World War One Memorial

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600, edited

Someday I’m going to walk into a museum in which all the exhibits are brightly lit and I can shoot flash-free to my heart’s content without cranking the ISO way up and the shutter speed way down.

Last Wednesday was not that day.

The World War One Museum is an outstanding collection skillfully presented, well worth the trip. And in its defense, the museum does allow flash photography. Of course that doesn’t help much with stuff in glass-fronted display cases. And as one might expect, a flash doesn’t help much in a large room.

Thus the photo I took in the entry hall had lighting issues. Here’s what it looked like straight out of the camera:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600

Nor is it simply a matter of adjusting the light levels. Just lightening the image wipes out the properly-exposed Liberty Memorial visible through the skylights. It also amplifies the noise caused by the high ISO. The result looks like this:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/1000, f/13, ISO 1600, edited

We can get around the over-exposed skylights by masking them off before adjusting the light levels. And we can eliminate some of the speckled look by applying Photoshop’s noise reduction filter.

This “problem child” photo is also a good lesson in not trusting my camera’s automatic settings. There’s no earthly reason for the shutter speed to be 1000 in a room with no moving objects. The aperture is also narrower than it needs to be. Adjusting those settings manually might have made the shot brighter and allowed me to cut down on the noise by using a lower ISO.