As you all know, every year I shoot this one big honkin event. This
year I returned a bit to my roots and travelled quite light. One of
the big factors this year is the almost total elimination of the use
of flash. This is a big change from what I was doing.
The elimination of flash did present a few problems, but for the most
part it worked out fine and was made possible through the use of the
100/2. This gave me a two-stop advantage over what I was doing before.
I used the DMC-L1 exclusively with the 14-50 zoom and the E-1 had the
100/2 glued to it. This turned out to be a very decent combination and
gave me excellent coverage. As always, I long for something really
wide, but I make up for the limitations in other areas.
For the group shots and portraits, I had the stage lights turned on,
with the color washes on the background scrims. A nice look. The flash
was on-camera, which was the venerable T45 stuffing its light into my
favorite reflector so I got over-the-lens lighting. Carefully
balancing the exposures, ISOs and flash power, I got a nice look.
During the reception, I did what I never do, but it turned out great.
I just used the built-in flash on the DMC-L1.
So, other than the lighting, the other big change for me was using the
DMC-L1 as my primary camera. In the end, I actually took more pictures
with the E-1, but that had to do with the nature of a "graduation
style event" where you are photographing people receiving their honors
on-stage and you have to shoot from a vantage point other than the
stage. My shooting location was perfect distance for the 100/2. I was
handholding the E-1/grip/100 at 1/100. Just to make sure I got the
shot, those were always a set of three or more pictures.
I'm screwed up a few of the shots, but overall, they all look good.
Everything possible is being done in LR4. I shot Raw for the entire
shoot. About 1700 pictures in all. Of this, there were individual
portraits for around 100 couples. The portrait session, which included
three large group shots and the 100 portraits took about 45 minutes.
Yes, 45 minutes. Once you get a system down you can really fly. When
people are cooperating, you can shoot them in about 30 second
intervals. My wife helps me out with this making sure that suit
jackets, jewelry and ties are straight. I rattle off a series of three
shots. Since I shoot with both eyes open, I can tell if a person
blinks and I'll chimp if I'm not sure of the shot. But chimping takes
time, so getting the system down to the point where you can trust it
is important.
The hardest part is getting the group shots arranged. People come in
all shapes and sizes. Getting 30 people quickly arranged for the shot
is like herding cats, but what is helpful is that in two of the three
groups you are dealing with people who have been part of one of the
lower groups in previous years. That also means they've heard your
jokes before, so it's fun coming up with new variations of the same
old joke about chimping.
I was going to use the 35-80 for the portraits, but discovered that I
had left it at home as part of my weight saving efforts. Oh well, the
Leica does a decent job too. Actually, more than decent.
Still, getting around 100 portraits and three group shots done in 45
minutes is probably close to a world record. We always have a time
pressure as the band needs to set up and practice, but we cleared the
time limit by 15 minutes!!! Simplifying my lighting setup made a big
difference and the super fast recycle time of the T45 meant that I was
waiting for the camera to write files--not the flashes to recycle.
After all these years, the biggest challenge is coming up with fresh
images. The majority of the images are your bog-standard grip-n-grins,
keynote speaker, band, audience and graduation/awards type of
photography, but the goal also is to supply the organization with
photographs that can be used throughout the year for various
publications. Some of that is, again, pretty typical stuff, but I like
to throw in some new creative shots once in a while.
On the subject of "new media". It would have been extremely valuable
to have the ability to upload to their on-line content stream that
updates the website, twitter and facebook all from the camera. The
media manager for the organization was doing this from her cell-phone,
but I would have liked to have the ability to upload a shot directly
from my camera in the midst of the shoot. I do believe we are reaching
a critical point in this and may decide my next camera purchase solely
on the availability of this feature. Video is a nice toy, but
in-camera media selection and upload is a game-changer.
After the event finished, we were, as always, the last ones to leave.
But unlike previous years where it took me an hour to get everything
packed up and loaded in the Jeep, it took about two minutes to get
everything in the ONE bag. We used the rest of the time to just yack
with our friends.
AG
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Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
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