Clowning around

Yesterday I went to the Fiesta Bowl parade in Phoenix with the express purpose of taking pictures. I had a lot of fun and learned a ton. Shooting with a digital SLR and a nice Zoom lens is a lot of fun. The speed and precision that you can use when manipulating the zoom is just no comparison to how it is with a compact digital camera.

This was the first daytime outing for the Canon Digital Rebel and unfortunately it was a rather grey and overcast day so light was anything but optimal for taking pictures.

Lessons learned. I really should have done more to increase shutter speed. I shot everything at ISO 100 when I probably should have used at least ISO 400 to cut down some on motion blur. I also learned that I should have used a smaller aperture when shooting wide angle shots to get more depth of field. I avoided that because I thought F8 would be enough and my shutter speed was already too low. I also learned that when shooting people in marching bands, make sure you take the size of their instrument and the size of the plume on their hat into consideration while framing. I have tons of nice shots that look sloppy because I didn't frame the entire instrument or cut off the plume or even did both.

Posted by Kimbro Staken