Birds and People

This week I was in London and spent some time at Hyde Park. The goal was to work on talking with strangers and to capture some images of people enjoying themselves. I set a goal for myself during the month of August to get out and take pictures of people in parks around the London area.

After arriving in London, I caught a couple of hours of sleep and while sleeping I threw the Olympus EPL-8 battery on the charger. When I got up and got moving, I headed down to Hyde Park. I headed directly to an area of the park where I knew people would be in one place and not in a hurry. I was hoping that this would make them easier to approach in order to photograph, and since I’m new to photographing strangers I wanted to stack the odds in my favor.

I recently started using back button AF on the EPL-8 because I thought it would make it easier to photograph things and people while on the streets. The FN button on the back of the camera was set to auto-focus and the shutter button when pressed halfway down was set to lock exposure. When the shutter button was pressed all the way down the shutter would release.

The advantage this offered is that it is easier to preset the focus separately from the exposure. When the shutter is finally pressed, the camera does not reset the focus momentarily before taking a picture; and it maintains the last exposure if you keep the shutter button depressed halfway.

While using the camera this way, I felt really awkward and was concerned that I would miss a large number of shots. In actuality, I only missed a few shots. Most of the shots were missed due to the exposure being off. In those cases, I forgot to keep the shutter button depressed halfway. When I go back to the park this week, I will try this configuration again, but I prefer Mode 2 for the AEL/AFL set up on the camera.

Mode 2 does the following:

Half-press of shutter button = AF
Full Press of shutter button = AEL/Exp
Pressing the FN button = AEL

The advantage of this configuration for me is that I see the AEL lock icon on the monitor and I can still prefocus and set exposure separately. Also, since I have big hands and the EPL-8 is very small, I feel really cramped and uncomfortable trying to half-press the shutter button while holding the camera.

The disadvantage is that when pressing the shutter button all the way down, the camera does momentarily activate the AF. So, if your focus is not close already, you may potentially miss a shot as the camera focuses. However, this would be a rare problem while shooting with plenty of light and if you prefocused earlier.

This week, my plan is to photograph people feeding the birds again but to spend more time photographing people with their dogs.

The images below were shot in raw and processed in DXO4. I used the Olympus EPL-8 and the 17mm F1.8 lens and the 45mm F1.8 lens.

Young girl In Hyde park waiting for her family as they feed the birds

Young lady feeding the birds in Hyde Park

A young man feeding the birds in Hyde park

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Hyde Park, Birds and People