O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree . . .

I was inspired by my post last year and by Elizabeth Kartchner's post on photographing your Christmas Tree to show the differences in camera settings and how you can make your tree "sparkle." Elizabeth's suggestion is to go as high as you can on the ISO and as low as you can on the aperture. I further suggest to anchor yourself against a wall if you do not have a tripod. Or at least use the poor man's tripod. I shot on the aperture setting {thanks Tracey} and here are the different looks to our tree - sans oraments. All but the 3rd were shot at 35mm.

Auto

ISO 400; no aperture or speed adjustment

ISO 800; f/5.6; shutter speed 1/13.

ISO 800; f/4.5; shutter speed 1/13

The 3rd picture should have been a bit darker than the 4th picture (that was my original idea) but because I zoomed out my picture also captured a larger amount light bouncing off of the floors and walls. I was also closer to the window behind me. It just goes to show that natural light wins out everytime. For more information on this I highly recommend reading "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson (thanks Kristi). Love that book!!