An Afternoon at The Wisconsin State Fair

We went to the Wisconsin State Fair this week.  I brought my camera.  By the end of the afternoon I had completely filled my 4GB compact flash card (275 photos total).  I chose to post these four photos because they fit together in an odd sort of way.  Of all the thousands of photos I’ve taken of Ella, this one of her driving the General Lee is one of my favorites.  It would be nothing but an average kid photo if it wasn’t for that horrible confederate flag.  The flag gives this photo a big twist and 100 different meanings to consider.    Bonus points for anyone who can figure the connection between the rabbit image and the image of the lady with the Coke.

Last week I made a resolution that I would post all camera settings for every photo I post on this blog.  I’m going to one up that resolution today and give you the thought process and the settings for each of these photos.  This is part of my how it’s done series.  Consider it working from the back of the series forward —  as if you were reading a text book from the back towards the front.  Someday, the beginner lessons will meet in the middle with the more advanced concepts covered here.

Photo #1 The Black and White Taxidermy Display

Settings:  35mm, f/5, 1/60 sec, ISO 1250, Aperture Priority Mode

This picture was taken indoors — inside a giant, poorly lit pavilion.  Because of the poor light I had the ISO set high and the aperture fairly wide.  Why exactly these settings?  Well, it wasn’t a scientific choice.  The settings were the combination between a guess and a compromise.  I was using my 24-70 mm lens so I wanted a shutter speed of at least 1/60th to avoid camera shake from hand holding.  I could have opened the aperture wider and used a lower ISO, but that would have limited depth of field.  Or, to gain depth of field I could have raised ISO and increased aperture.  These settings seemed like a decent compromise between depth of field and high ISO (higher ISO means more noise).  These settings weren’t picked based on this specific photo.  I set them when I first entered the pavilion and I didn’t know what I would be photographing.  I was walking through a crowd with my family and had to chose settings that would work passably no matter what the subject.  I knew I wouldn’t have the luxury of time to fiddle around changing camera settings.

Photo #2 Lady in Red Drinking a Coke

Settings:  24mm, f/4, 1/400th sec, ISO 500, Aperture Priority

This photo was literally shot from the hip.  As we were walking out of the rabbit and chicken barn I spotted this lady sitting alone on some bleachers.  I didn’t want her to spot me and ruin the spontaneity, and I knew I only had a couple seconds before this shot disappeared.   I dialed the zoom on my lens out to 24mm and shot a continuous burst while holding the camera at my hip.  The whole time I shot I was talking to my mom who was walking by my side.  No one but me knew I was taking pictures.  I’ve shot from the hip before so I did have some previous practice.  This technique actually works surprisingly well, especially when shooting at wider angles.  With a little practice you can frame a picture without even looking through the view finder.

As for the camera settings –I knew I already had working camera settings dialed in for the lighting conditions.  When I took the photo my camera was still set up from shooting rabbits a few yards away.  The light in this barn came from the translucent roof.  The light settings from one spot worked the same in another because the roof created nice even lighting.

Photo #3 The Rabbit

Settings:  70mm, f/4, 1/400th, ISO 500, Aperture Priority

Not to much thought went into this picture.  I simply wanted a usable rabbit picture to show my 2 year old daughter when we talk about our trip to the fair.  I actually wish I would have gone with a higher aperture because there isn’t enough depth of field.  The rabbits eyes aren’t in focus.  I could have dialed in a higher aperture and still had enough shutter speed for hand holding.  This picture still works for a blog post.  However, I wouldn’t try to submit it to istock.  I suppose small depth of field gives it a dreamy look.   A lesser man would say he planned it that way 😉

Photo #4 Ella in the General Lee

Settings:  43mm, f/7.1, 1/1250 sec, ISO 400, Manual Mode

This photo was meticulously thought out.  First I picked the best lit spot on the perimeter of the ride to set up.  It was late afternoon so I ended up standing on the western edge.  It was the only place on the ride where the cars poked out of the shade into the sun.  After that I dialed my ISO up to 400.  I picked 400 because I wanted the fastest possible shutter speed for the fast moving cars.  I know my camera fairly well ,and I know that ISO 400 gives me almost no added digital noise while shooting at high shutter speeds in the sun.   Next, before the ride even started I bracketed a few shots of an empty car in direct sun.  I checked the histogram and programed the best settings into manual mode.  The reason I picked f/7.1 was because I felt it gave me a decent depth of field without sacrificing shutter speed.    I used manual mode because I planned to shoot in bursts as the cars passed.  My camera uses the same exposure settings from the first shot in a burst on all the pictures in the burst.  In this instance I was afraid my camera would expose for the car in the shade and then over expose as the car entered the sunny area.  By switching to manual i could avoid that problem.  Lastly, I switched to AI servo mode which enables the camera to continuously focus on a moving object.  Everything was set up perfectly by the time the ride started and I was able to get a bunch of well focused and correctly exposed photos of Ella riding the General Lee.