So my wonderful girlfriend Courtney graduated from College a couple of weeks ago. It was a long hard journey for her, and having a photographer boyfriend, she knew that I would be there with my camera being all “creepy” (she calls it) and such. After arriving at the arena super early to get as close as I could to the stage, I was in a position to get a clear shot of her as she received her dimploma and shook hands with the college chancellor. I had my camera mounted on a tripod, along with a 580EX with an external battery pack. After getting a feel for the ambient light (very crappy sports type lighting), I threw the camera in aperture priority mode and pretty much let the flash do all the work. I was using a 70-200mm lens zoomed all the way out. The flash carried itself nicely all the way out to 200mm. The only other thing I did was dial in some -EV for the background, but besides that I got my one shot that I had hoped for.
- Canon EOS40D with EF70-200 f2.8LIS Exposure: 1/200 F4.5 ISO 800
After the ceremony was finished it was time to snap a couple of quick photos with family outside. The sun was high in the sky, and there were people everywhere. There was no where to really retreat where there was a nice looking background. My quick solution was to throw the camera into f2.8, crop in tight, and make use of that special high speed sync feature on the 580ex. I don’t regularly use this feature, but in this instance the camera was giving me a 1/800 shutter speed. The high speed sync worked excellent, acting simply as a fill flash. Not my idea of a perfect photo by any means, but certainly better than an average snapshot, especially in a quick and crowded situation.
VC Images and Performing Arts 