{"id":3946,"date":"2010-11-06T09:30:08","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T23:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=3946"},"modified":"2010-11-06T14:46:57","modified_gmt":"2010-11-06T04:46:57","slug":"europe-holiday-rome-iv-a-fast-lens-can-be-used-without-a-tripod-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=3946","title":{"rendered":"Europe holiday – Rome IV – a fast lens can be used without a tripod at night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using a tripod whilst traveling is a big pain, especially when you have to carry it all day in high security risk areas and then set it up in crowded locations.<\/p>\n

A potential alternative is using a high quality wide aperture lens, and for this trip, I had the superb Panasonic Leica-D 25mm f\/1.4 lens which gives great image quality even wide open, all I could wish for was that Panasonic would incorporate image stabilisation into their camera bodies as Olympus have done, but I don’t think that will be happening any time soon.<\/p>\n

Selling paintings at night in Piazza Navona<\/strong> (ISO 800, 1\/100th sec, f\/1.4):<\/p>\n

\"Selling <\/p>\n

Inside the church opposite the Trevi Fountain at night<\/strong> (ISO 800, 1\/30th sec, f\/1.4):<\/p>\n

\"Inside <\/p>\n

Note that I have used the native 16:9 aspect ratio of the Panasonic GH-1 to squeeze a bit more height into the images as an effective focal length of 50mm in 35mm terms with this lens can make things a bit tight.<\/p>\n

Instead of the Leica-D 25mm f\/1.4 lens, one could use the much lighter, compact, less expensive, Panasonic Lumix 20mm f\/1.7 which would give a wider angle of view but require a longer exposure time at f\/1.7 instead of f\/1.4.<\/p>\n

On camera flash would not have been helpful inside this church, so for those using slower lenses, the main alternative would have been to raise the ISO – ISO 1600 at f\/2.0, ISO 3200 at f\/2.8, ISO 6400 at f\/4.0 and ISO 12,800 if you happen to have only a f\/5.6 kit lens, although if it had IS, then perhaps a lower ISO may be possible by using an even slower shutter speed and being very careful with camera shake.<\/p>\n

Image quality with a point and shoot digital camera or even a kit lens on a dSLR would be poor inside this church – this is part of the reason Micro Four Thirds makes a great travel photography compromise – optimising size vs image quality.<\/p>\n

If one wished to capture images at greater than 16 megapixel resolution such as with the newer Canon dSLRs, then a tripod becomes indispensable for nearly every shot at lower shutter speeds – if you don’t use a tripod in these situation, you may as well be using a 10 megapixel camera as you will not be gaining any more resolution, and your file storage is impacted for no real benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using a tripod whilst traveling is a big pain, especially when you have to carry it all day in high security risk areas and then set it up in crowded locations. A potential alternative is using a high quality wide aperture lens, and for this trip, I had the superb Panasonic Leica-D 25mm f\/1.4 lens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[198,18,196,499,197,156],"class_list":["post-3946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-night","tag-europe","tag-four-thirds-micro","tag-italy","tag-night","tag-rome","tag-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t