The Association of Career Professionals was having it's AGM in local watering hole and about 60 people showed up for the event. As it was a solo gig, I once again borrowed my friend Tracy's D90 so I had 2 cameras with me at all times.
Composition
Now, the basement of this place has 3 bare concrete walls that have all the photographic appeal of a gray card. One of the saving graces was a post covered with red wood paneling of some kind. Perfect. Gives me a left frame for the pictures as the board members speak to the crowd.
Exposure
Next issue, I wanted to include the people listening but couldn't get the lighting to work for all the people in the shot. No problem, turn the back's of people's heads into silhouettes and make sure the speaker is adequately exposed. I'm still shooting at ISO 1600 and ISO 1000 for many of these shots though (1/30, f2.8) The slow shutter speed actually worked for me in some cases.Post processing
When I got back to the office, I downloaded the photos. As expected, there was a fair bit of grain in the shots.
For those who don't know, the D300 is a good camera, but not in the same league for low light shots as a D700 or a 5DII. (I'd put it up against either one of those at ISO 200 though...).
I had heard of some good things with Adobe's LightRoom 3 which has been released (finally) and it's noise reduction algorithms. Knowing I'm probably going to buy a copy soon anyways, I download a trial version and import the photos from the shoot.
All I can say is wow! I was impressed by the results. It even has some lens presets to correct for the 70-200VRI vignetting.
I got through the photos quickly, I'd taken over 300 shots but many of them were throw aways (did I mention the 1/30 shutter speed?). The shots will be used on the Advanced Career Professionals web site with links back to mine so I made a point of getting the turn around to less than 24 hours (which I normally try to do any ways).
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