Gettysburg Photographs

It has been since Mother's Day Weekend May 7, 2011, that WCL(my brother in law) and I headed up to Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania to shoot some photographs of this great US National Park. WCL is a veteran of this great park and has spent many an afternoon and evening with the sun setting to get just the right light hitting the monuments at the right angles. He has done some really fine work and can be seen here (all of the introductory photos are his).

But this blog is about learning. And one of the tools that I have learned to use is the NEF file of the Nikon D200 camera that I used that day.The NEF is Nikon's RAW file format, RAW image files, sometimes referred to as digital negatives, contain all the image information captured by the camera's sensor, along with the image's metadata (the camera's identification and its settings, the lens used and other information). The NEF file is written to the memory card in either an uncompressed or "lossless" compressed form.

Looking back and critiquing my work I have found some glaring mistakes that I made that would have made such a difference in the outcome of the digital shots I took that day.

A close look at the picture above shows the good luck WCL and I had when there was a re-enactment of a canon being loaded, sighted, and fired with armament of the time (less the actual canon ball).
 The dramatic fire escaping was a good shot but lacks the clarity that could have been attained by using a sturdy tripod, or some other support. The man just over the canon fire is blurred because of movement. So the number one lesson learned?
1. Always be prepared with a tripod at any shoot.

The NEF file is a file that the Nikon cameras uses when it takes each shot. It is a big file, and a wealth of information to review after  a photo shoot. Some mistakes can be corrected by using post programs to hide the mistakes. But, some can not.

 Here are the mistakes I found by reviewing just this one photograph above:
White Balance - was set to Incandescent !! No wonder the color was so wrong .
Focal Length   - was set to 125mm. That in itself was not bad but with the long focal length plus the fact that there was no tripod and the shutter speed went off at 1/90 of a second resulted in blurring.

2. Check your settings and then double check them again later making sure the settings still apply for what you are currently shooting..

Just two simple things, would have made a difference. There will be more in the future from the Gettysburg  photographs.