I stood across the street from this cafe in Lyon and started to figure out how much exposure compensation I would need to make the shot work. I dialed in one stop negative exposure compensation knowing that it would probably need more, but it would give me a starting point when I looked at the LCD. It blew the scene and I dialed in another two thirds of a stop and that held the white of the shirt, while the rest of the scene looked OK. The owner of the cafe and a delivery man looked back across at me, (they are just out of the frame to the left) and seemed to be wondering what I was trying to photograph. They looked up at the front of the cafe and across the tables while I fiddled with my camera.
My new sunglasses are polarized. The rear LCD on the camera is polarized and the two act together of course to darken down the view in the LCD so that it is almost unreadable. That’s something else to think about – where to put your glasses when a strongly lit scene like this comes along.
Maybe it will appear as an ecard on Quillcards Distinctive Ecards.
The point of this though is that the man’s face in the crop represents a very small proportion of the total frame but it shows lots of detail. The conclusion is that this 35mm lens is sharp. It is also a pleasure to use.
Nikon D60, 1/2000 second, f4.5, -1.7 exposure compensation, ISO 100
