October 4, 2009 - Cinnamon baked goodness

1/4

f8

ISO 200

55mm

RAW

I feel like I really learned something from today's photo. Once again, I found myself baking (some cinnamon rolls this time) and took some photos as the batch was cooling. Unlike most of my other photos, however, this was shot from a tripod instead of hand-holding and praying for the best.

I tried two different lenses &mdash first I went with my 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS lens, and then I tried my 70-200mm f2.8L lens. After looking through the shots, I really liked the perspective and angle of view of the first lens.

Going into the shot, I thought I would like the photos better from the other lens. Why? Because it is optically sharper. But in reality the smaller, cheaper lens was easier to work with and I got a better angle of view on the rolls.

The tripod let me pick a nice, slow ISO that would give a good, clean image that's free from digital noise (graininess). If you will notice, the shutter speed was 1/4 of a second. Without the tripod, this would have been an impossible shot to make. But even with the tripod there was a problem. This particular shutter speed is smack dab in the middle of a short range of shutter speeds that is susceptible to blurring because of the force of the internal mechanisms of the camera shaking the camera during the shot.

This shake affected the 70-200mm, but not the 18-55mm. I think the difference is the image stabilization. Without it, the 70-200mm had problems. But with it, the 18-55mm performed like a champ.

What would I do differently? I think I would have tried to move the rolls somewhere else, or at least do something to avoid the tile backsplash of the stovetop. The tiles have a floral arrangment printd on it, which can be a little bit of a distraction. Now that I have finished the post, I also think the image is a little tilted. I should have made sure it was level (either when I snapped the photo or with Photoshop Elements in post-processing.

And one other thing &mdash I wish I had made two batches of rolls instead of just one!