Monday, July 18, 2011

manual exposure

Have you been shooting in Program or Auto mode for quite some time now?  And you've been afraid to try manual mode.  Skies are a great subject to experiment with Manual exposure mode.  Point your lens at the part of the sky you want to meter for and play around with the fstop and shutter speed, keeping your ISO set between 200 and 400.  I have found that oftentimes skies look more dramatic when they are under exposed.  This shot was taken in South Dakota at ISO 400, f4.0 and 1/750 sec.  I thought to crop the trees out, but then I like the balance they give to the dark part of the sky.  In addition, the shapes of the clouds are similar to the shapes of the tree branches.
This was taken at the same time but more to the East
And one more...

Pic of the day: I took the liberty of running a little noise reduction on it.  But I really like the inclusion of the multiple layers and the great choice of foreground .  Notice the thin line of black at the bottom contrasting with the white on the top of the image.  Great shot!

1 comment:

john G. said...

Boy, you have sure captured the beautiful colors of nature in these pictures. Thanks for explaining what settings you used and below how you centered and structured the lighting for those great ones of Seth.