On Sep 22, 2012, at 4:04 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: >> That's not always an option. Dancers appreciate getting photos of >> themselves, but they don't appreciate a flash. And I can certainly >> appreciate that. Last weekend there was someone shooting by bouncing her >> flash off high ceilings, from the floor, and every time she took a shot, it >> hurt my eyes. I tried to suggest that she at least put up the catchlight >> card to bounce some of it forward but she said she tried it and didn't like >> it. >> >> I wasn't making my living at photography, but I was the official event >> photographer. I had the light that was there, fast moving subjects, a K-5 >> and my wits. I did what I could with what I had. Sometimes, perfectly >> sharp just isn't possible, especially on a Pentax rather than a Leica >> budget. I have to settle for "as sharp as I can get it" and concentrate on >> capturing the moment. >> >> I guess that when I get tired of blurry, noisy photos of dancers in dimly >> lit rooms, I can try photographing dead leaves on the sidewalk, or people >> sipping lattes in a coffee shop. > > If you want to make stupid and insulting insinuations, go right ahead. > I really don't care what you think of my photography, or whether you > understand what I'm doing. Your opinion is of no particular interest > to me, nor is it credible, in this respect.
Godfrey, You are very good at what you do. As a matter of fact, when I am photographing still lifes of found objects, I often think about how you would shoot it. But just as I get constantly teased about my photos of disrobed women, or roped up women, I'll tease you about photos of dead leaves on sidewalks, Ralf about factories at night, or Frank about blurry black and white photos taken at night in the city. > > The solution for your situation is to change the rules of the game. > Offer them that you'll run with brighter illumination as a special > event for a short while so that the dancers can be properly > photographed, then put the camera down. Or come up with some other > brilliant solution to your problem using your wits and be > self-satisfied with your cleverness. > > If they don't want that, then forget about taking photos in conditions > where photos cannot be made to the quality you desire. An "official > event photographer" has to be able to call the shots to make good > "official event photographs". If you can't do that, there's no point > in creating crappy, blurry, underexposed photographs that look > terrible. I would prefer to be able to shoot with less noise, faster shutter speeds and more depth of field. But the point of the events is not for me to take photos, the point is for people to have fun dancing. It is my job to get the best pictures possible without interfering with the event. These photos were all shot between 1am and 5am at the latenight dances. I believe that the set should be publicly viewable, and not need a facebook account. I do intend to sort the set down further before posting them on flickr, choosing the ones that are the best photographically, rather than just the shots that the dancers want, i.e. something clear enough of themselves having a good time. Despite the technical limitations, I wouldn't call them "crappy blurry, underexposed photographs that look terrible". https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151265920339673.513291.653299672&type=3&l=15819e7dcf > > Equipment limitations are always on issue in many photographic > endeavors. A Leica, or a set of star field goggles, aren't going to > help you: nothing is a panacea. A Leica, no matter how much it might > cost, is just another camera. > > And if you *are* making photos to the quality you desire, then stop > whining about how hard it is and just keep working at it to make them > better. That's called professionalism. I wasn't whining. You said something about never finding max ISO to be useful. I said that I do find it useful because I am often photographing in situations where I lose less image quality by pushing harder on the ISO, than I would by slowing the shutter speed down, or shooting several stops underexposed. If I had the budget, I could invest in a D4, or 5Dmk3, get several stops more sensitivity at the same level of noise, and substantially improve the technical quality of my photos. Unfortunately, I don't have a "Leica budget", whether I spend it on a Leica, Nikon or Canon. I do, however, have a lot of fun pushing the limits of both my gear, and myself, and generally getting much better shots under challenging conditions than the other people taking photos at the same events. There is a reason that I frequently have people saying that they were sent to me to learn how to photograph dancers. But, be that as it may, one of the things that makes the PDML so much fun is that we don't take ourselves, or each other too seriously, and teasing and poking fun at each other and ourselves is a lot of that. If you don't like being teased like one of the gang, then I apologize, I'll try to restrict my conversations with you to the purely technical and factual. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
