Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Travel Tuesday - How To Do This


Here are two photos of the natural fountain on the northwest corner of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.  The top one is in standard auto mode on a digital camera.  This is the image you would get with a camera phone.  The action is frozen, depth of focus is relatively shallow.  In the second image the water is moving, it is cascading, there is a wider range from near to far that is in focus. Not everyone, and not always, but many people would find the second image more interesting, dare I say more beautiful.  It is essentially the same scene, the difference is in shutter speed.  

So, how to do that. If your camera has an aperture priority mode, click on that, and stop the lens down, in other words turn the dial until the largest possible number appears, that will force the camera into the slowest shutter speed.  Alternatively if your camera has a shutter priority mode, you can dial down to the slowest possible shutter speed. Many digital cameras will resist letting you go to a shutter speed below what freezes the action.  Alternatively you can go fully manual, select a low ISO speed, I would go down to 50 if I could, then set aperture to mid range, and you should get a shutter speed of 1/4 of a second or slower. 

The second image above was ISO 100, f32, 1/6th of a second, handheld with a lens with VR vibration reduction.  An amazing image for handheld at that shutter speed, I used aperture priority mode, on a Nikon D5500, and an 18-55mm DX VR-II lens.   

This is an interesting museum.  The building is very impressive, the collection and displays have improved over the years, but it still struggles with trying to paint a coherent picture of vastly diverse histories and cultures. It tries to make everyone happy.  
 

18 comments:

  1. I love fountains! And I like both pictures just equally. I like picture as natural and untouched as possible.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I seldom edit a photo, I am enjoying the photo geek settings on the camera, slowing down the shutter speed is as old as photography

      Delete
  2. Thanks for sharing the information about historical museum. And both the click was awesome. I also love to travel recently I have spend my holidays in pocono
    and all the amenities were handled by Grand Leisure Travel

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am going to let this one slide, at least this spammer actually read the post and said something relevant to the post. Oh and his blog is blank.

      Delete
  3. I know nothing about cameraspeak, but I like the first one better. Conditioning, maybe?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I actually prefer how the water dances in the first photo. I wish I could have gotten into the museum when I was there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When you come back, the building is amazing

      Delete
  5. Anonymous8/10/2021

    I will refer back to this post for opening up my aperture. The second photo is certainly stylish, but I like the first one better, It shows the waterfall as it is in a moment of time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I get a feeling of more movement in the first, while the second seems more serene.
    Lovely.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Words I couldn't find, thank you

      Delete
  7. It's nice to see the contrast. I still like the first one best.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very cool! You're such a bright little bunny!

    ReplyDelete
  9. This sounds like my sort of museum; I would like to see it.

    ReplyDelete