After not doing much photography over the past few weeks, I took photos at a blues jam, then a dance last night, and did portrait sessions with a couple of my friends today.
I've learned, or at least been reminded, of a few lessons. 1) When I'm photographing bands, I need to push the ISO harder. Even if I think that the shutter speed is fast enough, it isn't. Likewise depth of field. 2) I need to get better at focusing. Too many of the portraits were blown from having the focus just a bit off. I tried autofocus on some of the shots, but it was too slow, too often. I guess I either need better light, or more practice. 3) The blazzeo radio triggers are just fine when shooting indoors, but even a plastic tarp is enough to block them enough to screw up reliability. At some point, I'm sure that I'll plunk down the money for pocket wizards. 4) At times I feel like my photography is getting to the point that what differentiates me from a pro isn't the quality of the photos nearly so much as the length of time, and number of shots that it takes to get them. I wish that I could blame it on my equipment, but I still haven't made all the mistakes that I need to learn from yet. 5) When I'm shooting in low light, even if I'm just "playing around", if my shutter speed is under 1/30 of a second, I really do need to use at least a monopod. Even if it looks OK on the camera display, I'm going to lose most of the shots to camera motion if I hand hold the camera. 6) Portraiture isn't about camera skills nearly so much as it is about people skills. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
