I just finished a 30-day trek around southern Europe with my best friend (my wife Barbara), and my Lumix G5. This composite shot (one of over 4500 taken during the trip) is of one of the Dresden Museums, just down the plaza from Frauenkirche cathedral. I left my big Nikon at home and traveled with my mirror-less Lumix G5, two lenses, and a MeFoto Roadtrip tripod packaged in a CaseLogic sling. Dresden is an amazing city! Put it on your bucket list.
I put myself on a very strict photo regimen. Since I preach about the necessity of understanding light, I figured I had to put it into action. I decided to shoot by The Deerhunter mandate: one shot, one kill. No bracketing, no retakes, and no peeking. Dangerous? You bet. Scary? Yep. But a very rewarding challenge. I only reviewed the images each evening as I downloaded them to my laptop.
For the most part, the images are unedited. What you see is what the camera captured.
This image started out as three images that were “photomerged…” in Photoshop. Aside from that, they are virgin pixels. Morning sunlight coming across the scene provided the contrast. Low ISO (160), f5.6 aperture and a moderate (1/400) speed provided the stable focus. Spot metering on the glass above the front door delivered the tonal balance. The WB was set to Daylight.
Since the image contained a full range of tones, the resulting black and white was pretty much a straight conversion with just a little contrast added for drama.
Reading and metering the available light accurately and setting the camera to address those readings almost always delivers results for me. The real discipline is in taking the time to use my brain before I use my camera. Get bright about light and the dividends will pay off big time.
I also suggest that you take the opportunity to learn more about the basics of light and color from my video series entitled the “Gotta Know Videos: Part One- Light and Color.” http://gottaknowvideos.com
Until next time, this is Herb Paynter
hpaynter@imageprep.net
