Chuck Gardner
Forum Pro
Manassas, the town where I live in Virginia, is for the most part a typical vinyl siding and shopping mall wasteland of suburbia 30 miles west of Washington, D.C.. However the old center section of town has been undergoing restoration for several years and retains a small town feel. That feeling is most evident before Christmas when the local Old Town business association puts on its Christmas parade and merchant open house. I decided to photograph yesterday's parade to test my D7Hi's cold weather and fill flash performance.
It's just a typical small town parade, but I was pleased with the results. Photos are posted in my gallery at http://super.nova.org/D7Hi/F009 .
Since I knew the sub-freezing temps would affect battery performance I used my Digipower DTS-9000. I picked a location where the restored city hall building would be in the background for a visual tie-in with the city. Most of the street was in shadows, but I found a location on the side of the street opposite City Hall where a gap in the building provide good side and back lighting and the background I wanted.
Overall I was very impressed with the cold weather performance of the D7Hi / DPS-9000 combo. Camera was set in P mode with flash set for Fill / ADI. There were only a couple occasions I couldn't get AF lock in time to take a picture, and for a group of unicyclists who were moving too fast to focus on I just switched to MF. I shot about 100 pictures over a span of 2 hours with the camera on almost continously and fill flash used for every shot. The camera grip was a welcome hand warmer and I kept my other hand around the DTP-9000 when not shooting to keep it warm. The DTP-9000 was less than half depleted at the end of the two-hour shoot.
Exposures in P mode were excellent considering the harsh back and side lighting. You can see some lens flare in a few to the photos but it didn't seem to affect the metering in ADI mode. The fill flash also performed much better than expected, but for distant shots beyond the reach of the flash I boosted the shadow detail in Photoshop using a duplicate screen layer to lighted the shadows, erasing the sceen layer in the sky and highlight areas. What was particularly interesting with regard to the fill flash were the bright reflections from the reflective material on the fire apparatus and fire fighter's coats, even on distant telephoto shots.
Lessons learned:
The city hall background I used was repetative and pretty boring when all the photos are viewed together, but I picked that point of view because of the lighting and because I knew many of the people in the parade were going to be city employees who might appreciate seeing a photo of themselves with visual the tie in. I plan on sending the URL to the city manager and Old Town Assn.
Being a small town type parade there weren't large marching bands, etc. which lent themselves to nice looking group shots. Having a six or eight-foot step ladder for a higher point of view would have helped for those group of shots; more heads, less horizon. But I wasn't hesitant to get out into the street and up close to the particpants with the wide angle. A couple time I even asked drivers of cars and floats to move up a bit so they wouldn't be in the shot of the group behind them.
I missed quite a few potentially good shots because the parade was moving so fast and there was apparrently no coordination regarding where bands, dancers, tumblers, etc. would stop and do their thing. If I had been shooting the event officially I would have coordinated with the organizers so the performing groups stopped and performed in front of the City Hall where the lighting and background were excellent.
Chuck Gardner
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