Mompesson House, Salisbury

This National Trust property in Salisbury Cathedral's Close is now open for the season and not having been there for many years popped in this morning. Sense and Sensibility was filmed in part here - I must check that out to see which room they used. It also has a rather fine garden but it was rather chilly and breezy sat outside with my pot of tea.

Showing what can be done with a modern DSLR and the Nikkor 10-24mm at its widest this was a colourful but quite dark room - the blinds were drawn against the bright sun to the left and behind me. The signs clearly state 'photography without flash' is allowed and what I like is how one can almost get pictures that wouldn't look too far out of place in a swanky property mag, if you don't examine too closely.

A balance between handholdable shutter speed, aperture and iso setting was always on my agenda. I used speeds between 1/20 and 1/30 inside today and apertures between f4.5 and f5.6, which allows the lens to perform a bit better across the frame than at the maximum, this lens' maximum being f3.5. Even still, the table corner is very close to me and only on close inspection on the PC did I find the depth of field not quite enough. And an iso of 640 is better than a higher speed for detail and smooth tonality, especially when some extra sharpening is added, which I did.

I edited about half a dozen before doing this one - the sheer colour and opulence makes it stand out, especially on the thumbnail.

The image was distortion corrected in Photoshop, purely to remove the slight barrel distortion (edges bowing out) inherent in a wideangle zoom and shows that carefully taking, holding the camera absolutely perpendicular and when there are few other visitors (early in the season, early in the day and an early weekday) can give a pleasing result.

I have added a few others edited to my BLIPFOLIO

Thanks to ALL who hoisted my It's Hardly Cricket Blip into the spotlight, yesterday. It got there at lunchtime and when I went to bed, it was still there - in the no.3 slot!

I'm not too up on Classical music but this soothing piece fits the bill, quite nicely I feel.

Look LARGE here