Today, I took some 17 photos in and around the company. And I don’t have a single good one. Why?
Well maybe first because I tried something new. I did mostly people shots, and most of those were candids. But I wasn’t always close enough, or I got the lighting wrong, or I shot from the hip and missed it, anyway – I failed big time.
Another reason could be that my own expectations are much higher than they used to be. I see a missed shot, and I can still learn from it. Ming Thein has just written an article about perfection and content, with lots of very very good examples – well worth a read if you’re interested in photography.
Just a few minutes ago, I took a photo of Zuleikha reading. I let down the shutters on the window about 2/3 of their way, and with ISO 100 and an aperture of f=2.0, that gave me 1/10th of a second. Not perfect but just hand-holdable with the good in-body stabilization of Olympus.
Like I said: that image isn’t perfect. But it’s by far the best one I took today, and I like it a lot:
Thanks for viewing and reading.
Nice handhold and nice composition – golden ratio included! Are the differencies between ISO 100 and ISO 200 so great?
In the words of dpreview about the Leica M 9 black and white: ” Pull 160 is essentially the ISO 320 setting given 1EV extra exposure, with a different tone curve to give the correct final image brightness. The result is a reduction in highlight dynamic range, compared to the full ISO settings”
And a new aesthetic and tone curve of course!
It´s the same for the Olympus and ISO 100.
Did you ever check this out in a kind of a scientific way, like you did it so many times (e. g. Grey cards, raw converter check …).
Just want to say: 1/20 s would have been easier to handle… nonetheless of course: nice shot!
Thanks Thorsten.
The E-520 and the E-PL1 are different: base ISO of the former is 100, of the latter 200. And since the E-PL1 is about one stop better in noise performance than the older DSLR, I max that one out at ISO 400, but only use anything than base ISO when I absolutely have to (like just a few minutes ago in the office, when I set mostly everything to ‘auto’, and switched colour off just to get a portrait of a colleague at 1/20s).
And no, I didn’t do many semi-scientific tests; now I hardly do them at all anymore. I just look at what these cameras give me when taking normal photos, and try to decide for the right camera and lens combination before I go out with just one.
For the portrait in this one, I took the DSLR with the 50mm macro just because the 20mm on the E-PL1 would have given me too much of the surrounding. Of course I could have mounted that macro to the Pen, but then I would have had to ask Mitchie for the adapter first, and so on and so on – the situation as it was would likely have been gone until I would have been ready…