We were asked to photograph at a fundraising event last night for the Coronado Performing Arts Center to give participating couples a memento of their evening in this historic theater in the heart of Rockford’s RiverDistrict. The tough part of this shoot was that we were hoping to show people in the setting of the theater itself, but the theater is massive, and everyone was on stage looking out to the house. To give you just an idea of how big this place is, and how great it looks from the audience point-of-view, here is a shot I took from the balcony that night:
A long shot view at 18mm of the theater from the balcony. Note that this is a 30 second exposure at f/11 at ISO100, so the lighting level is much lower than it appears.
Now, we were limited by a few things here. First off, the best view is from the seats looking towards the stage. But, we were limited to shooting from the stage where everyone was gathered for dinner, drinks & entertainment. Lastly, not only is this place huge, but it was lit very dramatically, and very low, so exposure was going to be a real challenge. Here’s a test composition of our assistant Aaron Spain, standing in where I though we could get couples posed with the theater behind them:
Here's our test exposure shot for ambient light at the Coronando Theater. Even at ISO400, we were only getting 1/2s @ f/8
As with everything in photography, it’s all about trade-offs. As you can see from the photo above, in-camera metering indicated that we needed 1/2s @f/8 at ISO400. And the theater itself still looked like a cave. Oy. Enter real studio lighting on location. Armed with a couple of Bowens packs – a QuaDX 3000 and the battery powered Explorer 1500, plus a few heads, we were able to quickly light both the subject area, as well as augment the ambient light in the theater to be as natural looking as possible. I actually think we did a pretty good job with it:
A cute young couple posing for a snap with the Coronado theater as a background.
Now, I could have shot these at say f/2.8-f/4 to gain 2-3 stops in the ambient range or shutter speed, but then we would have run into several other trade-offs. Depth-of-field would have been diminished, and subsequently the theater would have appeared more blurry and abstract. The Bowens Softlite beauty dish reflector we had boomed over the P.A. system was already about 3 meters away, and even at the lowest power setting of 30w/s I had to add a -2 stop ND gel to it to get it down to f/8. As a point of reference, the two background lights we used were pumping out 3,000w/s just to get the background of the theater to register on the camera sensor.
Other than the fact that we were a bit constrained by the place we were allowed to shoot from, I do wish we had been able to get the guests up on the band stand as opposed to in front of it. It would have been less distracting, raised them in relation to the high theater background, providing for a stronger composition.
The other trade-off of the exposure combination of f/8 for the flash, and 1/2s for the ambient was subject movement. Some folks just didn’t hold still, and so we got a few blurry shots. Of course, flash freezes their movement, but the longer exposure to pick up the ambient background was also lighting the subjects.
A long shot taken with an ancient Super Takumar SMC 500mm f/4.5 super telephoto on a Canon 1Ds MkII. This is a shot of the Acciona wind farms in Lena, IL at dusk. The strobe marker lights and turbines just start coming to life before nightfall.
I was asked by Frank Schier of the Rock River Times if I would be willing to provide some imagery of the Acciona wind farms north of Lena, Illinois. As a photographer that chiefly does work for advertising agencies & design firms, I was interested in broadening the scope of my work with some editorial content as well. Telling stories with photos without actually selling some product or serivce is quite appealing to me, and proved rewarding. There was a time a long long while ago –early in my career– that I just wanted to be a photojournalist. But that is another story…
At any rate, just finding this thing was the first challenge. I was told to just keep driving North out of Lena, and that I couldn’t miss it. Well, one gets a sinking feeling when you keep heading towards some distant point of no return. This place isn’t on any map after all, and the iPhone GPS in areas with just 1-2 bars of EDGE coverage isn’t exactly snappy. I went out one night to scout the location, but miscalculated the sunset, and got there way too late to get much of anything before I had to come back.
Snap taken with my iPhone from the highest vantage point of the Acciona wind farm.
The next thing I knew I’d need after that short scouting trip was a super telephoto lens, as these turbines are far afield, and all located on private property. Now, the longest glass I own is a Canon EF 80-200mm f/2.8L – a fine lens, but one that can’t even accept a Canon EF teleconverter. (someday, I really should test a Tamron 2X and pick one up if it doesn’t suck too much and throw it in my bag) My favorite glass for this sort of shoot would be the spectacular, legendary Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L, but they cost almost as much as new hatchback anymore. Buying an affordable canon EF 400mm f/5.6L when I could just try a $250 TC that might suffice would also kinda suck. Sure, Canon makes this great EF 400mm F/4 DO that my friend Stan Jirman loves, but it’s barely $1,000 less than the awesome f/2.8L so we’re really stuck.
Since time was short for the newspaper story, and the Rock River Times’ budget even shorter, I knew I didn’t have the time nor cash coverage to go rent some prime glass out of Chicago. So, on a lark I stopped by a local photo store, Camera Craft and just out of curiosity asked what long lenses they might have to rent out. Well, _nothing_ in Canon EF mount was the answer. When I told them what I was up to, they pulled a rabbit out of a hat, and dusted-off a ca. 1972 Pentax Asahi Super Takumar SMC 500mm f/4.5. Wow! Now this thing doesn’t win any awards for usability, and would be almost suicide for anything that called for tracking movement, but it did accept a screw mount M42 adapter to Canon EF mount, so I could at least try it. I took the lens back to the studio, mounted a Really Right Stuff MP-192 rail to its foot, and tried balancing it on my RRS BH-40 ball head. Oh, joy! (not) I’ve since misplaced my iPhone snaps of that setup, but let’s just say it was no fun to work with. Here’s an idea of what this beast looks like:
Images via Pentax User UK - http://www.pentaxuser.co.uk