Night (evening) at the Museum

Hello all. I have recently been nipping into the British Museum as it is close to where I work, and I took my camera with me yesterday and dropped in after work. Having a camera with me made me realise one thing... it's really dark! at least on a December evening it is... but here are a selection of shots. Most are high ISO (800 or 1600) taken with the DA* 16-50 at f2.8 to try and get the shutter speed up enough to keep the pictures as sharp as possible... Any C&C gratefully received...

This was taken in the portico of columns on the way in, and I think it gives a good impression of soidity (the columns are BIG)




Next up, an ancient egyptian statue. Incredibly smooth and fantastically worked stone considering it is thousands of years old:




Part of an Assyrian (I think) relief depicting a Lion hunt - very impressive (in real life at least):




A massive statue in one of the stairwells. This picture reminds me of a level in the game 'Tomb Raider', although the lighting pretty much defeated me because it spans a couple of floors of the museum, and the lower one is more brightly lit than the upper one...




And finally, the ionic capital from an ancient greek column...




The place is fantastic, and huge, and nearby (to me) so I have no doubt I'll be taking the camera again...

Regards

Mat W

Very nice set, and lovely and sharp, very impressive exhibits.

This is a very impressive collection of pictures. The high ISO hasn't caused any unpleasant noise, so you controlled that well, but it helped keep the pictures beautifully sharp - did you use a tripod or are they handheld. If the latter, respect.
david

Great series, Mat, well worth going back there again. I do like the detail in the last one, the mood of the first one. But I'm totally blown away by the second. Wow, great shot of a great statue.

Prieni

Thanks folks - they are all hand-held although I had to really work hard to keep them sharp. In particular the second one I took about four times checking between on the camera screen to see how sharp each attempt was! I was also concerned about depth of focus as I was using a wide aperture, but really pleased with how they turned out. The museum does seem to light a lot of it's exhibits well (albeit dimly overall), as you would expect..., which worked really well for photo 2. I tried a couple of shots with a flash but couldn't get the effect I wanted so stuck with high ISO and big aperture.

I'll definitely be going back

Regards

Mat

Great series, favorites are 1 and 2 for me.

The statue is excellent, great hard light and impressive lack of noise. I like the lines and lighting of the columns, but perhaps would have moved slightly to the left to get that window out of the picture.

Well done Matt, an impressive set of images from a central London location. And you were not arrested?!

I like em all

I like them, especially the relief. I believe the Assyrian room is quite spectacular.

Howard

The reliefs are amazing - in fact the whole place is so stacked with incredible objects I think it warrants a few trips to truly take it all in. It never occurred to me that I might get stopped by the police for having a highly suspicious camera (in a notorious tourist hot-spot), but recalling what I have read here, maybe I should watch out for it... Next time i'll also experiment a bit more with the columns outside...

Mat