Saturday, June 21, 2008

Top Of The Tipple


17 mm., 25 seconds at f16 with the 17-40 on 1Ds2
It's extremely dark in there - auto focus won't work, manual focus is difficult since you can't see the main objects in the view finder - you rely on focusing on specular highlights where you can find them. It's remarkable that the camera did as well as it did as regards the dynamic range - a bit of recovery in camera raw and some judicious darkening of the lightest boards and the results are quite remarkable given the difficulty of the subject.

One thing I can see that I want to change is to increase the contrast in the roof boards on the left so they better match the ones on the right. No doubt other changes will occur to me over time, some of which will prove ill advised, others important.

2 comments:

Seinberg said...

One technique I've found to work really well while focusing even in 100% dark areas is to carry a small, bright LED flashlight with me. When I decide what I want to focus on, I shine the flashlight only on that area and either manually focus or let autofocus figure it out. Since I started using a camera with LiveView, I do manual focusing in these situations by zooming in 10x and then adjusting - this is generally tack sharp).

George Barr said...

Good idea. I have even heard of using a laser pointer. It's not often I have so little light to work with (and bright windows preventing my eyes from really accommodating. Will start carrying flashlight with me.

George