But let's start off with two photos I took last weekend during "Snowmageddon." I had the opportunity to be holed up with my grandmother at her condo, so the first photo is of a dinner I made for us, sliced and fanned pork chops over green cabbage and caramelized onions and salted buttered noodles:
I took this picture using the tripod, no flash, an aperture of f/2.8, shutter speed of 1/10 of a second, and an ISO of 400. I also applied a custom white balance because if I hadn't, the photograph would've taken on an unnatural blue tint from the overhead lighting. I like the fact that you can see the juiciness of the pork slice. I probably should've used a smaller aperture to keep the noodles on the back of the plate in focus, too.
During that snowstorm, I also made a huge pot of roasted butternut squash soup:
This was in the exact same lighting as the pork dish above, with tripod, no flash, aperture of f/2.8, shutter speed of 1/15 of a second, and an ISO of 400. This, too, was custom white balanced off of a white napkin. Overall, I like this picture. The front of the bowl is slightly out of focus, but the main part, the soup, along with the sprig of chervil in the middle, are nicely focused. Were I doing this professionally, I probably wouldn't have used the white Corelle dishes my grandmother owned, instead picking something a little more warm to match the mood of the soup.
Next up we move to a mid-week dinner at Happy Dog in Cleveland. I was almost giddy with excitement when I walked through the door to discover a VERY dimly lit bar. After seating myself at the counter and getting my pint of stout, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the best shot:
This was taken using manual focus (it was too dark for the autofocus to work properly), no flash, tripod, an ISO of 800, an aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds. I had nothing to use for a custom white balance (no napkins), so I used one of the presets that seemed to be the most natural. For being as dark as it was in the bar, I think the picture actually came out really well, if not a bit too overexposed at the top. This was the first picture where I realized later on that I could've gone from ISO 800 -> ISO 200 and made the shutter speed 5 seconds instead of 1.3 to help reduce the noise.
This next photo was also from Happy Dog and was my vegetarian Italian sausage sandwich:
This was done using the tripod, custom white balanced off of my napkin, an aperture of f/3.2 (I had zoomed in slightly to fill the frame), an ISO of 800 and a shutter speed of 0.6 seconds. When I got home and looked at the photo, the noise became quite apparent. Again, had I dropped the ISO from 800 -> 200 and taken the shutter speed from 0.6 -> 2.5 seconds ... or even better, dropped the ISO from 800 -> 100 and cranked up the shutter speed to a whopping 5 seconds, I could've eliminated a lot of the noise I had to attempt to remove in the GIMP during post-processing. I am digging the amount of detail I am now getting, but my technique needs to be more fine tuned.
Towards the end of the week, I decided to have dinner at another notoriously dimly lit restaurant, Chowder House Cafe. After being seated and doing a custom white balance off of my napkin, I started by taking a snapshot of the menu:
Now, 0ne thing I have kind of figured out is that because I am holding the camera for menu photographs (instead of using the tripod) and because I'm not trying to capture the richness of actual food, it doesn't really matter too much if there is noise in the photo. In order to keep the blur low, I have to use much shorter shutter speeds. To compensate in this case, I jacked up the ISO to a whopping 1600, set the aperture to f/5.6 and the shutter speed to a 1/4 second (with anti-shake turned on). I would've taken the aperture to the smallest setting (f/8.0), but I didn't really want to jack the ISO up to the camera's highest setting of 3200.
Part of learning my lesson from Happy Dog was to see if I could actually take the photos at an ISO setting of 100 given that I would be using a tripod and long shutter speeds. First up was a picture of my table setting tonight:
One of the things that has always challenged me is taking a photograph when there is a light source in it (as opposed to reflected light). This small candle sitting in front of the salt and pepper shaker made a nice study in capturing the likeness without allowing the flame to blow out the picture. This was done on a tripod, custom white balanced against my napkin, ISO of 100, aperture of f/2.8, and a shutter speed of 8/10 of a second. I also took one with a slightly shorter shutter speed which yielded a darker photograph, but this was the one I thought better represented what I actually experienced tonight.
For my appetizer, I selected the chicken wings with jalapeño scallion chimichurri:
Again, no tripod, custom white balance, an aperture of f/2.8, ISO of 100 and a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds (much higher than the last photo because this photograph contained no light sources, just light reflections). I took just this one shot from this angle and I think it came out beautifully. The skin appears crispy, you can see the sauce underneath and the chimichurri on top of each wing. I am quite happy with the results of this photograph. Clearly, the pitfalls of the Happy Dog were noted, learned from, and applied to the next time I came across the situation.
That's all for this week. What do you think? Suggestions for improvement?
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