I was the official photographer at the SF Blues Exchange last weekend. I was amused to note that two other guys each seemed to spend more time than I did taking photos. Josh with his new 5D3, and Chris with his 60D. I suspect that someone talked to Chris at some point at late night on Friday, because he'd been using flash all night long. At one point I asked him if he had any faster lenses so that he didn't need to use flash, he replied that he didn't and continued using the flash for about another 40 minutes, and then I never saw him use flash again. I did have one friend comment to me on Saturday that I should market my IR flash to other dance photographers.
All weekend long I felt like I was fighting with my K-5, rather than just using it. I suspect that a lot of my problems were with my inexpensive split prism focusing screen. At least the metering problems. When I put the 18-250 on the metering flat out didn't work. Even with faster glass, most of the metering indoors was 0.7-2.0 stops under, and not consistently either. Unfortunately, the lighting indoors tended to be rather uneven and I blew a lot of photos by not keeping a better eye on exposure. Focusing tended to be a problem too. I ended up throwing away a lot of what would have been great photos because of poor focus. Poor autofocus is something I probably can't (accurately) blame on the focusing screen. There's no easy way, however, to see which blown focus shots were done with auto focus and which with manual focus. My sigma 20/1.8 did it's usual magic. It seems that most of the photos I got with it were crap, but when it worked, it was wonderful. My feeling is that the glass is great, but there is something about the mechanics of it that makes it tough to focus, even in autofocus. I wonder how it would work with some sort of SDM motor. On the other hand I have a wonderful lens of the same speed, that originally had the same AOV as I'm getting with the sigma 20, but that would require a 24x36 sensor to use with my FA31. I have to admit that I also blew a lot of photos with the 31 as well. I think that part of my issue was that since the light was difficult, but for the most part not impossible (or at least improbable), I didn't give it enough respect. The only time I pulled my monopod out was when shooting with long glass outside. It's also possible that a better focusing aid would really help. It's too bad I cant get something like a laser based cross that I could project based on where the focus point was selected. I did get a few good shots this weekend, but they almost seem to have been in spite of my gear, rather than because of it. It will also be interesting to see what the other guys got. If you're curious to see the mass post of snapshots this weekend, and are on facebook, just look in my profile. I need to go through those and start culling them down to the few that are not just snapshots of fun moments for the people there, but which are actually good photos that someone who wasn't there might want to see. -- 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.
