The Paris hotel and casino

Originally uploaded by dgmiami

While visiting Las Vegas last week, I was able to take over 500 pictures and really get a grasp on the camera settings available to me in full manual mode. Having never done this before, I was pleasantly surprised at the results from a little experimentation with the settings.

As you can see in this picture, the water coming down from the fountain outside of the Paris Hotel and Casino appears to be a light colored curtain of water. Just to compare, I took a picture in full auto mode and was stunned how “ugly” it would look when the flash fires and captures the water droplets in air.

I sat on the sidewalk with my back to the fence separating me from the Las Vegas Strip, put my elbows on my knees and created a rather steady position from which I took this shot. I took several pictures at different time settings until I found the ideal time exposure of one second. The shot looked good on the camera display, but even better when I got it on to the computer screen. Another setting I played with on these shots was the white balance. I believe I set it to “tungsten.” Click the picture and see the picture properties on flickr (towards the lower left of your browser window).