Photography Tips for Peak Baggers

[pudgy_groundhog]

Also related to dvbl's post, another resource I've found useful is "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson, especially if you're looking to learn about aperture, shutter speed, and different picture taking conditions. The book is well written and the picture examples useful.

 

[chipc]

Decide ahead of time if you are hiking with the goal of taking pictures, or if you are hiking and might take some snapshots along the way. Make sure everyone in your party agrees what the goals are for the day.
- d

Excellent point! Most of my photos from my NH 48 K hikes are in the "document the hike" mode with lots of severely lit summit and ridge shots taken between 11 am and 2 pm. For these hikes I was usually on a long day hike aimed to get to a summit and not looking for photo ops. My best hiking shots have been in Acadia where I have been able to plan shorter dawn or dusk hikes to familiar locations with the specific goal of taking photos.

So my one suggestion (which I don't think is in this thread yet) is to try to take open scenes when the is sun lower in the sky. Certainly that's one of the plusses of winter hiking (in addition to reduced haze.).

One last thought: If you haven't seen the book "Examples: The making of 40 photographs" by Ansel Adams its worth a look. Some interesting stories about getting to the locations for some of his famous landscapes.

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Remote shutter release / self timer

This question doesn't really warrant its own thread. For taking long exposures (typically beyond hand-held), what tricks can you use to not shake the camera when pressing "the button"? I recall my semi-professional photographer brother using remote shutter releases on his Nikons, which I don't have. The only thing I can think of is to use the self-timer so the camera is not moving as you release your finger. For things like moving water shots, the 2-10 second delay is probably inconsequential.

I've probably answered my own question, but if there is any other method you can add, great. Otherwise, I hope someone else finds this idea useful.

Tim

 

[darren]

You got it right, you can use either a remote trigger or the camera's self-timer. You can also activate
mirror lock up if the camera has it. Some cameras allow you to set custom functions that will auto turn on mirror lockup if you use the self timer.

- darren