Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Conquering the wobbles - cosc atrium after dark

This evening I had a meeting in the department which ran a bit late. That is, after most people had already left (though there were quite a few active asian communities gathering in corners) and the skies were getting dark outside.

A perfect opportunity to take some snaps of the department atrium with full lighting (and without being disturbed)!

From Uni Snapshots



From Uni Snapshots

I think I'm finally starting to master hand-holding "low-light" shots with longish exposures (the first one here is 1/3 second). Especially compared to this mess just a few months ago. Still, it's of course no match for a tripod shot. However, deep down I'd really just like fancier equipment that I could actually control in some way to use shorter exposures with decent results still, since trying to stand still like this in a busier location and in transit would be much harder to get these acceptable results. Also, it might not be quite as much fun learning to keep things really steady (hehe).

From Uni Snapshots

Then again, maybe these were all just flukes ;)

3 comments:

  1. I've always felt that shooting with a camera in low light was like shooting a rifle- inhale fully, exhale fully, pause, shoot.

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  2. Try making a brace - eg. camera in right hand, put left hand on right shoulder to make a triangle, put camera on top of left elbow. Even better if you can lean against something like a pole or column.

    Otherwise just get a 2Kg camera, that helps ;)

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  3. A 2kg camera... I've had one since yesterday afternoon (more details soon) does indeed help.

    The first night-shot out the window I took with it was by and large great (especially considering that I was a bit surprised afterwards to realise it had chosen to do a 1 sec exposure). Had to pixel peep quite hard to see what looked like faint 2-px blur :)

    Anyways, the brace idea is something that I've heard of, though haven't really tried yet. The ones here were mostly done through a combination of pulling the camera in quite closely, and various variations on the breathing idea which seem to get things most of the way there.

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