Fun at the Fair (for me)

[Stagecoach]

Last month I had the oppurtunity to go to a funfair at one of our local festival events 'Suva Hibiscus Week' in the evening. As the weather was dry for once and humidity low I decided to take the camera and have a play.

With my general mode of photography being macro I have time to plan, adjust and take a number of shots to achieve what I am after but appreciated this was not going to be possible in a crowded and pretty dark enviroment at night. I decided to take just the 50mm 1.4 and set up in aperture priority with auto ISO set between 400 and 2200, later 1600 with a mimimum speed set at 1/125th.

My primary aim was to use the camera as a P&S for this occasion and to see how it performed in these conditions knowing that the ISO would be well above what I would normally use. My interest in high ISO performance followed from discussions and examples here at CiC

F4 1/125 ISO2200

F4 1/60 ISO 1600

F4 1/60 ISO 1600

F5.6 1/60 ISO 1600

F2.2 1/100 ISO 1600


All the above were processed as follows; RAW opened in ACR (no changes made) and then opened in PS7. Image resized to 1024 pixels max and noise reduction and sharpening in 'NEAT' default setting. Images then saved as Jpeg approx 300Kb files. Max size of 1024 pixels is due to that being the max size the free copy of NEAT will deal with. No cropping, exposure, saturation or other changes made (yet).

Results : This has certainly taught me a lesson that with a bit of preplanning and confidence now that I have achieved reasonable results with the high ISOs next time I can concentrate on composition rather than be wondering if anything will be useable !

As for the funfair, it's not Disney standard but the kids there have just as much fun.

Grahame

[Donald]

My primary aim was to use the camera as a P&S for this occasion and to see how it performed in these conditions knowing that the ISO would be well above what I would normally use. My interest in high ISO performance followed from discussions and examples here at CiC
................
Results : This has certainly taught me a lesson that with a bit of preplanning and confidence now that I have achieved reasonable results with the high ISOs next time I can concentrate on composition rather than be wondering if anything will be useable !

Good on you, Grahame, for getting out there and pushing yourself into new areas of photography. That's what learning is all about.

And the results are good. You might concentrate more on composition the next time, but you'll be pushed to get a better one that that first one. I think that is a wonderful image.

[Stagecoach]

Thank you Donald, I'm going to have a go at cropping a few and perhaps some B&W conversion. But as you say this was a learning excursion, so next time composition will be priority.