A Little Rant # 3

[Greg McCary]

I do find that after a while I find that certain f/stops work well for most things that I shoot and I tend to stick with them. And I then work the shutter speed around what f/stop I want.
I guess my brain is aperature priority.LOL

[Didache]

I guess my brain is aperature priority.LOL

Oh me too!! It's the best way to control creativity in most cases.

Actually I have an event this coming Saturday which illustrates all this. Being as I live in London, I will be there on Saturday to photograph the prologue time trial of the Tour de France. The barriers will be packed with people all firing away like machine gunners on everything from cheap P & Ss to expensive DSLRs. And you can bet that a LOT of those people are going to be very disappointed with the results - simply because photographing something like that takes some thought.

The riders will be going at something like 30mph so there is a need to freeze them while, at the same time, keeping the crowds in the background a little out of focus. So: high shutter speed (1/500 or so) and openish aperture will be the order of the day. I will experiment with fill flash too if I can get a suitable place to shoot from.

Here's the really good thing. My camera (K10D) allows you to set BOTH f-stop and shutter speed, and it automatically selects the appropriate ISO. I will try that too.

Cheers
Mike