On Oct 7, 2014, at 04:10 , Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com> wrote: > Stanley Halpin wrote: > >> >> One other point about lens speed: the importance of wide apertures has >> seriously diminished (except for very specialized niche applications that >> call for shallow DOF) - the ability to shoot clean shots at ISO6400 or 12800 >> really makes “fast” lenses a relic of the good old days when we had a choice >> of either Kodachrome as God intended it to be at ISO 25 or of that new >> Kodachrome 64 that was a serious compromise in quality. >> > > I take it that you've never tried photographing dancers at a social dance: > tango, lindy hop, west coast, blues etc. Nor have you probably ever tried > photographing martial artists taking a belt test, or any other athletic > activity where people are moving fairly quickly in indoor lighting and you > can't use a flash. > > Yes, what we can get out of sensors at ISOs above 6400 these days is really > amazing, but trust me, the need for fast glass for reasons other than shallow > dof has not gone away. >
I agree that for dim-light action photography, you just can't beat a fast lens. I was surprised at my last series of concert photos, though, that I shot with the F70-210. I forgot to set the "program mode" for SPEED and had left it at MTF. Upon reviewing all of my (pretty decent-looking) images after the show, I found that almost every shot was taken at f/8! That would have been absolutely unimaginable in the film days. (example, if you care) http://charles.robinsontwins.org/photos/2014/lily_allen/content/K5__4431_large.html -Charles -- Charles Robinson - charl...@visi.com Minneapolis, MN http://charles.robinsontwins.org http://www.facebook.com/charles.robinson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
