The Fast and the Fuzzy

Dog Blog Post #667: Got an excuse to play with shutter speed today, as the Daily Dog Challenge of...

175. Fuzzy - Take a picture that shows us your dog's fuzzy side today! If your dog isn't fuzzy, think outside the box on this one.

... collided with...

Our Daily Challenge - April 23, 2012 - "Fast"

For reference, I usually shoot at least 1/250s when the boys are retrieving; 1/500s is even better, but my yard is dappled shade for all but the dead of winter, with only two small areas of full sun, and if I shoot that fast I end up tossing a lot of shots due to poor exposure as the boys run in and out of the shade.

The shot up top was dialed down to 1/125s, which gave Zachary's coat a nice "flow" and the picture what I hoped was a sufficent amount of fuzz. It's probably not something I'd choose to for a photo album, but I think it worked here (i.e. was the best of what I'd shot.)

It helped that the camera closed down the aperture to f11 (I was in shutter priority and Zachary was in the sun) giving me fairly good depth of field that somewhat compensated for the fuzzy bits.

The shot above was shot at 1/500s. The fur has been pretty cleanly captured on Zachary, but to keep my "request" of ISO 100, the camera opened the aperture up all the way. Since I was at full zoom (200mm) that put the aperture at f5.6 - leaving some of Zachary and all of Henry out of focus. Even fully open at that zoom range, the camera still had to tweak the ISO up to 110 to get good exposure.

Happy Henry

Henry wasn't hurrying anywhere today (above) and the 1/500s I was shooting at that point was serious overkill. (ISO 100, f/5, 75mm)

A terrible shot (above), as it managed to be both over- and underexposed, and blurry to boot. But I love Henry's tail, and it shows the strong extremes of light my yard has. Henry's tail is in the south sunny spot, you can see the north sunny spot in the middle of the picture, and Zachary is standing in the shade between. Total distance pictured? Perhaps 60 feet. I could have backed up another dozen feet, but that would have pushed me back into shade. (1/500s, f/5.6, 130mm, ISO 110)

Speaking of Henry's tail...

It just seems to have a life of its own.

"You throw it, and I bring it back."

Photographically, the shot above was the best of the bunch - although neither fast nor fuzzy. (1/500s, f/5.6, 200mm, ISO 250 -- focus point right on Zachary's nose.)

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