Dalai Lama, M8 and SF-20

[charlesphoto99]

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Guy,

 

Yeah, I know those situations. The M is both great and not so great in those situations (and this is coming from someone who has a Leica script logo tattooed on his forearm).

 

Great because it's not so intimidating; not so great because it is a bit slower way of working than an slr. If you suddenly feel that filling the frame with only half the face is the answer, you're kinda sunk with an M. That's why so many heavy duty portrait shooters use RZ67s.

 

I'm shooting a secret gig next Tuesday night and the client wants a selection ftp'd that evening of 25-35 selects, close-up, wide, horiz, vert etc and I'm only allowed the first three songs to shoot, no flash. I won't even know the venue until that day. So I need to work fast, make moments that aren't there through dynamic composition etc of a moving subject. I'll be using a D200 with zooms etc. (a replacement M8 is on the way though not sure if I'll have by then). Also, the spot metering is real handy.

 

But on the other hand, if the client wanted a backstage and/or soundcheck thing, more of a feature and there was turnaround time, I wouldn't hesitate to shoot with the M7 or 8, particuarly because the lenses are so good wide open. I did one last year of Kris Kristofferson like that. Fortunately in my case, people hire me for the grainy, intimate reportage look.

 

So many different ways of working. It's a good thing.

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[fotografr]

I'm curious how the shutter noise of the camera affected how much Brent was willing to shoot? I know how nerve-wracking this can be. One wants/needs to compress a full shoot into minutes yet doesn't want to disturb the subject or their audience.

 

The noise was really not a factor at all. I didn't notice it, nor did the Dalai Lama. If I had taken my 5D, I would have felt much more intrusive and it would have affected my style and approach considerably.

[fotografr]

I haven't said anything about my strobe technique here, but the way I handle these situations is generally to take an ambient light reading and set the camera to minus 1/2 to 1 stop. Then I dial the strobe down about 1 stop and shoot away. Some people refer to this a "dragging the shutter." The reason I stop down is that I would rather start with an underexposed RAW file and bring it up than have the image highlights blown out and try to put the detail back in.