Wednesday, July 2, 2008

120:365 Experimenting

Anna: Our building managers had a parking ban on our level for cleaning, so we had to have our car out. With no nearby parking that's more than half an hour (though the cars parked in our access lane never seem to be ticketed), or wasn't on a residential only street, we decided to head to the museum for the day. It's a good place to practice low-light photography - and the parking is free. ;-)

When we got there, however, we discovered that tripods and monopods aren't allowed in any of the galleries without special permission from the marketing director. This was a surprise, as we've used both a number of times. We just happened to get someone at the admissions desk that remembered they weren't allowed - she even double checked the book, just to be sure.

This made things a bit more challenging. Especially for someone with shaky hands, like me!

One of the main problems with using the S3 is that, in situations like the museum, the camera wants to focus on the glass instead of what's behind it. It does have manual focus, but it's very limited. It's one of the main reasons I wanted to try out the D70, now that Philippe has stepped up to the D80. How I would do this without my monopod, I wasn't sure. Most of my photos didn't turn out. I'm just too shaky for longer exposures. I did manage a few that worked. The following pictures were resized to 35%, but are otherwise unaltered.

This silver cigarette case seems to have worked out. I could probably improve it with PSP X2, but not by much.











I actually got two shots of this that worked, though the other came out looking misty because of the reflection on the glass. From this angle, I only had the one spot light's glare to deal with. I love the intense blue of the glass inside, though it's a little hard to see it here.









The minerals collection in this museum is really impressive - and extremely difficult to photograph even with a tripod. This is pretty much the only one I took that was clear.

I had the camera on aperture priority. I can't say I'm happy with it. I might play around with the multi-program setting, instead.

Either way, I have a lot to learn about this camera.

1 comment:

Gawdess said...

looks like a lot of fun is going to be had!