Do you ever feel like a rookie in an area that you should be an expert? Believe it or not, I do know my way around a camera but you wouldn't have guessed that last night. I picked my spot down by the river and set up my tripod. My routine is always to pick my shot and then literally take the same shot over and over again looking for the perfect light.
I found that shot and locked my tripod but then hesitated. I decided to get in a little closer so I changed lenses. So on went my 70-200. I started taking test shots only to find that every shot was either shaky or out of focus. I cleaned my filter, same result. I removed the filter, same result. I played with my focus, same result. I cleaned both ends of the lens, same result. I threw a tantrum, same result. After what felt like an hour (but was probably 5 minutes), it dawned on me that I had thrown a vibration reduction lens on a tripod and forgotten to turn off the vibration reduction. My lens was expecting some camera shake and was auto correcting - but my camera was on a tripod and didn't have any shake. Rookie mistake.
I then proceeded to take nice crisp shots but couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the shutter speed I was looking for. In this case I probably went 20 minutes before it dawned on me that I was in aperture priority mode (you can change the aperture but the camera picks the shutter speed) instead of in manual. AHHHHH! How did I managed to miss that? I cannot even begin to express how much this has me baffled. I have taken these night cityscape shots hundreds of times. I am going to have to blame it on the massive head cold that has me in misery (gotta blame something, right?).
"So you messed up for a couple of minutes, what's the big deal?", you ask. In the world of night cityscapes, you have a 10 minute window to nail the perfect shot. With 1 day per city, that leaves us 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening - if we have perfect weather both times. There is no time for mistakes. You must bring your "A-game" every time you are out and need to maximize every shot during those 10 minutes. Hopefully I have managed to get my mistakes out of the way on day 1!
Anyway, despite the mistakes, I did manage to land a usable shot. Here is my first quick attempt at post production. Presenting Harrisburg:
1 comment:
I'm believing you got all the nonsense out of the way last night and now . . . smooth sailing! I'm guessing you're done with night shots in Pittsburgh by now. Hope your weather will cooperate and that your cold gets better quickly. My love to you, Dave and Shelley. Have lots of fun!
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