Sunday, May 23, 2010

A Few Minutes Ago

We have t-storms in the area around us but not ON us... at the moment, anyhoo.  There were some interesting cloud formations right around sunset.  Two examples:


I'm more than a little disappointed with these shots; they're very grainy for ISO 400.  These were taken in shutter priority mode with my grab-shot camera at f/2, 1/1000 and 1/1200 sec (less than a minute apart), respectively.

7 comments:

  1. Hmm, your camera thought it was dark outside, hee. F2.1 is a really tough shutter setting, even on the 35mm lens. I use F2.1 when I want to get a short depth of field with my zoom lens (just a slice of focus, and out of focus everywhere else) but with lots of light.

    I think the culprit was the speed you chose. That's the kind of speed you'd want on an Indy car zipping by the hacienda.

    I'd suggest a tripod, or a stiff arm, and a shutter speed of say 1/125 or possibly lower. What this is going to do is make the shutter smaller (higher F-Stop) and allow the sensor to drink in light for a longer period, which these sensors really like.

    I think you have an excellent camera, but you are putting it to an extreme test. One that even film would be hard to meet the task. Painting with light, requires either a lot of light, or a long cature of light.

    Since the clouds are not moving at the same speed as the Indy car, I'd even go 1/60th of a second with a tri-pod.

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  2. And what happened with those storms? Because that looks a tad onimous.

    (my word is midrooki)

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  3. Buck - I was going to say something very similar to "Anon" above about the ISO. I would also agree with the shutter speed and F-stop comments. That storm is pretty scary looking - and the center of it and the bordering trees are very dark.

    Even grainy they are pretty cool anyway.

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  4. Anon: I took 33 shots last evening with varying shutter speeds and apertures. The problem with the lower shutter speeds/larger f-stop is how the camera "sees" the color, which is to say it doesn't. Sunsets are such dynamic things... you don't have much time to play with your settings! I've had some good results with this sort of subject matter in the past... mebbe I'll post an old shot today.

    Kath: The clouds were indeed ominous looking, but nothing happened. Which is both good and bad... we ALWAYS need rain around here, but I don't like it when it comes wrapped up in severe storms.

    Kris: What I said to Anon.

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  5. I'm ignorant of the finer (and even the not so fine) points of photography, but like Kris said, they look cool to me.

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  6. I'm not sure you folks know what a real ominous cloud looks like.

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  7. Dan: Thanks.

    Lou: I KNOW ominous. Two and a half years in OKC taught me that.

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