Walking in London

On Friday, Wonky Horizons took the afternoon off work, and went for a walk in London (see also Martin's post below). Covent Garden/Neal's Yard, and then a leisurely stroll from Charing Cross to London Bridge via Hungerford footbridge and the Southbank. I've walked along parts of that region of the Southbank many times, but have never done the full walk in one go - highly recommended in the evening light.

My general policy for days like this is to take one camera and one lens. (The only other things in my camera bag are spare flash cards, and a bottle of water.) The D300 is heavy enough without having to schlep all the extra weight of more lenses.

I also have a paranoia that, when transient compositions are forming all round, all the time, the simple act of changing lenses will cause me to miss pictures. The same applies to chimping. I try to avoid looking at the screen on the back of the camera as much as possible - and do so only to check exposures.

I also tried out using auto-ISO, with the camera set on manual shutterspeed and aperture. The reason here was that I wanted to ensure a high enough shutter speed to eliminate most camera shake and subject movement (except - see #3 below), plus sufficient depth of field. In the event, I think it worked pretty well - but it does mean accepting some absurdly high ISOs. Picture #1 below, for instance, was ISO 2200: ridiculous, but I don't think it matters. With the high ISO pictures, I've just done a little chroma noise reduction, and nothing else. (I suppose that, having grown up with Tri-X and HP5, a little electronic "grain" is the least of my worries.)

Of course - a day like this is not worthwhile without sustenance. During the afternoon, I introduced my fellow Wonkies to Maison Bertaud in Greek St, where we restored our blood sugar with cakes and coffee. These are essential during any photo walk!

A few quick edits from the day: I've put some more on Pbase.

Lunch - from different points of view

Anais

Southbank skater

Watch out - Wonkies at work!