This is a great list. If you ask even a reasonably interesting
question you not only get 5+ answers, but you guys then proceed to
chew on the subject some more. It's quite enlightening!
Keep going, I'm listening attentively.
This setup doesn't have to work that well for me.
I'm almost infinitely willing to waste card space. I may spend a day
at the carnival, make 600 or more exposures and end up with less than
20 that I want to look at more than twice. If I can come up with
something that increases my technically acceptable shots for a given
scenario from 1 in 50 to to 1 in 15 I'll consider it. Not all of
this stuff uses the pole but it's mostly shot with the camera away
from my face. Currently I'm working in such a way that it's helpful
not to even have to touch the camera much. For instance, I'll stand
just a little bit past one of the game booths, with my istD on the
stick. I'm actuating the shutter with the remote. Spinning the pole
toward the people playing the game just doesn't register as
photography. Working this way, I have a lot better percentage than
shooting from the hip. With a 50 mm I figure I could hit what I'm
aiming at, but the chances that it would be in focus aren't too good.
I'm finding that aiming from the far end of a ten-foot pole is a bit
easier than I thought it would be. It's quite possible that for my
way of working that I could get that to work with a 50, again with
the focusing issue out of the way.
I've only got one AF lens for the istD at present, a 19-35 Tokina
zoom, which I find sometimes seems to get confused in broad daylight,
then again, it does ok in light like this.
Part of my problem is not having any experience with SLR level AF.
(When does the enablement start, hint, hint?)
At 11:17 PM +0100 8/3/05, John Dallman wrote:
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Alan P. Hayes) wrote:
I definitely will go on using my wide angles, but I'm wanting to get
some isolated portraits, for which the 50mm seems ideal.
It is. I do similar stuff indoors at conferences, and use an FA-50/1.4 for
almost all of it, usually with autofocus. The 50mm is too long to zone
focus in poor light and too narrow for your extension-pole trick to work
very well, I reckon. Going up to ISO 3200 might help.
The autofocus does take its time in poor light, though. Learning to move
in such a way that people register you as a passerby rather than someone
paying attention to them helps a lot, but I still reckon to miss a fair
few shots.
The tricky bit is learning how to use the focus points well. I still
haven't quite managed that; I usually just use the central one, but I
suspect I could do better if I learned what kind of pattern would work
better.
--
PDML means I get more e-mail than spam!
--
Alan P. Hayes
Meaning and Form: Writing, Editing and Document Design
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Photographs at
http://www.ahayesphoto.com/americandead/index.htm
http://del.icio.us/ahayes
