Shelbourne Hotel

This day last week I was walking from the opening of Photo 2010 to the Luas stop at St. Stephen’s Green, a walk that took me past the front of the Shelbourne Hotel – one of Dublin’s more famous and fancy hotels – and with the camera bag over my shoulder, the front of the hotel nicely illuminated, and the road not too busy, I decided to stop and capture a quick photo.  In reality I knew I was a couple of hours too late to get a decent evening-time photograph of the building, as the sky was already gone black, so it was more a test to see how well it might photograph at a better time of day.  And it became a little bit of an exercise in shutter speed.

My instincts in this situation, as I took my camera out of the bag, were to bump up the ISO to 3200, open the aperture to f/2.8,  and hope that the shutter speed stayed reasonable.  I did that in exactly that order as I lifted the camera from my shoulder bag.  It’s all done in one reasonably fluid movement…

Camera bag over right shoulder, right hand lifts flap over the top of the bag, left hand reaches in to take the camera (already with the 24-70 lens on and with the lens cap off, after my earlier photography of the Photo 2010 opening), right hand hits the power switch as I lift the camera out, left hand hits the ISO button, right hand turns the wheel to move it up to 3200, left hand releases ISO button, right hand dials aperture wheel to f/2.8, and by the time the camera is at my eye I am ready to take a shot.  Before I do take a shot a quick check in the viewfinder confirms that my settings are indeed as I wish them to be.

This “quick on the draw” type movement may be overkill for a photograph of a building that isn’t going anywhere, but it’s a habit that I’m trying to get into for other aspects of my photography, so these no-pressure type situations are good practice.  As I refine that technique, I get better at grabbing shots of those “blink and you’ll miss it” moments that can make for the best photographs.

Anyway, back to the shutter speed exercise.  The first shot I took, above, ended up (thanks to the camera’s meter) being at 1/500s.  And at that looked a little over-exposed at the highlight end.  I was somewhat surprised to see that shutter speed at first, but I suppose looking at the scene it is giving off a fair bit of light, even though it’s dark.

I programmed in -2/3rds of a stop of exposure compensation to basically inform the camera that this scene is naturally a tad darker than it was thinking (primarly trying to account for the black sky at the edges of the frame and ensure the camera didn’t over-compensate for it) and then started methodically stepping down my ISO as I slowed down my shutter speed to compensate.  Why?  Well, firstly I didn’t need to shoot at much over 1/25s with a 24mm focal length in order to give myself a reasonably good chance of a steady shot.  Secondly, the lower ISO would reduce noise considerably, giving a better image quality.  And thirdly, a slower shutter speed and moving traffic might make for a more creative shot.

I didn’t spend a long time doing this – this was, afterall, just a bit of an experiment – but even in just a few minutes I was able to take a good range of shots across shutter speeds from 1/500s all the way down to 1/25s.  The last frame I took – that 1/25s – began to show a hint of why the slower shutter speed might have uses creatively.  By this point I was down at ISO 400, and had stopped down my aperture from f/2.8 to f/5.6 to give me a little bit more sharpness.  As I clicked, a bus came past, and the lights from it look a little bit funky.

Technical Information: f/5.6 @ 1/25s, ISO 400, 24-70mm lens at 24mm, Nikon D700

I’ll return to Stephen’s Green some evening, when there’s still a bit of light in the sky, and will set about getting a better photograph of the Shelbourne Hotel, but after this little experiment will do so in the knowledge that there’s plenty of scope with regards to shutter speed, aperture and ISO for a little creativity while still getting a decent exposure.