jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
I just finished a marathon of rehearsal photos for our local professional ballet company: three nights of dress rehearsals totalling more than 800 photos. I shot them using both my R-D 1 (all with 35/1.7 Ultron) and my Nikon D100 (alternating between 20/2.8 AF Nikkor and 24-70/2.8 AF Sigma.)
If this lens selection sounds odd, it was; this production was in a 'black-box' theater, meaning I had to be unusually close to the stage and forcing me to use much wider lenses than I normally would. In fact, that's why I brought the Nikon in the first place: I don't own any lenses wider than 35 for the R-D 1, and I felt the zoom's flexibility in framing would be a plus since I didn't have much space to roam around.
Also, the lighting was terrible -- pools of light, pools of darkness, backlighting, etc. -- so I figured the Nikon's spot meter would be a big advantage. And, of course, it has motorized advance and autofocus, useful for this type of fast-paced shooting.
Anyway, I shot about equally with both cameras -- probably somewhat more with the Nikon because of its motor wind -- and over the three nights I pretty much lost track of what I had shot with what.
Tonight, though, I sat down with the artistic director, and we went through the whole take and picked out 17 shots to put on CDs (which I'm burning now) to include in press kits for tomorrow night's opening performance. Later I looked at the EXIF data and found that of the 17 "keepers":
--14 were shot with the R-D 1
-- 3 were shot with the D100
Overall, the R-D 1 shots were drastically sharper, and in general they were better exposed (hmmm, I guess having to think about exposures works better than blindly relying on a meter reading, duhhh...) I also was much more successful at catching the peaks of action with the R-D 1.
This probably doesn't prove anything except that I personally shoot better with an RF camera than an SLR... but I thought the group would find the "score" interesting!
I'll attach one of the R-D 1 pictures (small version🙂
If this lens selection sounds odd, it was; this production was in a 'black-box' theater, meaning I had to be unusually close to the stage and forcing me to use much wider lenses than I normally would. In fact, that's why I brought the Nikon in the first place: I don't own any lenses wider than 35 for the R-D 1, and I felt the zoom's flexibility in framing would be a plus since I didn't have much space to roam around.
Also, the lighting was terrible -- pools of light, pools of darkness, backlighting, etc. -- so I figured the Nikon's spot meter would be a big advantage. And, of course, it has motorized advance and autofocus, useful for this type of fast-paced shooting.
Anyway, I shot about equally with both cameras -- probably somewhat more with the Nikon because of its motor wind -- and over the three nights I pretty much lost track of what I had shot with what.
Tonight, though, I sat down with the artistic director, and we went through the whole take and picked out 17 shots to put on CDs (which I'm burning now) to include in press kits for tomorrow night's opening performance. Later I looked at the EXIF data and found that of the 17 "keepers":
--14 were shot with the R-D 1
-- 3 were shot with the D100
Overall, the R-D 1 shots were drastically sharper, and in general they were better exposed (hmmm, I guess having to think about exposures works better than blindly relying on a meter reading, duhhh...) I also was much more successful at catching the peaks of action with the R-D 1.
This probably doesn't prove anything except that I personally shoot better with an RF camera than an SLR... but I thought the group would find the "score" interesting!
I'll attach one of the R-D 1 pictures (small version🙂
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