Lets Talk

I have always fancied doing a 'Lets Talk' general chit chat ditty so will take this opportunity to do the first one, So a week away has ended and now back at home downloading the images to be viewed on the big screen to see if the week has been a success or failure and most of all reflect on the week to know if it was fun as that's the most important thing, We often get carried away with looking through the view finder without taking time to look around, I thought this once when in India, A tiger had a kill right in front of me and i happily clicked away until i ran out of film, It was a great experience but more so when i could put the camera down and sit back and watch the events like a normal tourist taking in the whole scene not just part of it, I had no expectations last week,an open mind as it was just a recce, So in that sense the week was a success as i came away with some very nice images and made lots of mental notes for when i return i a few weeks, I knew that the deer would be without antlers and that the plant life would be a bit behind which it was, I didn't expect the place to be quite as beautiful as it was and wasn't expecting the turkeys to be so co-operative, All in all a good week.The weather could have been better,I had heavy rain,snow,sunshine and dark cloudy days so a real mixed bag but know from experience that mountain photography is that way-unpredictable,I didn't have much time to play around with my Lee filter grads but it as obvious that i will need some ND filters for the waterfall shots a i couldn't get as low a shutter speed as i would have liked,so more expense-its never ending, The Nikon D3 was used more than the D300 this time as the light was low most of the time, I don't shoot with the D300 over ISO 400 as grain starts to become apparent but i will happily shoot past ISO800 with the D3 and as long as you are careful with the metering and get your exposure spot on grain is very minimal, Another thing that came to mind when shooting was that i only had one morning where i would shot at a low ISO and that if i had an all singing all dancing Nikon D3X i would have struggled as i hear it starts to get grainy at ISO 400 and is best at 200 and below,For landscape work it would be fine but for a lot of my type of work i feel that i would struggle with it-doesn't stop me from wanting one though, So that's one week out of the way and planning the next trip in a few weeks along with future trips to the mountains later in the year,trips to the coast and a trip to Colorado-looks like the year is starting to get busy

Dave