Focus!

DSC04805SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO2000)

Some more from the bike. Important not to my younger readers: Don’t try this at home!

Photography is a wonderful thing and it learns you one important lesson: You can only focus on one thing. When riding a bike downhill it is the same. You need to focus on what you do otherwise you risk to crash. So going downhill on a bike and taking pictures at the same time is not a smart thing. Either your biking of your photography will be compromised. In this specific case I happily compromise on the photography side.

DSC04836-2SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO2000)
DSC04875SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO2000)
DSC04886SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO2500)
DSC04894SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO2000)

The road was wide but covered with some loose gravel and wet leaves. Some bends were tricky and I needed to stop taking pictures and put my right hand back on the bar.

I also did not check the composition on the screen, I focused on the track. I know on which angle I need to hold the camera to get the bar in the picture. I had the camera on its fast burst rate and shot bursts of 1-2 seconds. For the image above I held the camera at a different angle to get a shot where the background is in focus. To get both, bar and background, in focus at the same time is hardly possible unless you are riding in bright daylight.

DSC05007SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/4, 1/500 sec, ISO3200)

On the first part of the ride I lost some shots because of camera shake or should a say photographer shake. That’s why I put the shutter speed to 1/500s on the downhill. The shutter speed was short enough to get sharp shots but the ISO went up dramatically. The good thing is that high ISO is not a big issue anymore today. The last shot in the dark forest area is shot at ISO 6.400. Of course there is some noise but I think it is pretty useable.

The next day I did exactly the same ride again but without a camera. Instead I focused on to enjoy the ride. I’m really happy that I took all those shots on the previous blog post and on this one but nothing beats to just focus on the ride. I was much faster because I didn’t stop for pictures and I was faster on the downhill too because I had both hands on the bar.

I know that this is a photography blog but sometimes it is best to lay down the camera and to just focus on the experience.

DSC05039SONY ILCE-6000 (16mm, f/3.5, 1/400 sec, ISO6400)