DemiCon 19 is over and done. A good time was had by all. I got to Fanboy at Steven Barnes, who is an author I've liked, though I haven't really kept up with him lately. Steven is an intense kinda dude, and he spent a fair amount of time talking to people in the con suite all weekend. I like that in a ProGoH.
The photography I did will show up at my DemiCon Gallery on Smugmug.
My photography habit was hindered by my shoulder problem. (Rotator cuff strain or something.) I did no event photography, just the costume shoots and TICC performances. My friend Robert was cool enough to do the camera work for the hall costume shoot, which is the longer session.
The TICC shows are challenging, due to the nature of theater. The lights are gelled, generally blue-ish on one side of the stage, and pink-ish on the other side. This gives depth to the stage by simulating the reddish sun on one side of the sky, and the blue sky on the other side. This can make it tricky to determine the white balance to use. I don't own a color temp meter, but thru the various shortcuts I've used, I've come up with a white balance of 2800K and -22 tint correction in Lightroom/Photoshop ACR. This seems to give me the best skin-tone and overall color balance.
This year I shot the dress rehearsal sessions of TICC with my 50mm f1.4 prime lens. I have always used a mid-range zoom for this, with my current Canon kit, I would shoot with the 24-70mm f2.8 L lens. But that lens is way heavy, and I wanted to see how things would go with a prime. It also would (I hoped) save my shoulder for the real stuff I wanted to do the rest of the weekend.
The short answer is I like most of the photos I shot with the 50mm, better than similar photos I got during the peformance with the zoom. It is sharper, has better contrast, is brighter, and the perspective on the 50mm is essentially that of the human eye. Some of the picture quality is that the 50mm is a faster lens, but I really like the "human eye" perspective of it as well.
I decided last year that I really don't like the current lights I have that I've been using for DemiCon the last few year. They are the Adorama house brand of lights, the exact brand name I forget. They don't completely suck, let me just say that to be fair. But I am unsure of their exact white balance even after setting it to what the manual says, and they seem to have a subtle variation of power on each shot, which is annoying. What pushed it over the edge was a modelling light burned out, and I had to track down a replacement at a specialty electric supply company, who had just one to sell me.
I'm leaving the lights here in Des Moines now. If I can get them replaced before next year's DemiCon, I'll figure out what to do with them then. Otherwise, they'll be here for DemiCon 20 next year.
Posted by Wookie at May 5, 2008 02:21 AM