Camera Labs

A good week for the surf at Snapper Rocks




Cheers

_________________
Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

Nice image - do you own a CPL? It'd really help the shot.

You may also like to try the same with a slower shutter on a tripod.

_________________

Thanks for the comments, I own a CPL but this was taken just after midday with the sun behind me, from what I've read a CPL should be used 90 degrees to the bright sun. I was there to shoot surfers so this one was just a bit different. If I used a slower shutter speed wouldn't the aperture open up and I would get the same shot?


Cheers

_________________
Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

In my experience there is always an effect when using a CPL, irrespective of whether the sun is shining directly onto your left or right cheek. The effect is certainly lessened, and you'll lose ~1.5stops dependant on CPL brand, but you'll certainly see the difference.

Regarding your shutter comment - you clearly have an understanding of the exposure trio (shutter, aperture, ISO) but you're only thinking of it in image brightness terms.

But, and it's a big but - shutter and aperture control two key creative effects, they aren't purely for exposure. The slower the shutter, the greater the motion blur & the faster the shutter, the more frozen your scene becomes. Aperture controls the depth of field - when you select a focus point for your image, imagine a big square window sitting on that point. When using a wide aperture, i.e f/1.4, only items through which your big window cuts will be in focus. To increase your depth of field and ensure that more of the area in front of and behind the window are sharp, you will need to close the aperture down, i.e. f/4.5. See the two images below.

You are right to say that each should remain balanced to keep a correctly exposed image - you should be using your camera's light meter to determine this. My suggestion was to slow the shutter - thus creating more motion blur in the water. The problem here is that you would've needed a tripod to keep the remaining static items (rocks, horizon) sharp. If you were dead-set on retaining the same depth of field (aperture) and my suggestion to use 1/4 sec shutter was a requirement, you would've need to manually block or add more light using ND filters or raising the ISO (or using flash) respectively, based on the ambient light conditions.

Do you ever shoot in manual mode, or always use shutter or aperture priority?

_________________

Thanks again for the comments Mitch, this was a bad day for me as I left the EV at +0.7 from my last shoot and I normally always have it set on -0.7 for the bright sun, hence the blown out sky. I took over 100 shots and for me this one and the surfer I posted were about the only two which are not to bad, the rest went in the trash.

I take no notice of the D7000 camera's light meter as it over exposes with no -EV, I generally use App mode, as the sun was in and out I used shutter priority to prevent blur on the surfers, the Exif is shutter 1/000s, f5.6, ISO 200, +0.7 EV and from memory the focus point was at the far end of the first rock..

I tried landscape scene mode as a test for the first time this week in a national park, I took 2-3 different tests shots, scene and app modes and the scene mode shots were just blown out as it did not put any -EV in the shot. Lesson learnt, not to use scene modes with the D7000. For me the D7000 is a great camera as long as I check my setting.


Cheers

_________________
Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

Incredible! At some point, the surf actually looks like ice and snow. Definitely some mind-bending going on here.