Learning to use the ISO settings.

This weekend had several disappointments. These included not being able to get out in the mornings for photography, and the weather being overcast and wet yet again. However the most annoying was to find out that Yorkshire Water now charge for car parking at their reservoirs. Luckily trying new things in photography always cheers me up.

As my trip out was late afternoon on a very dark and windy Sunday I tried some experiments with manually setting the ISO for different shots. This was all new to me as I am still learning how to use manual settings with a automatic ISO!

As evidenced by the tree it can get very windy at the Ben Rhydding nature reserve and today was no exception. However I managed to get this shot handheld with an ISO of 400 and a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second. The "dark lit" mallard duck was 1/200th of a second shutter and an auto ISO of 6400. This was improved using a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second with an ISO of 1000, both pictures being taken at dusk.

A nice bonus of the slower shutter speed was the "pausing" of the water around the duck. When there is less wind I do need to try that technique with a tripod to allow even shorter speeds.