Pillow Fight, Bingo, Bike Trial and Walpurg Fire, Apr 2005Various Student Days events from Saturday
Comments:
Events & Photography - Various events on the fifth day of Student Spring Days 2005. Most pictures are straight from the camera without any post-processing. First off is bingo-playing. I was determined not to take pictures that night, but once people started playing, shouting and clapping, I just couldn't resist the temptation:)
Next up is pillow fight. The organizers were going for the Guinness record, but with that standing currently at 2700 participants, it was a long stretch and no wonder they could only muster 1/10th of that. Heaps of fun for all participants nevertheless.
Then come the bike trial championships. I thought I was soooo smart to switch to shutter priority mode (keeping shutter at 1/500s) to capture bikers midair and possibley add some sharpness to the pictures with the automatically closed down aperture if light allowed that. Well indeed. Lots of sharpness everyhwere, especially where it is not needed at all - which is mainly in the bacground. These pictures look like they came out of a pocket digicam - "nice" and sharp. A large depth of field is fine for landscape, architecture and groups shots, but when you want to SEPARATE your subject from everything else (for example bikes from the buildings and onlookers behind them), that kind of sharpness in the background is not called for at all. Instead of standing out, the bikers blend in with the rest of the bacground and all in all, these pictures are just plain crap. So why didn't I delete them? Well I need SOMETHING to remind me not to be stupid, don't I:)
Last up are Walpurg night fireworks. Once again I thought I was being clever, when I packed a $5 five inch mini-tripod for this event (in fact I was just too lazy to take my regular tripod with me). Consequently, I ended up shooting fireworks at ISO 1600 (a big no-no!). Additionally, my camera's battery went dead exactly when the most spectacular fireworks were displayed. Of course I changed the battery as fast as I could, but with fireworks, no amount of battery-changing-speed is fast enough. I can only console myself with the fact, that at ISO 1600, using fast shutter speeds and no tripod they would have looked lame anyway.