Bluebell Wood
We went for a walk yesterday in Middleton Woods near Ilkley in North Yorkshire.
I had my Nikon D700 with me but I didn’t take a tripod. I had in mind that I could pump up the ISO if there were any bluebells in the woods, but we were there primarily for a walk.
When we arrived and looked up the hill, the ground was carpeted with bluebells in all directions. The weather was dull and overcast, which is pretty typical for this part of England. 
The upshot is that I didn’t think I would be losing anything by not having brought my tripod.
Now in order to make sense of how the photographs turned out, I have to go back in time a bit to when I owned a Nikon D200. I sometimes used to shoot portraits at ISO 800 with the D200 because it had this quality of making faces appear somewhat sketch-like. It was a look that I liked and which I think suited some portraits.
What I mean by sketch-like is that the lines and areas of color looked as though someone had gently rubbed out some of the detail and left a slightly gritty, slightly washed out and impressionistic image. That may not be so obvious in the following portrait because I bumped up the color a little, but I think it is clear in the crop.
Man In Jerusalem
Crop Of Face
This man was sitting near the entrance to a series of rooms that run as an extension to the Western Wall in Jerusalem There was natural light, but not a lot of it, si I shot at ISO 800.
The D700 at ISO 1600
I have used the D700 for portraits at ISO 1600 and been amazed at how good they looked, but I have always said that portraits are a poor overall judge of how a camera performs. That is because the individual elements in a portrait are quite large (nose, eyes, hair, etc.) and the viewer does not have to make out and interpret lots of small detail.
I think one way of thinking about this is to imagine a sketch of a face. It can be done with comparatively few lines – our imaginations fill in the rest because we know so well what faces look like.
Landscapes on the other hand are much more demanding.
My experience from yesterday is that the D700 at ISO 1600 is better than the D200 was at ISO 800 and maybe better than the D200 was at ISO 400.
But to a lesser degree the D700 exhibits exactly the same kind of sketchiness that the D200 exhibited.
Bluebells - Crop
What I learned from this is that if I am going to get any good bluebell photographs I need to take the tripod and shoot the scenes again at base ISO.
Technical
I shot the bluebell photo above in RAW and developed it in Adobe Camera Raw.
Poladroid
This last shot is one that I put through the Poladroid application just to see how it would turn out. You can Google for Poladroid if you are interested in using it yourself.
Bluebells with Poladroid Effect
