When You Don't Know The Right Thing To Do...

You are also in the happy position of not knowing the wrong thing to do. Provided you are not engaged in defusing sea mines you may have some leeway in experimentation. A lot of photography is like this.

Case in point: in the dear days of dinosaurs, Elvis, and Plus X film, 125 ASA was the giddy limit for sensitivity in photo emulsions - at least in the sort of films that they sold in the local drugstore and that I could afford. I was new to the sport and dutifully exposed the Plus X at exactly this meter setting ( and took a careful meter reading for each and every exposure - even when neither the light nor the subject ever changed...). I was rewarded with a set of ever-so-slightly underexposed negatives. Had I known to do it, I should have rated the stuff at 80 ASA and got more silver for my money.

Then again when I underexposed the Kodachrome II slides of the period I was a little disappointed with the dark colour but now that I can scan and subject them to PSE, I am more than happy to have the highlights.

This last weekend saw me running out with a new lens and camera and a new sense of adventure occasioned by retirement. I drank a beer in a country pub at 11:00 AM and spent the afternoon in a car museum. While I shot a number of the exhibits with the Fujifilm EF42 flash providing fill, I also threw caution to the winds and racked the Fujifilm X-T10 up to 3200 ISO and let 'er rip. I can report that the jpegs are imminently satisfactory and the freedom to just point and shoot is awesome.

Of course you all knew this before I did, and in the case of some of the bigger DSLR's you have been turning the ISO dial up to nosebleed numbers for years - but this is the handy dandy mirror-less game for me and I am starting to get excited. I suspect that if more people were to come into the shop and look at the Fujifilm X-series and some of the new lenses that have wide apertures, they would join the brigade.

Note: Heading image is the museum hall - this following one is of a new Morgan three-wheeler. The graphics are execrable but the vehicle is a delight.