Chain Bridge, Budapest, Hungary

The Széchenyi Chain Bridge, which spans the Danube River and links the cities of Buda and Pest, was completed in 1849. It's a suspension bridge, and as you walk over it, you can see that it really is suspended from huge chain links, as opposed to cables that you usually think of bearing the weight of such a structure. It was designed and built in the UK and shipped in sections to Budapest for assembly, according to Wikipedia. Getting up close, i.e. walking over the bridge, you can see the enormous steel chain sections, and how they're joined by huge nuts and bolts. What an amazing feat of engineering from almost 200 years ago.

Kris and I went for a walk up the Danube bank on our first night in Budapest, and because we'd just gone out for dinner and hadn't planned on a long walk, I hadn't brought my camera. Luckily, Kris had her Canon S100 and she kindly lent it to me to take this shot. As you can see by the lingering blue of the sky, it was just after dusk, only about 4:45 in the afternoon. It gets dark early in northern Europe this time of year. I always use manual when shooting with this camera, (and my S110) and so can just look on the viewing screen to get an exposure I like. I check to make sure I can hand hold at the shutter speed I end up with, and adjust the ISO up if I need a faster shutter speed. This exposure was at ISO 1600, f/2.0 (wide open) and 1/30 sec. In Lightroom, I raised the exposure 1/4 of a stop, and used the noise reduction tool to smooth out the grain. I balanced the resultant loss of sharpness by cranking up the sharpness to 80 on the slider. On shots like these, I'm mainly interested in smoothing out the look of the sky so you are more aware of the color than the huge grain (noise) a high ISO will give you.

For more info about the equipment and software I use, see this page.