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[OM] [OT] Canyon 5D at ISO 3200

Subject: [OM] [OT] Canyon 5D at ISO 3200
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:57:09 -0400
I recently attended my granddaughters' dance recital held at the 
University of Buffalo.  I'd never been to one of these things before and 
didn't know what to expect.  In fact I'd never previously shot any sort 
of a stage performance except to assist a friend with his daughters 
junior high school play.  In that case we attended a dress rehearsal and 
were allowed to use flash including a couple of studio strobes placed on 
the stage.  I knew there would be no flash here and it wouldn't have 
made sense anyhow.  We were also warned on entering that no video 
cameras would be allowed.  But no one made any comment about my 5D.

Having been through it now I wish I had brought a monopod which would 
have helped a bit with camera motion if not subject motion.  I think I 
could have easily rested it on the floor in front of my seat. 
Fortunately, I had an excellent vantage point.  Dead center about 5-6 
rows back.  I ended up shooting throughout the 3 hour production (yes, 3 
hours) using only the 5D and Tokina 28-80/2.8.  Although the stage was 
reasonably lit for human vision it still took ISO 3200 and f/3.5-4.5 
(mostly) to get a shutter speed of 1/160 to try to stop some motion. 
This was the first time I've ever taken more than a couple test shots at 
3200.

Some surprises.  Although there is modest noise visible on the CRT there 
is essentially zero noise visible on 4x6 prints... either those from 
nearly full size images to those which are cropped to about 25%.  That's 
from my little Epson inkjet.  I've yet to see what the lab prints will 
look like.  Since I'm new to CS3 which I used for the conversion it 
occurred to me afterwards that CS3 might be doing some noise reduction. 
  Sure enough, I checked and saw that everything has been converted with 
a default value of 0 for luminance noise reduction and 25 for color. 
However, moving the sliders around I couldn't see any actual change in 
noise level.  I also sharpened the images in PhotoShop so whatever noise 
is there has also been a bit accentuated from the sharpening.

Although I shot in raw mode I set the camera to auto white balance so 
that an as-shot conversion would give me a starting point.  The next 
surprise was that I made almost no changes in color temperature after 
processing more than 100 images.  I don't know how the camera manages to 
do *white balance* amidst a profusion of colored lights but it was rare 
that I could manually come up with a rendition that I liked better. 
This was especially surprising since I have seen it make some not so 
flattering choices in light which I'd consider much less challenging.

You can have a look here:
<http://www.chucknorcutt.com/dance_recital/index.htm>
Granddaughters are front row center in image 2 and front in image 6.  No 
doubt many could be Moosified but after processing 117 images I didn't 
have the energy.

Chuck Norcutt


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