This is the partner shot of Pannanick Pond. For my personal thoughts and interpretations of these shots together, see the description of Pannanick Pond.

I took this shot using my 50mm Nikkor 1.8 lens with an 81b cooling filter mounted on my Cokin filter system at handheld shutter speed with a small aperture. Whenever possible (using film bodies), try to avoid using the extremes of your camera's abilities. That is, try to avoid either the widest or the smallest apertures of your lens. At these points, your lens, even new digital lenses, will function at their poorest. For best quality, keep you aperture in a mid-range, between f/16 and f/5.6 (depending on the range of your lenses aperture).

Similarly, avoid using the fastest or slowest shutter speeds your camera can achieve. At these points, your camera is most likely to produce reciprocity failure, which is discussed in the description of The Cycle Respun. If you find yourself caught in situations where the light is too strong not to use both smallest aperture and fastest shutter speed, then you know it has come to the point where you need to invest in special filters called Neutral Density filters. These filters contain a darkening grey that will have no effect on the colours within the photograph except to darken their exposure. This allows one to use slower shutter speeds and/or wider apertures in bright daylight. They come in varying degrees, from a third of a stop to 2 full stops.

For more information on Neutral Density filters, as well as sample images, visit http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/filter/filter-ND.html.