I took this picture at dawn in San Marco Square here in Venice. The cobalt blue sky was just starting to appear, and I was essentially shooting in the dark. Compared to the film days, when getting a picture like this would have been impossible without flash, it was pretty amazing that I could get a decent shot at all. In order to get this kind of depth of field and exposure, I had to use 5000 ISO and a 24mm focal length. Even so, I was surprised the image came out so well. In the ACR dialog box, I pumped the color of the sky with the vibrance slider, and I reduced some of the noise with the luminance sider. I don't normally shoot at night without a tripod, but sometimes it's best not to use one. A tripod would have been inhibiting, plus i couldn't use a long exposure because the models obviously couldn't be perfectly still. My settings were 1/20 and f/4, and the Canon 24-105mm lens I was using was image stabilized. That allowed me to get a sharp picture at such a slow shutter speed.
2 Comments
Feb 21, 2016, 9:10:22 AM
Jim - Daniel, I held my breath when I squeezed the shutter and used image stabilization. Still, the sharpness of this also depended on the models not moving. I took a lot of pictures for insurance.
Feb 21, 2016, 8:38:21 AM
Daniel Reynaud - Wow, 1/20 th !! What a steady hand.