Took a little trip yesterday, out of the “big city” and down into central PA, to Lewisburg.  No real reason, just one of those fun afternoon trips you take to see something new, poke around a small town, and get lost a couple of times despite the best efforts of the GPS.

Lewisburg, PA, for those of you who may not know – and I suspect that’s almost everyone, since goodness knows I’d never heard of the place – is known for it’s “Main Street, USA” status as well as for being the home of Bucknell University.

Market Street, Lewisburg, PA

I love traveling to places like this, little towns that time seems to have passed by, at least partially.  Visiting Lewisburg certainly wasn’t like stepping back in time, with classic Fords and poodle skirts down the street, but it was historically quaint and very charming.  Mostly it was clean and quiet, which are two qualities that I always appreciate.

Despite the fun of these trips, they are always a source of some conflict, however.  The conflict being which camera to bring?  On one hand these are usually social trips, Mandy and I going to explore and spend time together, so lugging a full bag of gear would be a distraction.  On the other hand, it’s good odds that I’ll see something worth shooting, and I want to end up with usable photos.

On this trip the ability to travel light won, and I took only the little Powershot – which ended up being the right choice, since there were in face several scenes I ended up shooting, but overall the DSLR would have been overkill.  The important thing is, the photos I came home with are perfectly usable.  Shooting with the P&S requires extra attention, settings need to be just right, care taken on exposures, histograms studied.  There’s no RAW adjustments to fall back on, no real latitude for recovery.

Fortunately the shots I really cared about came out well, although I’ll freely admit that it took me about a dozen frames to get into the groove of shooting successfully.  I don’t know that I’ll ever make prints of any of these images, although I certainly could if the mood struck.  But the point is that I had the camera with me and was able to record some memories.

Campus Theater in Lewisburg

The one change I have made recently is in metering modes; I used to throw all my cameras on Spot Metering and leave them there, and as such I got pretty good at picking a metering point, grabbing a quick exposure reading, then recomposing and shooting.  But I’m reading McNally’s Hotshoe Diaries over again, and Joe recommends matrix (evaluative in Canon lingo) metering, so I’m giving it a try.

Believe it or not, it does have a noticeable effect on exposures and I’ve had to make some adjustments.  But it seems to be working well, and for most subjects it’s a perfectly valid way to go (although there are still circumstances when switching to the spot meter will save your butt).

Bucknell University chapel

Our final stop was nearby Bucknell University, where we were stopping to see the senior show put on by one of Mandy’s friends.  Finding Bucknell was easy, but finding our way around the campus wasn’t – the place is huge!  We finally found a campus map posted in the admissions lot; we hopped out to check it out, and I caused a bit of consternation when I wandered right past the map to capture the last of the sunset light on this chapel.  The campus has a very New England feel to it and being the university photographer there must be a delight – the place just oozes photogenic.  I’d love to be able to make some images there.

(For the record, once the light was past (aka in the dark) I went back and read the map and got us where we needed to be.)