Day One Redux

The first day of the big event shoot was a banquet held in a large gymnasium. Of course, the lighting is ghastly. I shot one roll of film in the OM-3Ti with the 24/2.8. ISO 400, F4 at 1/30. To be on the smart side, I used the Expodisc for a single frame so I can white-balance in the computer. The rest of the images of the banquet were with the Olympus E-1 and T45 flash.

The T45 has been performing flawlessly. This is, by a country mile, the finest flash I've ever used--bar none. Not only is it obscenely powerful, but the quality of the light is incredible. I'm tempted to get a couple more of these flashes and replace the Vivitar 285HV flashes with them. I know I keep yabbering about the T45, but honestly, it is in a league of its own in every way. The only shame is that the flash is off to the side a bit, which casts shadows differently than my stroboframe equipped Vivitars.

I set up the monolights in the balcony of the auditorium. This year I brought them in from the sides a little bit more, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep them there. They are at the same position as most of the primary stage lights (five clusters of them hung from about 3/4 of the way back in the room). Distance from lights to stage is over 60 feet.

I've almost always run the monolights just with their reflectors, but I'm going to try using umbrellas tonight. The shadows are just a touch too harsh as you'd expect from 60 foot distance and the hanging microphones, lights, speakers, etc., cause a lot of nasties on the background. Strobe height isn't an issue, and I can get up to the 30 degree point easily--but must do so from a slightly different position as my lightstands are tall enough to block the stage lights. The umbrellas will kill a stop of light--a stop I can barely afford to lose. It'll force me to be around F4 at ISO 400. But by dragging the shutter a little bit, the colored stage lights will warm things up enough to be interesting instead of stark. I did attempt to use the umbrellas last year, but my light position was too far to the sides.

If the umbrellas don't work out, I'd rather find out tomorrow night so I can have it corrected for Wednesday's grand finale.

Another oddity this year--I did not shoot RAW last night. If my in-camera settings are correct, there is little to no reason to bother. SHQ JPEGs with in-camera sharpening set to "0" are as easily processed in post as most RAW files. I'll chicken out and shoot RAW tonight because the mixed lighting and going back and forth between flash and no-flash exposures is a great way to induce human error.