Wet Dogs

Sunday was a lovely day. I woke a little before seven, saw it was fine and went out to take photographs. I ended up going to Hardcastle Crags, near Hebden Bridge. I was very pleased that I did.

As I got to Gibson Mill I found three ladies out with their dogs. The dogs were having a wonderful time playing in the stream. They kindly allowed me to take photos of the dogs, which I did and how. In a little under ten minutes I took 201 shots, JPEGs, equating to approximately 1Gb of data.

This gave me a chance to experiment with the continuous shooting mode and focus tracking features of the D300. It was a sunny morning and I was using my 85mm 1.8, so speed wasn't a problem. Thing is, I had no idea what shutter speed I should use.

Looking back at the photos I see had selected shutter priority and started at 1/40th of a second. This gave a good effect in this photo, but it doesn't freeze the droplets. I tried 1/100 of a second and must have checked the results on the camera as I very quickly changed the ISO rating to 800 and set shutter speed to 1/800th. This forced a wide open aperture and did a pretty good job, as illustrated here.

The main splash isn't frozen but the droplets above the dog contrast nicely with the darkness of the stream. This gives the shot action.

I was also very pleased with speed of my camera. I checked the times of one sequence and found six shots within a second.

One final lesson is to always zip your camera bag shut. I did and was glad that I had. Inquisitive wet dogs really don't mind what gets wet :-)