So I'm sitting in front of my computer, posting part two of this blog, and adding some new photographs to the website. the rain has subsided today, and the sun is out. I am going to go around and see about making a few prints of some of the vistas of the area. We will see if that comes to fruition today, since there's quite a bit of work to do from this weekend.
As posted in Part One of the blog, it was a difficult show to photograph. You lose a reasonable amount of detail at ISO 6400 setting on any camera. You can see a lot of tests where a camera company shows a nice nice photograph at their highest ISO setting. What they do NOT tell you is how they arrived at it. A lot of times if you OVEREXPOSE a high ISO file, you mitigate some of the noise artifacts. Okay, so over expose by say 1/3-2/3 f/stops. Alright, so why don't you do that? Well what if you're photographing action? You want as FAST a shutter speed as you can muster, even underexposing the photograph and bringing it back in post *(the reverse of the above, so increasing the noise more).
Okay, so that doesn't explain everything. Most of the times, when you're using a high ISO setting such as 3200 or 6400 or higher, you're starved for quality+quantity of light. So what do these people do? They shoot a portrait of an individual, overexposing maybe 1/3 shot, using a studio strobe to light it, inside of say a softbox (thus dealing with quality and quantity of light) and then have a crew of professional retouchers bringing back detail or creating it.
I'm not saying that high ISO's haven't improved drastically. My old 30D I wouldn't have shot above ISO 800. I considered it an 800 camera. My old 40D, I shot at 1600. Now with the current cameras, except my 5D, I shoot at 3200 or 6400 if needed.
Alright, enough of that. Just shedding some light on how some camera manufacturers make their high ISO performance appear better than it is. Don't show me a portrait in a studio environment illustrating your high ISO performance. Show me a low light action shot at f/2.8 where you're BARELY getting enough shutter speed to freeze medium paced action, and you'll be seeing what I'm showing.
I just want to touch upon the background of these photos from this most recent event. My shooting position put me opposite this white divider cloth that the venue used to divide the floor section. The crowd sat below me, and to each side, so this wasn't a "set up ring with a cute white background". In hind site, I would have liked to have moved and shot with a crowd as my background, as the white really bothers me.
Well, here's a few from the show. I really only got to photograph about half of the show. The first part of the show, locating the venue controller of the lights was hard to do and we needed more of the lights turned on. In the beginning I was metering for 1/125 and that's simply not fast enough to even try to catch someone throwing someone through the air.
Please don't think me saying about the lighting is to say the lighting is bad at the venue. It's not, it's just not good for action photography. Think of highschool gymnasium lighting and you get the idea.
Here's a few photos, and a link to the first blog post
http://roblynnphotography.blogspot.com/2010/05/aon-wrestling-5222010-part-1-education.html
Also I want to say, since someone was confused about this before. My website is WWW.ROBLYNN.ORG
If you go to roblynn.com, it is not me. I have him linked on my site, and I suggest to take a look at his site and story too, however we are not the same guy.
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