Shooting street fairs
I'm starting to look at my photos from the Folsom Street Fair yesterday. I saw a lot of people wandering around with external flashes and a small diffuser (about the size of the flash) on their camera. I wondered whether it would do any good in that light. It seemed rather silly to me. After going through my shots of the White Rats Experimental Morris, and seeing all of the problems I had with shade and sun, I think that I may have to try it myself. Unfortunately, that makes the camera a lot bigger and more obtrusive. I've also had miserable luck with my AF-540 in any sort of quirky lighting situation. I noticed another problem I had with shooting the morris dancers. I cut off their feet in way too many of the shots, shots where there was plenty of headroom. I can see that there's a lot to learn about shooting street fairs, and it'll take a lot of blown shots to figure it out. It does seem that playing the numbers by shooting a lot of photos is going to be a key technique. Another would be to shoot a wider angle than would be nominal, just so you have room for cropping to make up for the lack of time to carefully aim, or the lack of ability when shooting from the chest. -- The first step is learning to take great photos, the second step is learning to throw away ones that are merely good. Larry Colen l...@red4est.comhttp://www.red4est.com/lrc -- 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.
Re: Shooting street fairs
Larry, I wonder if choosing manually a diff AF sensor would help with the framing. I'm getting the same problem with the Ds, and will try to use that to help me point the camera a little lower - I suspect I'm using the AF brackets as sights, and maybe using one off the center will help. I'm assuming you were using the viewfinder in a fast mode - I never really managed to shoot from the hip with cameras. I do a lot better with a Luger... pity they are very choosy about ammo and can't stand wind-blown sand... lf Larry Colen escreveu: I'm starting to look at my photos from the Folsom Street Fair yesterday. I saw a lot of people wandering around with external flashes and a small diffuser (about the size of the flash) on their camera. I wondered whether it would do any good in that light. It seemed rather silly to me. After going through my shots of the White Rats Experimental Morris, and seeing all of the problems I had with shade and sun, I think that I may have to try it myself. Unfortunately, that makes the camera a lot bigger and more obtrusive. I've also had miserable luck with my AF-540 in any sort of quirky lighting situation. I noticed another problem I had with shooting the morris dancers. I cut off their feet in way too many of the shots, shots where there was plenty of headroom. I can see that there's a lot to learn about shooting street fairs, and it'll take a lot of blown shots to figure it out. It does seem that playing the numbers by shooting a lot of photos is going to be a key technique. Another would be to shoot a wider angle than would be nominal, just so you have room for cropping to make up for the lack of time to carefully aim, or the lack of ability when shooting from the chest. -- Luiz Felipe luiz.felipe at techmit.com.br http://techmit.com.br/luizfelipe/ -- 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.
Re: Shooting street fairs
I almost always use a flash when shooting outdoor situations where I can't control the angle of the light. The 540 works reasonably well in these situations with no diffuser and in high-speed synch mode. Most of my playground shots of Grace and her friends are shot with flash fill. Without it, the shadows would be far too deep. Since the level of flash doesn't come up to ambient anyway, I just shoot full power in most situations. For extremely close shots, I'll dial it back a stop. Paul On Sep 28, 2009, at 3:52 PM, Larry Colen wrote: I'm starting to look at my photos from the Folsom Street Fair yesterday. I saw a lot of people wandering around with external flashes and a small diffuser (about the size of the flash) on their camera. I wondered whether it would do any good in that light. It seemed rather silly to me. After going through my shots of the White Rats Experimental Morris, and seeing all of the problems I had with shade and sun, I think that I may have to try it myself. Unfortunately, that makes the camera a lot bigger and more obtrusive. I've also had miserable luck with my AF-540 in any sort of quirky lighting situation. I noticed another problem I had with shooting the morris dancers. I cut off their feet in way too many of the shots, shots where there was plenty of headroom. I can see that there's a lot to learn about shooting street fairs, and it'll take a lot of blown shots to figure it out. It does seem that playing the numbers by shooting a lot of photos is going to be a key technique. Another would be to shoot a wider angle than would be nominal, just so you have room for cropping to make up for the lack of time to carefully aim, or the lack of ability when shooting from the chest. -- The first step is learning to take great photos, the second step is learning to throw away ones that are merely good. Larry Colen l...@red4est.comhttp://www.red4est.com/lrc -- 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. -- 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.
