I admit it. I love sailboats of all varieties. Recently I saw this schooner (Schooner Bay Lady II) sailing off of Provincetown, MA. While the color version of this photo looked nice, I thought the black and white version with the Long Point Light lighthouse in the background was more evocative of times gone by for this historic town. I did a simple levels adjustment in PSE, then used Nik software’s Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert to a grainy black and white image.
Details: I shot this with my Canon 5D Mark III at 45mm, ISO 100, f/8, 1/400 sec. I used shutter priority mode to minimize blur due to camera shake and the motion of the boat we were on. When using this mode for this purpose, it’s important that the shutter speed is set to a minimum of 1/focal length of the lens. In this situation, my maximum focal length for the lens I was using was 105mm, but I also was balancing how quickly my ultimate subject matter would be moving (in this case whales since we were on a whale watch), the bright sun, cloudless sky and the glint off the water. I also wanted my f-stop to be around f/11 so I averaged a variety of lighting situations/directions (pretty easy since the sun was high in the sky) and came up with 1/400 sec for the shutter speed. In the end, it worked out pretty well. I was able to focus on the bursts of action without worrying about having to check each and every press of the shutter for proper exposure.
