The Roof of the Mezqitta

In Spain last week and saw this unbelievable mosque in Cordoba. Built by the Moors about year 1000-1100 and then added on as a church starting 400 years later when the Moors were driven from Spain. I saw incredible delicate architecture with great light coming in. So what to do when it is dark, you don't have a tripod or DSLR and you want your images to be sharp. One set the ISO to 800, 2) find a firm surface to steady the camera, in this case- a rail and 3) set the camera to take 3 bracketed exposures 1/3 stop apart. So, steady the camera, compose and depress the shutter. The first image will likely be blurry from camera shake with depressing the shutter. But.......the next two will be sharp as the camera takes these shots without shutter depression-shake. An alternative is to use the self timer button set at 2 seconds and still bracket. Taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX5. Jeff

Street photography

This shot using Hyperfocal focusing as described in the post below. I used a Sony F828 digital camera with the lens set to 28 mm at f22 equivalent. I found this app called Old Photo Pro that can give an image a old picture look which I though was appropriate for these Chasidic boys at the Fair. Jeff

Men at Work

Great day for wandering around with a camera. Some ventured into the woods and creeks to shoot snow nature landscapes, as I did on Sunday. Today was about the urban scape and snow. Shot in color with a Fuji S3 Pro, ISO 400, 24 mm Nikon lens, f22 set to hyperfocal distance so everything from 1.5 feet to infinity was in focus, then converted to B&W in PS CS. If you don't know about hyperfocal distance for street shooting, you need to.

Check out:http://www.dofmaster.com/hyperfocal.html

There is a lot written about it. Basically it allows you to eliminate autofocus and the lag that will occur with AF systems when you depress the shutter. By setting focus to manual with a wide angle lens, putting the lens in its hyperfocal setting, everything with in that focus zone will come out sharp. In essence, you urn your camera into the fastest point and shoot around. This is essential for street photography at times. Jeff

Trees and Snow

We had a great fluffy snowfall last night. The kind that coats the trees and creates beautiful B&W images. I was out cross country skiing with my good friend Cliff today and came across this grouping of trees. I used an f-stop of 5.6, ISO 400, RAW on a Panasonic Lumix LX-5 camera and composed with main focus on the forward tree to the left. With all of these cameras, snow will be exposed a mid tone grey unless you do one of two things. You must open up the exposure in camera by 1-1and 1/3 stops if you don't process your images in the computer, or adjust the exposure histogram toward the right in levels or curves to show the proper color of the snow. If you shoot in RAW, white balance can easily be adjusted in processing. If not AWB may work but it's better to choose the proper scene balance in camera. For this image it would have been "cloudy". Alternatives to compensate for the color changes that can occur on cloudy, overcast days are to shoot a Custom WB off the snow or set a proper Kelvin temperature in camera to compensate. Jeff