I think I've made a sound investment! It certainly paid off with the post-game celebrations shots that I like to get, the clearness of the image becoming apparent in the relatively low lighting of the rink. Certainly the rink's lighting is amongst the best in the country, but in terms of the amount of light getting to the sensor, it's still fairly low. But with the f1.8 iris the light can be more than compensated for, and even though an f1.8 has a traditionally shallow depth of field, it can work well when the subject is distant enough that the focus can be set to 'infinity':
On Wednesday evening, I'd planned to do a Still-Life shoot with the new lens, using a rather nice glass paperweight as my subject. The end of the working day came around, and there were still some students burning their films to blu-ray who needed a little longer in the edit suite, and so I had an idea - go from shooting the Still-Life to shooting some portraits, using the students as subjects. One of the students was accompanied by his missus who'd recently done a make-over shoot, and so I pilfered her to start the shooting process. And so it came to pass that Shelbie Wark and I ended up setting up a three-head 300w set up, and shooting some portraits of Shelbie:
Before long, other 'subjects' became available to be press-ganged into appearing before the lens:
Again the lower light capabilities of the lens paid off, giving me the kind of portrait results that I was looking for. The experiments with the lighting continue though, and there are definitely some lessons to be learned from this shoot. I'd used diffuser on the key and fill lights, but for future shoots when shooting a female subject, I'll be using a proper soft-box to make the diffusion more effective. The sharper shadows don't seem so out of place on portraits of 'menfolk' but with female subjects it seems that more diffusion is the general rule. You'd have thought I'd have learned that after the last sets of portraits: setting up a soft-box can be a pain in the neck, but it's always worth taking the time to do it!
Incidentally, I did manage to get some of the Still-Life shots done that I'd originally set out to do!:
Friday night saw Yol and myself taking a trip up to Manchester to see the closing night of the New Vision Photography Exhbition at 4 Piccadilly Place. The Exhbition is staged by photography students at Bolton University, and amongst them is my friend and fellow hockey snapper Lauren Freeman. Lauren's section of the exhibition consisted of some visually striking portraits of players from the Sheffield Steeldogs, taken on the ice Here's a shot of Lauren standing in front of two of her exhibited photographs:
Lauren took us for a guided tour around the Exhibition, allowing us to take in the work of some of the promising and up-and-coming photography talent that Bolton University has to offer (as well as some other work that was also exhibited). Thank you, Lauren, for the tour and the insights into some of your fellow artists!
After the Exhibition, Yol and I went to grab a bite to eat at the Bella Italia around the corner, and again it gave me a chance to see how the f1.8 would perform in low light:
All in all, a cracking week for the lens!
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