It just occurred to me that the dinosaur exhibit I went to recently provides a convenient backdrop for making a photographic point…specifically, that if you want to take nice pictures, you should really learn how to control exposure manually.

For the sake of illustration, let’s compare a couple of images. First, here’s a photo of the trio of Mapusauruses on display (with a veggiesaurus of some sort in the background), taken with a Sony DSC-W300 compact digital camera set on P mode (automatic everything):

Acceptable, but nothing special, right?

Compare it with the photo below, which I took with the exact same DSC-W300, in the exact same building, with the exact same dinosaurs, with the exact same ambient light:

Much more dramatic, wouldn’t you agree?

Besides shifting position to crop out and conceal some of the distracting bits in the background, I switched to Manual mode, then reduced the overall exposure level by about 1.7 stops.

The net effect? I eliminated a lot of the un-necessary visual clutter, like the grating on the ceiling, the detail in the background concrete, the detail in the people in the foreground, etc., making you see what I wanted you to see…a trio of menacing beasts towering over curious onlookers.

I was also lucky…gaining the unanticipated bonus of having strong light fall on the people on the far side of the podium leaning over to read something…perfect for showing scale.

In the first picture, the camera did exactly what it was supposed to do…adjust settings to give as neutral an exposure as possible. That’s the way cameras are programmed, so that’s what you get if you let the camera decide everything.

In the second picture, I basically executed a manual over-ride, and told the camera that I wanted to create an image that’s darker than an average exposure…in order to hide the unsightly bits and bobs, while accentuating the cool stuff with hooked claws and sharp teeth (how’s that for technical-speak?).

The take-away message is that if your camera has manual controls, learn to use them. I’m not talking just about expensive DSLRs. The camera I used for the photos here is a compact that I carried in my pocket (I was too lazy to lug a bigger camera across town).

When your pictures don’t turn out the way you want (underwater or on land), it’s tempting to blame your camera…but keep in mind that quite often, just fiddling with a few settings will make a big difference.

It seems like this was my week to see old stuff…expensive fossils on Monday, and yesterday, a dinosaur exhibit at the National Museum of Nature and Science Tokyo.

This will probably come as no surprise, but I was obsessed with dinosaurs and other prehistoric life forms when I was a kid. I devoured every dinosaur book in every library and bookstore that I came across, and I probably spent hundreds of hours digging through gravel, mountain rocks, river beds, construction sites, etc. for fossils. (I found a lot!)

I drew dinosaurs at school (usually during reading and grammar classes), and dreamed up all sorts of little projects to pursue in lieu of doing homework. When I visited Washington DC…straight to the dinosaur exhibit.

…so seeing the dino displays at the museum yesterday brought back a flood of fond memories.

The were a number of dinosaurs on display. True to form, I gravitated to the ones with big teeth and sharp claws, giving only a casual glance to the duck-like, pacifist “veggisaursuses”.

The one at the top of this post was the first to greet visitors to the hall. It’s a Cryolophosaurus ellioti (can you hear me saying “cooooooolllllllll” as I walked in?).

And the ones below are a pack of Mapusaurus roseae. We listened to a brief talk by one of the researchers, who explained how our interpretation of these dinosaurs has changed over the past couple of decades.

He wasn’t a great speaker, but he showed some illustrations from textbooks in the late 80s and early 90s that made these guys look like uncoordinated, dopey Barneys…which underscored just how off-the-mark researchers were only a few years ago, and how “accepted truth” at any given time can look really stupid with the passage of a little time.

We now view these and other similar dinosaurs as intelligent, agile, bad-a** pack-hunters…something probably much closer to what they were really like.

There were many other dinosaurs on display, including some flying reptiles that looked like they couldn’t possibly walk, much less take to the air, but these guys with the big teeth were the stars of the show…the ones that left me saying “cooooollllllll” all the way back home.