Further Confusion 2007: Saturday

[foxgrrl]

The first rule of photography club is: Never use a flash.

The second rule of photography club is: Never use a flash.

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I forgot to white balance these, or do any post-processing on them; So I'm going to re-post these later. I'm trying to get at least a few photos posted everyday. I haven't had a lot of free time yet…

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Further Confusion Sat.: Jan 20, 2007
Doubletree Hotel
2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

( This post in my style )

Comments

[kitsunenine.livejournal.com]

I wish the (This post in my style) (This post in Foxgrrl's style) links wouldn't overlap so badly whenever I look at your posts. :(
But awesome photos. One day I'll make it out West.

[foxgrrl]

I wish the (This post in my style) (This post in Foxgrrl's style) links wouldn't overlap so badly whenever I look at your posts.

Erf, they shouldn't do that. I just checked this entry as it appears on your friends page (The only way that I can see it in your style), and it looks ok. Which web browser are you using? I'm currently on FireFox 2.0.x

[kitsunenine.livejournal.com]

2.0.0.1, myself. I haven't a clue why.

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

I always look at them in your style since you're so hardcore...

I'm enjoying the opportunity to kinda sorta a little bit get to be there. These are fun :-)

[catwoman69y2k.livejournal.com]

I see you were at the sublevel 03 concert. The performer looks real cool. Thanks for showing me a perspective I couldnt see (since I was dancing behind one of the screens at the time)

-Kat

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I am so about available-light photography when I can get away with it now.

[jwockies.livejournal.com]

....I swear to the god that that's the best picture I have EVER seen of me.... you have some talent, girl! I am so incredibly impressed! May I have your permission to use this on my website and stuff? Of course I'll give you credit.

It's actually saying quite a bit that this is the best picture of me ever, cause I do a lot of photography and model myself... do you have a DA? My website is http://gealach.deviantart.com/

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's all about available light whenever feasible, and sometimes when it's not feasible. I find that flashes are a crapshoot at best, and a snapshot at worst.

[arethinn]

Yeah, wtf? That's an awesome getup! (for certain values of 'awesome'...)

[arethinn]

I meant something like "really bizarre", but with no negative connotation. :)

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Let's just rename it Further Cubism, and be done with it. Cube Head Costume really stole the show, for all values of awesome.

[arethinn]

"The first rule of photography club is: Never use a flash.

The second rule of photography club is: Never use a flash."

f-in werd.

[pathia.livejournal.com]

Meep! Where are the Sunday shots :)

[foxgrrl]

Meep! Where are the Sunday shots :)

http://www.arclight.net/~julia/lj/2007_Jan/FC2007_I/

Just finished processing, going to go to sleep now instead of posting…

[foxgrrl]

Considering the encouragement not to use a flash, how do you reconcile darker settings or night time? Try and find the right lighting? Change the ISO setting on the digital camera?

The, number-one, biggest thing that I do, is to use a very fast lens — the Nikkor AF D 50mm f/1.4 specifically [BEST LENS EVAR], but I used to use an f/1.8 for a few years. When using it wide-open, you get:

• A shallow depth of field, so that you can exactly isolate the subject matter (blurring everything else).
• The ability to point and shoot in the dark. (Literally, candle light and moon light.)

The shallow depth of field can be a little bit annoying sometimes, not just because if you focus on someone's eyes, the tip of their nose will be slightly blurred, but the D50/D200's autofocus system has difficulty locking onto a dark blurry shape [technical reasons go here] which is kinda annoying if you're shooting action, because manual focus can take too long. Basically, in a not-so-well lit room, at ISO1600 and f/1.4, you can use a shutter speed of about 1/30sec. to 1/60sec. Fast enough to avoid motion blur.

And, as much as I hate setting the ISO that high, a lot of the time I end up using ISO1600. But it's kinda noisy, and looses a lot of dynamic range. At FC, my general style was to keep my aperture locked at f1.4, and my shutter speed at 1/50sec, and have the camera change ISO based on the TTL meter (Which I'd sometimes override "compensate" manually). If the ISO hit 1600, then I'd start cranking up the shutter speed until it was within about -0.3ev of what the meter says. I could generally do all of this within a second or two of knob twiddling. (One of the few advantages of professional gear is UI speed.)

Using a 50mm "prime" lens, has a number of compositional/artistic advantages and disadvantages. Every time I handed my camera to someone else to shoot a photo, their first question was: Where's the zoom? THERE IS NO ZOOL ZOOM! If you want something to look bigger, you have to move closer to it. If you want it to look smaller, you have to move back. While you're moving around, It forces you to think about how and where you want things in the picture. A 50mm lens is also referred to as a Normal lens, because it exactly matches the human eye. If you look through the camera with one eye, and leave your other eye open, you'll see a normal stereoscopic view. It's very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of thing. I knew what all of my photos were going to look like before I took them. And when you're viewing them, all of the subjects are the 'correct size' in relation to all of the other subjects.

There's also that whole thing about isolating the subject, by blurring out the visually distracting background.

One of the slightly annoying things about this lens, is that there's some vignetting, but that's what computers are for. (I haven't been correcting for that until the last four FC posts, it's probably unnoticeable if you don't look really really closely.) But the most annoying thing of all, which is not the lens' fault, is the stupid 24mm 1.5 Crop Factor CCD sensor(s) in Nikon digital SLRs. Dur! It makes your 50mm lens like a 75mm lens, dur. NO IT DOESN'T, It's a regular 50mm focal length image with the edges chopped off. A 75mm lens looks different, because objects that are far away look closer/bigger than they actually are. [I have a long rant about this.] Anyway, now I have to stand 1.5 times further back from the subject than before with my 35mm film camera. That's also why a lot of my photos these days are super-close-up.

So, what was the question… yeah, look for good light, and open your aperture all the way, and crank up your ISO as high as you can tolerate the noise. That's my strategy for doing hand-held candid photos in dance clubs.