Pushing the limits

I got my much needed picture of my granddaughter.

Attending the annual Christmas Irish dance show is a family must: My granddaughter, 4, takes part. I must get a picture. The problems are legion, or at least they feel numerous and immense. My camera is but a glorified point and shoot, the distance from the stage is so great I must use a long lens setting and therefore a small f/stop and the light level is quite low. It is a tough situation.

I set my Fujifilm HS10 to manual. I accept the f/stop that I must. It is wide open but when the lens is zoomed wide is not all that wide. And I set the shutter to 1/500th. Lastly, I kick up the ISO to 1600 or even 3200 if I feel lucky. I set the camera to shoot bursts of six exposures each time I depress the shutter and then I shoot lots and I shoot RAW.

The images were a little underexposed but using Photoshop I enhanced the RAW images before switching them to jpegs.

Are these images perfect? Of course not. There a little grainy thanks to the high ISO, the shadows are a little too dense thanks to the underexposure, but they are usable. They capture memories and that is what photography like this is about.

Don't let a little loss in quality stop you from capturing those important family moments.