October was a great month. We had a doll meet as Dee's house and we featured and hosted a Rock&Roll theme. We all brought dolls and band gear to create the set. Over 30 dolls were present, which I think is a record so far, but we had a blast featuring our dolls at the meetup. We placed our gear on the stage and propped the dolls as if they were playing. We had smoke machines, lighting and great audio to fill the atmosphere. It was quite loud at times but everybody enjoyed it.
So this month I will talk briefly about night photography and why a good lens is needed here.
To start off, I bought a pro lens (Pic below) 24-70mm F2.8 vr lens from Tamron - which enabled me to use very low ISO and hand held night shots. For the scenes below (pics), I used ISO 200, shutter speed 1/10 sec and F2.8 - Normally this would be a disaster for just about anyone without a tripod and longer exposure and high grainy ISO's - but not for this set up. 1/10 sec is very doable, and almost all pics came out razor sharp. Because it's hand held, I was able to get candid shots and a bit more realism to the set. Most other cameras used high ISO around 1600, and those pics failed for those people. I think this is a best case scenario to use pro lenses, because they are great in low light. Of course a F1.6 prime lens would work too, but shallow depth of field (DoF) can be a nuisance with limited angle. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the outcome and this gives me confidence in using low shutter speeds!
Mishka
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