Oahe Dam

[deeky]

I spent a few days in Pierre, SD for work. One evening there were thunderstorms rolling through, so I went out to Oahe Dam (pro. Oh-ah-he). It's a dam big dam, forming the 4th largest reservoir in the country.

I had the camera on a tripod sitting on a flat boulder for the first and on a roadway for the second, using my camera to adjust and remotely trigger.

I'm generally happy with them, but here's the question - on the first shot, the intake towers are soft. I was at least a few hundred yards away, shooting 23mm at f/5.6, iso 400 for 30 seconds. The second shot is sharper (at 24mm, f/5.6, iso 125 and 15 seconds to account for the much brighter lighting around the facility), so did I just miss focus on the first? The last marking on my lens scale before infinity is 5 feet, so I manually set it just short of infinity and figured I'd have the dof to cover.

How do you ensure that your foreground is in focus when the live-view screen is too dark to see before the shot?

As always, comments welcome.

#1
IMG_5682a by breckmiller, on Flickr

#2
IMG_5670a by breckmiller, on Flickr

 

[Destin]

Beautiful shots.

To answer your question about focusing when it's too dark... carry a really bright flashlight with you and use it to light up the area you want to focus on while focusing. Sometimes even this fails. In which case go set the flashlight where you want to focus and focus on the light itself (If possible).

If you're trying to focus while in live view that may be a big part of your problem. Focusing using the viewfinder is much faster and better in low light than using live view. Not sure what camera you have or if this is an option for you though.

 

[blurred45]

Those are professional taken! Nice