Digilux 2 help for assignment

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wblanchard

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I've been assigned to shoot some images at a local Boxing club. Some nice candids of the boxers and club. Should be lots of fun. No flash allowed. I will use my Leica D2 with a non-interchangeable 7mm-22.5mm f/2.0-2.4 Vario-Summicron zoom, equivalent to a 28mm-90mm zoom for 35mm film. The widest apertures at the marked focal lengths: 28mm f/2; 35mm f/2; 50mm f/2.1; 70mm f/2.2; 90mm f/2.4.

Any suggestions on a good shutterspeed/ap combo? I know there will be some good shots available here. I normally shoot outdoors, but figure if i set the iso at 400 and shutterspeed at 125 and shoot raw I should get some good shots.

Black and white of course. :)
 
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Yow, good luck! Maybe your boxing club will be lit more brightly than the hole-in-the-wall athletic facilities I used to visit occasionally.

But at typical light levels and a max ISO equivalency setting of 400 on the camera, I expect you'd be seeing shutter speeds in the range of 1/15 or 1/30 at full aperture; you'll be lucky to get to 1/125 in the brightly-lit areas.

Shooting raw will give you a little more latitude for trying to save underexposed shots, but you'd still better count on plenty of noise in the shadow areas.

Recommendation: When you get there, look for areas with adequate and dramatic light, and then concentrate on what happens in those areas.

(Backup recommendation: Are you sure you don't have room to pack away an RF camera, a fast lens and a couple of rolls of T-Max P3200, just in case you find the lighting situation is hopeless for digital?)
 
Maybe I could spot meter a face or two under some lighting..the place has some good light, but not like being in a high school gym.
I could always do a manual white balance setting from a kodak grey card before going there.
 
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Don't do it before you go. You need to set the white balance off the card under the lighting conditions where you shoot.
 
Krasnaya_Zvezda said:
Don't do it before you go. You need to set the white balance off the card under the lighting conditions where you shoot.
Click to expand...
Yeah *grin* that would be a good idea.
 
I've worked pretty extensively with the D2 in low light. The camera gives enough inherent DOF that F/2 is very useable. From there, watch the histogram and give the camera as slow a shutter speed as it needs. Don't underexpose and then try to pull up the files later because the D2 files won't tolerate that. They will fall apart quickly at ISO 400 if they're much more than a 1/2 stop under-exposed. The underlying noise in the lower tones is very strong and will come out in force if the camera doesn't get proper exposure.

If you find, after the first session, that ISO 400 isn't sufficient for the light level and shutter speeds you want then either borrow a DSLR or shoot film (TMZ was a good suggestion above). If the files are going to be in B&W from RAW files than WB settings won't be relevant at all.

Have fun,

Sean Reid
Contributing Reviewer
Luminous-Landscape
 
Sean Reid said:
I've worked pretty extensively with the D2 in low light. The camera gives enough inherent DOF that F/2 is very useable. From there, watch the histogram and give the camera as slow a shutter speed as it needs. Don't underexpose and then try to pull up the files later because the D2 files won't tolerate that. They will fall apart quickly at ISO 400 if they're much more than a 1/2 stop under-exposed. The underlying noise in the lower tones is very strong and will come out in force if the camera doesn't get proper exposure.

If you find, after the first session, that ISO 400 isn't sufficient for the light level and shutter speeds you want then either borrow a DSLR or shoot film (TMZ was a good suggestion above). If the files are going to be in B&W from RAW files than WB settings won't be relevant at all.

Have fun,

Sean Reid
Contributing Reviewer
Luminous-Landscape
Click to expand...

Thanks Sean..I plan on going there this week and taking some light meter readings from my sekonic and then decide if the D2 will work or just take my film camera and use that instead.
 
There's no way to answer that without knowing the light level. With the D2, turn on the live histogram and set the exposure so that the highlights come close to (but not past) the right edge of the graph. That will give the shadows as much exposure as possible without blowing the highlights.

Cheers,

Sean
 
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