Home
RSS: 
Recognition
Equipment
| Camera | Fujifilm FinePix A900 |
| Exposure Mode | auto |
| Focal Length | 8.8mm |
| Aperture | f/2.9 |
| Exposure | 1/100 sec. |
| ISO Speed | 200 |
| Flash | off |
Lets start with the photo and explain why I thought it worth spending £3 on a new piece of photography equipment. The photo shows the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Mary appearing out of the early morning mist of Lake Bled in Slovenia. The layout of this blog means that I can't easily use a bigger version of the photo, but if you want to see more detail then I have blogged this photo before so you can see it in all it's glory over on Tales from an English Coffee Drinker.
The photo was taken around 7am on the 13th of January 2009 in temperatures of around -17C. Given the small shutter button on the camera I can't operate it with gloves on and so my hands were fairly numb and I did have problems holding the camera still. I took eight photos to get the whole scene and after combining the photos here is how the panorama looked.
Obviously to improve the composition of the image I had to crop to remove the section of boardwalk and the tree branches from the right hand side. I also had to straighten the image so that the lake was level and the church spire didn't look like it was falling over.
There are cases where the orientation of the camera isn't that important but in images such as this keeping the camera level is vital, otherwise the final image just looks wrong. In this image there isn't much detail at the edges and so straightening the photo on the computer was possible. When taking panoramas or 3D photos keeping the camera level becomes even more important. The best solution of course is to simply ensure that you keep the camera level as you take the shot. The easiest way of checking the orientation of the camera is with a spirit level. There are a number of spirit levels available that fasten to the head of a tripod but as I don't currently own a full blown tripod they aren't an option. So the solution I've opted for is a 3-axis spirit level that simply clips into the flash hot shoe on the camera. It fits on my main camera perfectly and is in my field of view when I'm looking at the LCD on the back of the camera and so is easy to check. Of course this wouldn't actually have helped with the photo I took in Bled as the small camera I travel with doesn't have a hotshoe.I've got a couple of trips planned over the next few weeks so hopefully I'll have lots of new photos to blog about rather than having to talk about an old photo again next week.
2 comments:
This is very Caspar David Friedrich and reminds me of his Winter Landscap with Church which hangs in , I think, The Tate and with which IO fell in love.
Well I'd never heard of Caspar David Friedrich before but after a quick hunt on Wikipedia I did find a photo of his "Winter Landscape with Church" oil on canvas. I'm guessing that the painting is much better seen in real life than on the web but even so there is definately a resemblance; the colours are close and the way both churches kind of appear out of the mist is very similar.
Post a Comment