Shooting with a Prime in Irvine

Suzi Receiving Her White Coat

In some ways this is a follow up post to Shooting with a 50 mm prime.

The Back Story

I’ll keep this short. LOL, you believe that?  Okay, I’ll keep this short.

I’m in Irvine California this weekend.  My daughter Suzi is going to Med school here for the next 4 years.  Then 4 years or residency; which means 8 year in Irvine, CA about 5 minutes from the Pacific coastal highway and THE BEACH.  But I digress already.

Yesterday Aug. 8 was the “White Coat Ceremony” where each of the 104 students of the class of 2013 received their white coats and took the oath to do no harm.  Suzi said this ceremony is famous for being photographically unfriendly.  The distance to the stage is long, the balcony is high and the lighting is dark.  There were lots of people with point and shot cameras and even a few blackberry/Iphone snappers but most were getting blurry dark images of ghosts with white around them.  Remember this was a white coat ceremony.  All those white coats in a dark auditorium makes for a light meters nightmare.  There was a guy behind me with a very nice camera,  but from the back of the auditorium in the back row of the balcony, his zoom lens and pop-up flash weren’t getting him anything besides the well lite backs of heads for 5 rows in front of him.

Being forewarned of the conditions I knew the lens of choice was the 50 mm.  I mounted it on the camera and left for the cermony.  A couple quick test shots told me that everything happend very quickly and I needed to be shooting with a shutter speed of 400.  WHAT?  400 in a dark auditorium with no flash, are you kidding me?  I wasn’t kidding.

Here are the settings.  Shutter priority 400.  ISO 650 natural light (no flash).  Hand held shooting RAW. This lens goes to 1.8 and I”m sure it was there during this shot.

You can’t beat this little lens in this situation.  There were more images of the ceremony, but for Dad, this was the money shot and I got it.

Tags: 50 mm, Low Light, Shooting Handheld