ISO 4000, 38mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
On Saturday December 14th COS Choirs presented their holiday concert, Tis the Season. The two choirs were the Concert Choir and the Ladies’ Chamber Singers. My foster daughter Liz sings with the Ladies’ Chamber Singers, and several of my friends sing with the Concert Choir. The music and singing were amazing. The pianist, harpist and flautist were amazing as well.
ISO 4000, 92mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
Now ISO 4000 on the D800 at the pixel level is pretty grainy. The great thing is when you apply some noise reduction and then down sample the images they are incredibly sharp.
ISO 3200, 120mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
I have also found that when I am shooting inside in a dim environment that I get better photographs if I switch to manual exposure. Doing this gives me better control over the aperture and shutter speed. I also am not a big fan of auto ISO since in these situations it usually goes right to 6400. I tried using aperture exposure mode, but the shutter speed it was choosing was way to slow for the movement of the singers. I could have used exposure compensation to increase the shutter speed by setting the camera to “under” expose the photograph, but I wanted a consistent shutter speed.
ISO 3200, 105mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
In any dim situation using the largest aperture available that still gives you control over depth of field is desired. My 24-120mm zoom lens has a 4.0 aperture as its largest aperture through out the zoom range. So obviously I chose this as the aperture. The shutter speed that eliminated motion blur of the singers, but still gave a decent exposure was 1/125sec.
ISO 3200, 78mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
When debating between a higher iso or a slower shutter speed to obtain the correct exposure, I have found that increasing the iso is more effective. The higher iso setting and the resulting higher shutter speed allows you to eliminate motion blur of the subject and camera shake. You can reduce or eliminate the resulting “noise” and “grain” from a higher iso with software, but you can’t eliminate motion blur.
ISO 3200, 105mm, f/4.0, 1/125sec
ISO 3200, 92mm, f/4.0, 1/100sec
The photographing would have been better if I would have had a lens with a fast aperture of 2.8 or larger. The Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 would be a nice lens for this shoot, but it is more money than I want to spend and it doesn’t have the reach I like of the 24-120mm f/4.
