Mariela Gavin - 5 Strangest Discoveries

I struggle a lot with trying to find a balance in lowlight, one of the things I discovered (since just newly getting into photography) was how to work with ISO properly. At first I didn't even think twice about changing it before we started learning about it in class. I was getting frustrated with the weird grain that would always appear in my lowlight photos, but simply adjusting the ISO (as well as F-stop and shutter speed) the purple grain was gone. A simple discovery, but I never knew about it before this class.

I also started experimenting with zoom in close range objects. When we learned about the flattening of the image in class, I was blown away. Even with the zoom, the detail still remains. I did not notice this until I started slowing down and zooming instead of physically moving closer.

 It was tedious to get good exposure once you hit certain limits. The f-stop is on the lowest, ISO is the best it can be. I found it strange, and sometimes annoying, when I had to resort to a slow shutter speed. It was sometimes hard to stay completely still and I would always try to bring my shutter speed faster anytime I could.

I found that manual focus made the biggest difference when I was zoomed in all the way and everything was flattened. Once I discovered this, I experimented with just leaving the lens zoomed in. Near the top of my head, You can see a little bit of a picture in the background in focus.

One thing I did happily experiment with was very long shutter speeds. It was interesting to see how they're would turn out if you kept adjusting other functions like ISO and f-stop. I played around with it the most and tried to find a happy balance where I had a very long shutter speed in extreme lighting.