I posted this on another forum some time back, but thought that it might be of interest to PDML'rs as it shows what the *istD can do with available light. Sorry for the large file.
I was asked to take photos of a local news anchor, Jineane Ford, for a small specialty newspaper. Jineane is on Channel 12, here in Phoenix. She was Fiesta Bowl Queen in 1978 and Miss Arizona, and Miss USA in 1980. The studio was surprisingly dim. The TV cameras of today don't need much light, and I guess the newscasters thus don't have to squint. I was really surprised at how dim the studio was. I asked a guy in the studio about the K temperature of the lights and he said they were set at 3200. It was so dark that I would not have been confident with a custom white balance, so I set the white balance to tungsten, the ISO to 800, and shot away, at about 1/60 sec at f/4 to 4/5.6 with the Pentax 16-45mm lens. But of course the lighting in the studio was perfectly balanced and the colors were great. The chips in the broadcast cameras have the same problem our digitals do, limited latitude, so they don't want much contrast in the studio. Jineane was very gracious, very down to earth. The newspaper wanted "broadcast" type images. The photos turned out very good (shot about 20 different angles and poses) and this is the one that was chosen for the cover of the small newspaper which came out last week. http://www.solutns.com/jpeg/jford.jpg As always, comments welcome. -- John Power Racehorse in the desert 'Life is too short to miss out on photography.'
