On a hot day (by my standards) in  Nimes, I was looking for the gardens that I had read about on Trip Advisor, turned the corner, and saw this site.  The waterway ran the whole way to the gardens.  The colours were stunning and, despite the fact that this was one of the major roads in the town there was an air of tranquility.  So, no apologies for a tourist photo on my blog.

The settings on the camera were (with 50mm lens) 1/80secs, f/9.0, ISO200.

My Canon S90 has a setting for low light, so I thought I would experiment and try it out despite the fact that it was a bit miserable and damp – no reason not to take pictures I thought.  The leaves on the pavement, and the pavement itself, were glistening in the rain – perfect photo material.

Basically the camera bumps up the ISO setting to 3200, but (considering my love-hate relationship with this camera) I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the picture that I got.

These leaves were lit by the yellow of the street light, so I adjusted the temperature a little in Lightroom to reduce the yellow cast, but other than that this is pretty much how it came out of the camera.

The resulting settings were ISO3200,1/50secs at f/2.0, 6mm.

I have taken pictures with a lower ISO with this camera in much better light and not had them anywhere near as sharp – definitely a setting worth playing with.

It is not a great shot, but I was trying not to get my camera too wet in the rain.  I also had to bring the exposure down a touch as it came out a little hazy, but it is pretty much a reflection of how I remember it.

I like it because it is taken in the country park, one of my favourite places, it has lots of autumn colour and layers of different trees, with the path leading the eye past them all (albeit down the centre of the shot – not necessarily ideal).

This was taken with my Canon S90, ISO80, 1/30secs, 6mm.

Autumn Leaves and Trees

Autumn brings opportunities and dilemmas for photographers.  On the one hand the colours can be fantastic, especially if you know where there are some acers or other members of the maple family.  On the other hand, the light can be drab, and the weather can be wet and windy.

If you strike it lucky and you find yourself on a sunny day (hopefully without too much of a breeze) in October near to some obliging acers, as I did in the middle of October in Batsford Arboretum, then there is another dilemma – a bit like Writer’s Block.  There is so much colour, how do you capture the essence of autumn – do you take a landscape shot, will the colours really come out as you had hoped?  Do you go for a close up?  Will the light be good enough to get a hand held shot with a macro lens – if you take a tripod will it be still enough to make it worthwhile?  In other words, decision overload.

Out of all of the shots I took at Batsford I have decided to put this one on the blog – that is not to say that there won’t be others, I took the macro shots, I took the landscape shots, I tried the light in the woodland shots, but I thought this one captured my day more and was a little bit different – you may disagree (you are allowed).  The colour of the leaves on the floor sums up autumn for me, but the strong shadow of the tree from which they had fallen reminds me that we did have some bright sunny days in my two weeks off work.

For those who are interested in such things, ISO 200, handheld macro lens of all things (who would have thought?), f/6.3 (would have liked more but beggars can’t be choosers and I had been facing the other direction taking macro shots shortly before) and 1/200 secs.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, I had my macro lens, but had forgotten my polarising filter  – never mind.  I had visions of autumn leaves (they have acers!), late flowers all brilliantly captured by my macro lens.  Then the sun went in – macro opportunities limited.  I opened up the lens, shifted to ISO 400 and did my best, after all f/4.0 should give a lovely fuzzy background.  If you want to see the most decent effort then you can find it on my Flickr stream.  The picture I have decided to post was taken with my Ixus.

Reflections in the Water at Birmigham Botanical Gardens

I was initially taken by the colours and the reflections (nothing like a little bit of water to boost the light levels) and took a couple of quick shots with my compact.  I then tried to get the same with my SLR – nothing doing, so I concentrated on the ferns using my macro lens – I was pleased with some of the pictures, but prefer the one pictured above.

What I like about this is the colours and the dark reflections as well as the way the green plant moves along the diagonal.  It is also ‘held in’ by the ferns at the bottom left, apart from the colour and texture that they provide I think the photo would be unbalanced without them.

For those with an interest in the settings of my mostly automatic compact, I chose ISO200, it came up with f/2.8, 5.8mm, 1/50 secs.