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Standing by the side of the Doge's palace in Venice, watching the tourists go by, is an amusing way to spend a few minutes.
But when you want to take a tripod mounted, seriously composed image of the iconic Bridge of Sighs then things become a bit less relaxing.
For me a tripod is an essential piece of kit for this type of photography.
Everything needs to be precisely aligned and positioned, locked in place, and once you're working at optimum aperture (f11 for the lens I was using), optimuim ISO (100) and you've put a polarising filter on to reduce the glare then hand-holding is no longer an option.
It took me about five minutes to take the photo shown here, adjusting my position by a couple of inches here,a couple of inches there till I was happy with the composition and exposure.
Fortunately it was a cold day in March so the tourist throng wasn't as great as it would have been in high summer, but even so I had to prevail on the goodwill of a lot of very polite Japanese to get this photo.
Filename - venice bridge of sighs 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 17-40mm zoom @ 35mm
Exposure - 1/4sec @ f11, ISO100
Location - Venice, Italy
This image - 800x640px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Tripod, mirror lock-up and cable release used to prevent camera shake.
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