a better image, but what the heck, I am not a perfectionist. I will be walking about more at evenings now [for the exercise] and will don my photo backpack. There is nothing as good as being in the right place, at the right time, with a loaded camera in your hand.
Comments