Recently a friend came to visit so we went for dinner in Central London and for a walk after. I brought my camera without thinking ahead too much.
End of one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges
Night had already fallen by the time we finished eating; my camera is a Canon EOS 450D from 2008, with an outdated sensor which can’t handle low light very well. I hurriedly set it to Auto ISO and set the shutter speed to take long exposures. With a long exposure what you need is stability. As long as I could lean on something or assume a very solid stance, I was able to take reasonable photos.
View from the same bridge; you can see the Hungerford Bridge running alongside at the bottom right
What did I forget? To set my lens to a wide aperture! All these photos were taken at an aperture of f/6.3 even though the lens can open as wide as f/3.5. Letting in more light would’ve allowed me to use shorter exposures.
On Westminster Bridge
Any people in the shots were blurry because they move too fast (it’s okay! I can still recognise my friends when they’re blurry…) and I messed up one or two from not being able to find a good stance at the required angle. There is a lot of noise and grain as well due to high ISOs.
Near Waterloo station
Despite that, the photos are a lot better than I expected. I still prefer these over the ones I might have taken with my smartphone camera. Putting in the effort to take them helped me to capture some memories a little more vividly too.
Bonus: the next day when we walked around Harrow on the Hill. This beautiful red brick building is part of the Eton-level-posh Harrow School.
And this was a community cafe set up in a nearby church to raise money for repairs. I drank some mango lassi here.
