Friday night...in a corn field

Went out this evening as the sky looked like it was going to light up the modest amount of cloud cover and I ended up, as I do more times than I'd like to admit, in a field with absolutely no foreground interest. I pulled out the 10 stop filter, to try and do something with the movement of the clouds and the corn, I thought the hill and the trees to the bottom right almost had a Tuscan feel, well, about as Tuscan as you can get in Northern England.Anyway I didn't spend too long editing it, mainly removing the magenta cast from the long exposure filter by adjusting the white balance in lightroom. The exif data was 20mm, f/11 cooked for 30 seconds at ISO400, 400 I know, and it was still slightly underexposed, I get a little nervous above ISO400, I don't know why because the 5D handles noise really well.

I was lacking in inspiration with my wide angle but saw Emely moor mast in the distance looked like it was about to get swallowed up by the storm so I swapped to the 70-200 and zoomed to 200 to eliminate any distractions. I could have done with the clouds being a little more side lighted by the low sun but there you go. This was taken at f/8, 1/40 ISO200. I was ok going to 1/40 at 200m as I was on the tripod but as a rule you should always have the shutter no slower than the focal length to avoid any camera movement. ie 400mm should ideally be taken at 1/400 or faster, 16mm you can get down to 1/16 (actually 1/15) but that is about the limit of hand holding for shots I find.I've also cropped to a 2:1 ratio for these shots, I quite like this widescreen, panoramic look and it works well with these as there wasn't much going on at the top and bottom of the frame.

Have a good weekend folks.

Trees and Masts

I had a feeling we'd get a decent sunset this evening but I couldn't have been more wrong, a mite disappointing to say the least!
It was pretty windy up near Emley Moor Mast so I took the opportunity to get my 10 stop filter out and see if I could get a bit of cloud movement, notice the complete lack of interesting sunset in the background, that's breaking the rules for ya! The mast one was taken at f/5.6 ISO100 19mm 30 seconds.
The tree was taken about an hour earlier, I was using the fence as a leading line and side lighting from the low sun. You wouldn't believe it if I told you but when I was approaching there was a big mean looking cloud behind the tree that would have made a decent shot but alas it vanished and left me with a fairly plain blue sky.
The important lesson is not every outing is successful and this is why it's so rewarding to eventually 'get' a shot, I'm told golf is similar but I don't believe it for a second.