Sailing into Gibraltar just as the sky was starting to lighten before dawn was a wonderful experience, perched as I was on the tenth deck of the P&O cruise liner Arcadia.
But how to record this experience for posterity?
Photography in the dark when on land is straightforward enoungh, you just use a monster tripod and a very long shutter speed. Job done.
Unfortunately however, that approach doesn't work on a moving platform like a ship, so what to do?
In the end I used my new Nikon D3100 with the ISO wound up as high as I dared go, which was a very respectable 3200. I'm amazed how relatively noise free the images are compared to my good old Canon 5D at similar ISOs.
With the kit lens aperture open as wide as it would go (a somewhat limiting f5.6) I managed to get a meaningful amount of luminance recorded in RAW format at 1/2 second shutter speed.
Even with the lens stabilisation enabled there's no way I could hand hold a camera for 1/2 second without motion blur, so I jammed the camera down on the ship's railing and took about two dozen pictures of the same scene, in hopeful anticipation that at least one would come out reasonably sharp.
Well my plan worked (for once), with this one image showing acceptable sharpness and exposure.
I'm glad I made the effort, otherwise this view would just be a fading memory now.
Filename - gibraltar 01.jpg
Camera - Nikon D3100
Lens - 18-55mm zoom @ 55mm
Exposure - 1/2sec @ f5.6, ISO3200
Location - Gibralta
This image - 800x450px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - High ISO used to increase shutter speed.
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