Glad so many of you liked my Venice research photos (which those of you new to this place <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hewsons/sets/72157623122797633/" target="_blank">can find here on Flickr</a>). Several people have asked me how they were done. Here is the lowdown. All the worthwhile ones were taken with a Ricoh CX2 pocketable camera, not the cheapest on the market at around £280 in the UK but far and away the best digital camera I've owned.

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<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/rimg0037.jpg"></a><a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/rimg00441.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2821" title="RIMG0044" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/thumb.jpgblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/RIMG00441-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>First, those grainy black and white photos at night and in poor light. Dead easy. The Ricoh comes with a black and white mode custom designed to produce this kind of dramatic shot. The important thing is to remember it's going to be a long exposure to get photos like the one on the right. Maybe as much as a second. You can't reliably do this while holding the camera in your hard. You need something to steady things. And there's a problem. I <em>hate</em> clutter. I will never own any camera that demands I wear it round my neck because it's so big. I only want things that can fit into a pocket. Nor do I wish to be carrying around a tripod either.

The first solution can be seen below. This is taken in a little cicchetti bar in San Trovaso. The exposure is automatic -- I haven't set anything special. The camera is simply sitting on the counter. And note: <em>no flash! </em>I hate flash.

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<strong>Big tip.</strong> When you take shots like this you can still rock the camera just by pressing the shutter. So set up a timer delay -- I use two seconds on the Ricoh. Hit the shutter, the camera will beep counting down, then wait for it to do its job.

<img style="float:right;padding-left:4px;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/41xwuankhl-_sl500_aa280_.jpg" alt="41XWuAN+kHL._SL500_AA280_.jpg" width="180" height="180" />What if there's no handy horizontal surface you can use? Simple. Buy one of the flexible tripod gizmos on the right. These can be wrapped around drainpipes, fencing, pretty much anything, or used as a normal tripod. Mine is a Gorillapod which currently <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joby-GP1-D1EN-Gorillapod-Original-Black/dp/B000EVSLRO/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t" target="_blank">costs £11.97 on Amazon UK</a>. Absolute bargain. It squeezes down small enough to fit in the pocket of my winter jacket and can be grabbed out, easily fitted to the camera, and used in seconds.

Again, remember to use the timer delay since you can get bounce using the shutter. But this is all a hell of a lot better than lugging round some gigantic tripod and a whacking great digital SLR.

Finally, one trick with colour which the Ricoh, and some other cameras coming along now, will do for you automatically. Digital cameras are clever but, however many pixels they have and however smart their sensors, they are not as clever as the human eye. The light in Venice at this time of year is extraordinary and frankly the average camera cannot capture its subtleties of light and dark.

There's a new idea around in photography at the moment called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging" target="_blank">High Dynamic Range</a> (HDR). The proper way to do this is to take several shots of the same subject using different exposures and then to combine them into one photo using specialised software. This is much too complicated and fiddly for a lazybones like me. Fortunately the Ricoh comes with a very simple, built-in equivalent called dynamic range. You can use this when there's a lot of contrast in a scene, so much that a camera will normally under or over expose parts of both.

Two examples, the first shot using normal exposure -- a view from Castello towards San Giorgio Maggiore.

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Nice enough, but note the lack of detail in the buildings. Here is the same scene, moments later, taken with the dynamic range option.

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This time round you get to see the brickwork. It won't add anything unless there is that tonal range, though. And since you are taking two shots a tripod or some firm surface is essential to stop blurring -- for this I just rested the camera on the bridge. Here's one of the things I was trying to capture for my research for the coming book -- the look of the water and sky of the Giudecca canal, one of the key locations. I don't think I'd have got it quite right without this technique.

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Why am I going to all this trouble? Because I want this story to be buried deep in the visual look of Venice at this time of year. I'm going to be writing it for the next six to nine months. Even if I have the time I won't be able to go back to Venice and see the way the city in the lagoon looks in January and early February. Venice changes appearances by the hour. The light for the rest of the year is entirely different.

That's my excuse anyway.