Cindy from atop The Pier with her Canon T1i mounted on her new carbon fiber tripod!
My DSLR Photography students continue to accumulate new gear, which is exciting for me too! For out second lesson Cindy got a Benro carbon fiber tripod, no small investment. Coincidentally, this was the second tripod based DSLR Photography Lesson I taught this week. It's funny how such themed lessons, that are themselves rare, happen so close to each other. The same thing happened with 50mm lens lessons earlier this summer.
Despite our 10am lesson time start, things up on the roof of The Pier (5th story) were not that hot as there was a constant breeze and the sun was to our backs. That latter fact helped us with photographing the downtown St. Petersburg skyline. Not only did Cindy get a new tripod, she also got a cable release and wireless remote control, two very useful items that are very wise to pair with a tripod purchase, especially the cable release.
We actually started out by figuring out how to setup her Benro carbon fiber tripod including locking the legs securely into place and adjusting the ball head, not to mention securely tightening the mount plate to the bottom of her Canon T1i.
After shooting from all angles on the roof, we headed down to photograph some pelicans looking into the sun. We did this because Cindy asked me what happens if on her trip to Alaska next year the whales are backlit by the sun. Obviously it is not ideal at all to have backlit subjects, but getting such a subject decently exposed is still possible by adjusting the exposure compensation, usually the +/- button. This will of course blow out the sky and overexpose much of the image, but getting the whale, or in our case yesterday, a pelican, exposed well enough to see details, not just a silhouette.