Saturday, July 23, 2011

Steady, steady.

A tripod is an essential piece of accessory in a photographers kit. I have often had difficulties clicking pictures in low light, but have figured out ways to keep the camera steady. If you are clicking pics with exposure times over a second, it is essential to take care of the shake caused, when you click the shutter release. An easy way to avoid that is to use the timer option of the camera. When set at a 2 sec timer, you have a good two seconds to click the button, and get a good grip of the camera before the picture is clicked. Also, if you are clicking pictures with exposure times of around the one second mark, the vibration caused by the mirror would also be a cause of concern, especially if you don't have a lens (or in rear cases even a camera) with vibration reduction. And for this you can use a feature called "Mirror Lockup", which I was kinda surprised to find hidden in my camera as well. What this does is, it locks up the mirror well before the image is actually captured. This way there is no mechanical movement when the image is actually clicked. The Live View option of your camera could also be used to solve this problem, but for some reason, it just doesn't do it for me. Anyway, I leave you with two images, both derivatives of the same picture. One slightly touched up, and the other a highly touched up picture, the result of an exploration session of the Adobe's Lightroom.
Steady steady

Steady steady