Shortly after writing and posting yesterday’s blog entry, I started reviewing my news reader to catch up on my RSS feeds. To my delight, I discovered that Derrick Story chose my submission to be the featured image for his November Photo assignment, which was “High ISO.” The image he featured is shown above. There is no prize except for the honor, which is quite enough. Actually, one of his sponsors will pick a photo from the same set of submissions to win a free SizzlePix print, but they do not necessarily pick the same image, so we’ll just have to see. I noted the fact that I “won” as an update to yesterday’s post but I thought it appropriate to post the image today. In retrospect, I might have added “enter more photography contests” as a goal for this year.
I started listening to Derrick’s podcast several months ago, but this is only the second time I entered his Photo Assignment of the month contest/exercise. I can recommend Derrick’s podcast if you have not tried it yet. It is mostly about photography with occasional forays into other areas of creativity and technology, with Derrick’s personal interests as highlights. It also includes a lot of Apple/Mac info. He’s a great teacher with an engaging personality. I briefly met him at the PhotoExpo in NYC this fall.
In any event, this image was taken with my Nikon D700, which has superb high ISO performance. For the assignment, we were charged with taking a picture at ISO 800 or higher. This image was taken at ISO 2500, at night, with no flash, on Fifth Avenue. I used an 85mm lens at f/3.2 and a 1/320 shutter speed using autofocus. As I often do with night time street photography, I had the exposure setting switched to +0.67. Depending on circumstances, sometimes I move it up to +1.0. Here, the vendors cart was so well lit that I pulled the aperture back from where I usually shoot at night, which is at f/2.2 or wider. My only post processing was a to the Highlights slider in Aperture, to pull back some detail in the faces of the girls closest to the bare lightbulb. I did not even add any noise reduction or sharpening.
These brightly lit vending carts have really become prevalent in the past year. When i started doing night time street photography just 9-10 months ago, there were not so many. They present a challenge, as I am usually not focusing on the people right next to the cart, so the bright but limited light they shine often wreaks havoc on my auto exposure meter. Here, it allowed me to demonstrate the beautiful performance of the D700 at a high ISO, including its ability to capture a wide range of light in a single image.
Scott
2 Jan 2011Congrats dude, great shot!
Jim Denham
2 Jan 2011Good for you Mark! Great shot! I do listen to Derrick’s podcast and like it as well!
John Sotiriou
2 Jan 2011Nicely done, Mark. High ISO performance was the very feature that led me to selecting my D700. It has never let me down!
James Howe
2 Jan 2011Congrats! This is really a terrific shot. I like how the faces of the customers are lit by the lights of the vendor’s stand. I also like how the image has a natural vignette which draws your eye in to the main subject.
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Steve Beal
2 Jan 2011Congrats Mark… It’s a great image!
mark
3 Jan 2011Thanks, everyone. I was pleased with this shot and even more pleased when it was featured.