Pistons on the Square – the Ides of March – RiverDogs X -Words and Pictures from the River's Edge

The Ides of March is March 15 and marks the anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar at the hands of his friend Brutus in 44 BC. No such event this year as it was a gorgeous morning in Georgetown, Txas.

I was out with my Nikon D850 and a single lens – the Tamron 35 1.8. This was my “one lens” choice so I could shoot wide enough to get whole car shots without backing into the mid-street area. I have been working on the one camera, one lens goal since the original ides of March in 44 BC. Sometimes I regret not having another lens at hand but usually it ends up OK.

Photographer Mistakes

I had not shot with the D850 for a while and though I thought the settings were good, I was wrong. It wasn’t until I imported the raw files in Lightroom that I noticed an overexposure problem. Most of the pictures were OK but there were some where I blew out the sky. I was able to salvage most of those by pulling the highlights all the way down. Turns out my metering was set for spot metering instead of matrix. Even center-weighted would have been a big improvement.

On those shots where it the image did not include sky, everything worked out. When you are shooting mirrorless with an EVF you notice that issue sooner and easier than with an optical viewfinder. Lesson learned – I should have press the I – Info button to review all my settings in the LCD panel on top of the camera. Or I should have been more observant of the 3-second image review on the Live View display.

Every time you pick up a camera, review the settings – have a mental checklist and run through each item before you get carried away with the picture taking. If it’s a pro job, you better run through that checklist twice.

The Gallery

I shot both raw and black and white jpgs. Here’s a tip – save your raw files to one card and your jpgs to another. I didn’t do that either but I will from now on.