The Grand Mosque

If you've been following my journal the last few days you'll know I've been experimenting with the basic daylight exposure technique and today I thought I'd try it out on the car journey to the cinema which takes you passed the Grand Mosque.

Travelling at 100kmph (Larissa was at the wheel of course), I knew I'd need a fast shutter speed. The BDE rule basically states that on a sunny day, the shutter speed should be the inverse of the ISO setting at f/16 (that is to say that if the ISO is 100, the shutter speed should be 1/100). I figured that to take a picture of the mosque at speed would need a faster shutter speed than 1/100 and so I started off with ISO 800. Using the 'Sunny 16' rule, the shutter speed is set to 1/800 at f/16. I wasn't sure if 1/800 would be fast enough, so decided to go for 1/1600. By doing this however, less light is getting in, and so to compensate, the f-number thingy is 'stopped down' (I hope that's the correct term) to f/11 to balance it all up again.

Well, this is all very fascinating to me; it's like discovering the 'rule of thirds' all over again! As you can see, the photo turned out pretty well and shows you exactly what the Grand Mosque looks like when whizzing passed it on the highway when the visibility is not too bad.

The film we saw on said trip to cinema was the new Pixar animation 'Up', which was utterly superb. I do enjoy a good Pixar film with The Incredibles and Wall.E proving my favourite until today. Up managed to combine all the humour, spectacle and story elements you'd expect from Pixar but with a very touching and poignant human element added too and is definitely deserving of a second viewing at some stage.