Background.
I am an only child. But for the first few years of my life, it felt like I had two siblings.
Johnsie and I were born the same year and not long after Gina joined the band. My Mother and their Father are first cousins, they had moved from the homestead in NC to Albany, and moved into the same house with their families on different floors. We even went to the same Catholic School. Great memories for me. Then when I was seven we moved off to Colonie when my parents bought a house and they moved back to NC and a home of their own not long after. Still, the friendship endured. We visited NC every year when I was growing up and they would visit Albany as well.
Our parents are long-time friends as well as being related, and our Dads were great friends that were good for a laugh when they got together. They were my template for friendship.
So when they reached out to me about a celebration they were planning for their Mother’s 80th birthday I was in. And I was honored when they asked that I capture images for the night.
Gear.
The lens?
I will start with the easiest choice. Lens. My go to lens for near any type of photo session.
A complete no brainer. It covers everything, performs wonderfully across the focal range, and I heart it. I find it to be especially good for events with mixed or low lighting where a fast zoom with a wide focal range can be very helpful.
Flash.
For portraits at a backdrop they had set up, my trusty AD300, snap on modifier, and a V1 flash. And I had a chance to test the Godox X3 I recently wrote a preview for in the wild and it was flawless.
No flash was used for candid photos of the crowd.
Camera.
I chose a favorite of mine but any modern Sony body, or near any other brand, would have sufficed.
Settings.
Sure, I could have used two cameras but I decided to use just one body and one lens. This required being able to quickly switch between flash and no flash photo settings.
Flash set up.
AD300:
- Group A.
- 1/2 power.
- Set high on a stand camera right.
V1:
- Group B.
- Full power.
- Set on the floor and behind the subject camera left…
- …which was kicked over at some point despite my best efforts to keep it out of the trample zone.
Camera:
- Manual mode.
- Shutter speed: 1/3000s
- Aperture: Wide open (f/2-f/2.8 for this lens.)
- ISO 800
Made slight adjustments for the size of the crowd when I needed to move the flash back. After briefly switching back and forth manually I assigned the settings above to Memory slot 3.
Candid non flash pics.
Camera:
- Manual mode.
- Shutter speed: 1/125s
- Aperture: Wide open (f/2-f/2.8 for this lens.)
- Would occasionally close it down to f/5.6 when taking photos of more than one person.
- ISO Auto topped out at 6400.
- My personal high end tolerance for this camera.
Here are some of my favorite pics from the evening.
Follow up thoughts.
I love my family.
I had full confidence in my gear this evening, and it did not disappoint me at all.
While it is true that I prefer more artsy fartsy vintage or film camera gear for my daily use you just cannot beat modern gear when you just need the pics.
AF, AE, flash, strobe, and trigger all did exactly what was needed when needed.
That about wraps things up. Another successful event session.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 