Visited the Met yesterday cause Erin needed to sketch some things for her ceramics class. Miserable weather (rainy & humid) so tons of tourists. While Erin sketched, I putzed around with my camera. Had the Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM mounted since I remember the lighting in the museum being very dim so even a f/2.8 lens would be pretty tough to use unless you really cranked up the ISO or use a mono/tripod and flash. I had forgotten how light the 50mm is; the entire camera seemed like a featherweight after carrying around the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro and the Sigma APO 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG/HSM.
This is a partial shot of the main staircase in the Met, taken from the second floor. Oddly angled cause I was using the edge of the wide stone balcony that runs all around the perimeter on the second floor as a straight line. Following the "don't shoot unless your shutter speed is at least 1 over the length of your lens (1/50s in this case) if you want a blur-free shot", I had to shoot mostly wide open at f/1.4 and set the ISO to 800. For this particular picture the shutter speed was still only 1/40s. That's how dim the lighting in the museum is.
Better lighting for this shot so shutter speed was able to reach 1/80s. I like this copy of the 50mm. =)
More after the break...
This is a chess set from Iran from ages ago (forgot the exact century) which I thought was pretty cool. Didn't know they also played chess. =)
For this and the preceding picture the light available was good enough that I probably could have used a higher f-stop but I like the gradual blur spreading out from my focus point.
For this shot I definitely should have used a higher f-stop just to bring the foreground pieces a bit more into focus. It had looked fine previewing on the XT's LCD screen but wasn't until I saw it full-sized on the computer that I realized that the foreground piece was much too fuzzy.
This was taken in the Japanese Art gallery. Absolutely gorgeous gold lettering on black parchment. Again I like the sharp to non-focus effect at this wide-open aperture.
This slatted half a wall was actually the back-side of an exhibit in the Japanese Art gallery. The front which you'll see in the next pic.
I have this picture labeled as a bad shot cause well, it is. But I definitely want to go back to redo it. Was in a bit of a rush when this particular shot was taken cause I had already spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to compose this thing and there was a guy waiting behind me. It was basically an irregularly-shaped rock that had water flowing up and out from the center and down two sides. The flow was so slight that it was hard to capture in a picture. And then the person with the orange shirt showed up on the other side of the half-wall (shown in the preceding picture) right when I had moved to this position which created a nice reflection. Unfortunately the auto-focus focused on the wrong area (would have been better to focus on the reflection) and I didn't have time to refocus cause that guy was behind me waiting. So next time I'll get Erin to wear a brighter colored shirt and go back to this exhibit to redo the shot. Probably try it from a slightly higher angle as well. =)
