Archive for June 7th, 2009
In a dark bar with a D700 and 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom. ISO 6400
Single light source in the corner
The other night I was roaming around looking for something to shoot. No quite sure where to go or what I was going to do. Suddenly I happened upon a wildly “edgy” bar I had been to once before.
On the earlier occasion, I took a series of photographs of the bartenders. Luckily I had my Leica M8 and the Noctilux 50mm f/1 lens. Although my Noctilux has a slight back focus issue, it performed well, given the very dark ambiance of the bar. And remember, with the M8, we are talking manual focus. In a very dim bar. The photo below was taken that first visit.
Leica M8 with Noctilux 50mm f/1 lens
On the recent visit, I hadn’t prepared for a return visit. As a result I ended up with the D700 and the 14-24mm f2.8 lens. Because this lens is only capable of f/2.8, I dialed up the ISO to 6400, hoping that I could compensate for the lens’ relatively lack of wide aperture. I half expected the auto focus to struggle and that I would have to go to manual focus. Well, this didn’t happen. After I turned off the AF assist light, I went strictly low impact. I used the D700’s spotmeter with “aperture priority” and f-stop 2.8.
Post processing was minimal. Noise reduction was turned off. I took the liberty of processing some of the b&w in a high contrast style.
Bottom line, the D700’s performance, including its high ISO capabilities and the extremely fast and accurate auto-focus, makes it a joy to use. The only downside was the sheer size of the combination when compared with the M8.
Caged
Cropped from above
