First run with the Nikon D300

Well this past friday I was fortunate enough to be able to take my new Nikon D300 out for its first real event shoot. And as soon as I took the first photo I knew it was going to be a great camera for events. 

The event I was at was a coffee house fundraiser set up by the Drama Club at Oswego High School and completely designed and run by students in the Drama Club. I was there to make sure nothing went horribly wrong as my day job and was also doing my side work of photographer. So in between taking care of activities that were requested of me I was able to take a few photos of the event itself. Now the event being a stage event and not having really super bright light everywhere I knew that this could pose an interesting problem for the camera metering system.

So now I'm sure you are wondering how the camera worked out. My verdict on the camera? Most Excellent in all aspects. 

The first thing I did in preparing to work in the low light environment was to set the ISO down a little bit. Now with my D70s any movement from ISO200 proved to get quite grainy and was used only when really necessary. So I was interested to see if the higher ISO's on the D300 would prove to be better. I am happy to say that they didn't only prove to be better, but they well exceeded my expectations. I shot the event at ISO1600 (I wouldn't even dare shoot an event that could possibly be going to print at that on my D70s) and on the D300 the amount of grain I was getting was equivalent to the amount of grain I would get from ISO400 on the D70s. Not bad at all! This allowed me for faster shooting speeds to capture any fast events and even capture the musicians movements without any blur. 

So now actually shooting the event... How to get around 70-80 people seated in many chairs around tables and get into interesting locations for angles of the shots? Well... it wasn't easy... and it pretty much just entailed hoping that something would still be there when I managed to get to the location that would work great. 

Now... Shooting in low light situations can be tricky... The meter in your camera always goes for the even grey card equivalent across the whole screen. When shooting in low light situations this can cause for some areas to be blown out while other areas are still dark. This is what I wanted to avoid at all costs. I wanted to convey the dim light setting while still preserving the qualities of the low light and the bright light. Again, the camera did help quite a bit on this. To start out I usually pick a spot where I get both the bright light and the dim light in one shot and take several test shots to get an idea of what speed I will be shooting at. The usual meter reading is between 1 and 2 full stops underexposed. This setting has always worked well for me in theatre and dance settings for events that I have done. And shooting in RAW mode does help quite a bit in allowing for easy touch ups later. 

Well thats all the time I have for this post. Check back later for more or visit my website at www.wussowphoto.com for more.