Challenge 6 - Tom's first

Been thinking about something like this for a while, but as always, in practice what seems like a good idea...

Tripod not quite tall enough to get the camera over the bridge railings, so had to shoot through the bars, which limited angle and how wide I could shoot. Bugger to focus as well, as the road surface itself is too dark to ge a lock on and the cars are obviously travelling a bit to fast to get a reliable point on. In the end manual focussed on one of the white lines and then locked it.

Also had to cope with a) busy-body PCSOs interrogating me on what I was doing and b) gangs of chavs trying to interrogate me on what I was doing.

Experimented from 1 sec all the way up to 30 secs. 30 secs too long in that light and for traffic that speed - in my opinion. Light trails too dense and surroundings too lights.

Top my favourite (f8, ISO 200, 5 sec, 16-85@85mm), but below was a close run second (f8, ISO 200, 15 sec, 16-85@58mm). Too busy I think.

Chrimbo Challenge - Tom's first attempt

Bit experimental - Alice has strung these baubles up against the bathroom window on very fine wire. Fired camera in completely dark room and then "painted" the baubles with a torch during exposure time. Darkened the background as much as poss in PP to try and isolate the decorations. Movement of me and the torch caused air movement which moved the baubles during the exposure, which means it's not as sharp as it should be.

D300, 30secs, f25, 16-85@28mm, tripod and remote trigger.

A noisy noise annoys a photographer pt 1

Lacking the budget for a decent travel tripod and the fact the £30 Jessop finest I do have doesn't actually fit into my "three-day-trip" size bag, I ended up experimenting with low light, handheld photography in some dark and dingy Czech breweries illuminated by dark and dingy late-november light.

First example is a massively underexposed 1/60s, f8 at 1600ISO shot, with 100 per cent crop to show just how nasty it is and then, really just as a bit of fun, what slamming Photoshop's noise reduction filter through it at max settings does. Result: some really odd smearing and additional texture, but I'm surprised how much detail gets retained.

Challenge 2 - Tom's first

16-85@16, f8, 20s, ISO 200.

Only bit of weather so far has been a bit of a deluge on the drive home a few nights ago - luckily enough when I was playing around with the camera, the remote, a tripod belted onto the passenger seat and some long exposures at night. Definitely a technique in progress, but thought I'd share anyway! Must do better.

More dark arts

More messing around with the camera in the dark - wedding fireworks. Pro snapper did something very clever where he managed to get a shot of the couple, with fireworks in background, I'd guess he did something similar to what I tried with the dancing, long dragged shutter and flash to expose Mr and Mrs sharply in the foreground. Meanwhile, I was messing around with my tripod and ridiculously cheap but very functional wireless remote gadget, just arrived from Hong Kong. Went for 10 sec exposures, left the camera on the tripod out of everyone's way and returned to the crowd to enjoy and just randomly press the remote release every now and again. If I'd been paying attention and reviewing every shot, I probably would have tried a shorter exposure for a "cleaner" trail, but pretty pleased with result (especially considering I generally only get one chance a year to experiment!).

Again, just converted RAW to JPG and not got around to doing any PP or cropping with this yet.