Girl playing violin.

jiro

Kate practicing her violin lessons.


Nikon D70, 50mm lens, ISO 800, f/2.2 @ 1/320 second.

Got some time to bring the camera with me while waiting for Kate to finish her music lesson at school. I asked the teacher if he could allow me to take some shots of my kid and he gladly said yes.

I decided to shoot this one at ISO 800 based on what I've read about some wedding photographers shooting at ISO 800 using only common available light. I knew that my Nikon D70 doesn't perform that good at ISO 800 being "noisy" but I don't mind. What I am after is the feel of the situation and the only way I can do that is to shoot at a higher ISO so I can have some control on the shutter speed. I decided to go with B&W even before I shot this one since the inherent noise grain would look better on the conversion.

The music booth is really small. It's about 7 feet wide by 9 feet deep and 8 feet high. To make the situation worse, I brought along a 50mm lens (equivalent to a 75mm lens since the Nikon D70 is a DX camera with a 1.5X crop factor) instead of the other 18-70mm lens. The room was lit by a fluorescent fixture on the ceiling so there is not much dramatic lighting that I was hoping for with available light. I love the personality of the 50mm lens specially at f/2. It gives me that good subject to background separation that I can't get with the 18-70mm due to its smaller aperture limit of f/4.5. Luckily, the small, upright piano inside the music booth has less than 2 feet of space from a wall so I squeezed myself on that space to capture Kate's face and the full length of the violin. That's how tight the space was. I wish I have the new 35mm f/1.8G lens that Nikon sells. That would give me an almost true 50mm lens coverage on my subject.

Thanks for viewing.

photogreen

i like the composition. also really dig the background in this shot. thanks for sharing!

jiro

photogreen wrote: »

i like the composition. also really dig the background in this shot. thanks for sharing!

Thanks, too photogreen for dropping by and viewing my work.

Quincy T

Now this is a spectacular shot, jiro. A smaller aperture may have helped make this image sharper, though.

jiro

Sword and Scales wrote: »

Now this is a spectacular shot, jiro. A smaller aperture may have helped make this image sharper, though.

Thanks Quincy. I will try to shoot with a smaller aperture next time. While checking my images I was surprised to realized that I got 1/320 second shutter speed on this shot. The fluorescent fixture inside the small music booth must be really bright. Thanks for your comment and for dropping by.

BrettDeutsch

I think the wide open aperture works. If you have enough light, I'd lower the ISO more instead.

jiro

Thanks, Brett. I'll keep that in mind. This shot came from a test series shot with me testing how my old Nikon D70 would work at ISO 800. Now that I know it can work at that setting, I can certainly shoot lower then 800. Cheers.

jpc

There's no drama here. Next time, try shooting from off-axis rather than straight-on. Everyone sees her play from this vantage point, so it's not really interesting. Shoot from her left, with the violin in the foreground. Use a wide-open aperture and focus on her face.

jiro

jpc wrote: »

There's no drama here. Next time, try shooting from off-axis rather than straight-on. Everyone sees her play from this vantage point, so it's not really interesting. Shoot from her left, with the violin in the foreground. Use a wide-open aperture and focus on her face.

Thanks for your opinion and suggestions. She's about 2 feet away from the main door on her back and about 2 feet away from the left wall (relative to my position). The room is a 7 feet wide X 9 feet deep music booth. There is an upright piano about 2 feet deep on the other end of the music booth and that is where I am shooting at. In between me and her, there is her teacher sitting evaluating her bow movement and the tone of the note she's producing. In fairness, I think this vantage point can only go this far considering I only have a 50mm lens to work with at that time. Your suggestion sounds very interesting. I'll try to incorporate that on my next shots and bring my other 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 DX lens next time so I can find out if your suggestion is possible. Thank you very much.