After a dash back to Marston Moretaine to change into clothes that were more suitable for the afternoon in the centre of Fairford Leys and to also offload the pictures taken at the lake of Windsurfing activity so there was no danger of their suffering any mishap before I was back to processing that afternoon’s images, I collected a group of lenses that I felt would be suitable for the inevitably low light levels I would encounter.
I gave myself a reasonable amount of leeway as I knew there would be a higher level of traffic as the route involved passing Milton Keynes, and to add further insult the A421 road now has a 40mph limit which actually simply backs up the traffic such that even that speed most of the day is an unfulfilled dream; it tends to be a series of 20mph spurts between 10 second standstills, I found it pays to hold back and keep a steady speed of around 18-22mph and save fuel, frustration and brake wear, and fortunately the driver behind seemed to agree as he did not come up and sit on my rear bumper – that was a pleasant surprise.
Although the traffic was still fairly heavy after the spell before the new sections, at least it moved at a fair pace, so I arrived in reasonable time such that my daughter and I were able to take a relaxed pace as she collected her music and most importantly some pegs to anchor it to the music stand, though she did find she was missing some of the necessary pieces she was due to play.
We arrived early and found a place to park with ease and headed for the centre, however, actually reaching the venue had still proved to be somewhat circuitous, as it was later to be repeated when leaving! As we took the saxophone and music bag from the car it dawned on me that my camera gear was still sitting in Quainton with Tim, Lizzy’s husband and the children – they were due to follow shortly, and when Lizzy broke the news to Tim, he had very fortunately not left the house! Acquiring the missing music sheets fortunately presented no problems and the afternoon went well, so whilst Lizzy got herself organised I simply stood around like a spare part, but was soon very relieved to see Tim with my camera bag (some Professional Photographer I turned out to be!) Tim very generously did not make a meal out of it.
Yes, ‘get by’! – if I needed more speed, I had a stop in hand but at least I could cope with the inherent grain at this speed – Thank Goodness for Image Stabilisation or what my friend Adam refers to as Anti-Shake, also when you have my level of unsteadiness I am grateful for the burst, because sometimes the second image can be usable if the first suffered from my tremble.
I think I did occasionally open up to f/2.8, and 1/8th of a second I think was my slowest shutter speed, so I am grateful for the technology jump from my earliest days when 400 ASA still meant I had to use auxiliary lighting and a tripod! Even in Brighter light levels!
Flash under the situation such as this was out of the question as it would have been extremely distracting to those who were playing as well as killing the ambiance of the scenes I captured.
No comments:
Post a Comment