242. Fast Track

I am indebted to Mike (smbunation) for today’s posting. In his his blog yesterday he showed how it is possible to get a very good picture from a moving vehicle by pushing up the ISO. I was so impressed I thought I’d have a go. I often go past this place on the train and hadn’t really thought that it would be possible to get a reasonable picture before. My only experiences of using high ISOs have been in conditions of poor light and have been very grainy so I’ve generally avoided it. I’m quite pleased with the results though; obviously it’s not as good as going to the place and taking photos whilst stationery, but I’m happy that these are passable.

Lessons:

1. (With my camera at least) using high ISOs because I’m moving fast doesn’t seem to have quite the horrible grainy effect that using them because it’s dark has.
2. As I’ve learned many times before (only to forget until next time I use it) Canon’s 17-85 lens is a very good lens down to about 20mm. Lower than that and the barrel distortion is appalling (they don't really build fences that badly around here).
3. I don’t know how this will show up on photoblog, but there is considerably more noise on the shot of the boat than on the one of the bridge. This is because the boat shot has been pulled about with Gimp’s perspective tool. High ISO and perspective pulling is apparently not a good combination. But then the barrel distortion on that one was horrendous.

Thanks for the inspirartion Mike.