Decisions about which equipment to use

[onedayillknowbetter]

The show went great, and the party wasn't bad either! I made friends with a photographer who gave me a couple very helpful tips that really guided me in the right direction and resulted in less bad photos than I was expecting. I'll post some soon!

 

[TamiyaGuy]

Good on ya! I hope to see those photos soon, I'm sure they'll be fantastic!

 

[Dao]

Great! Look forward from seeing them!

 

[croomaniac]

I'd probably use a very good low noise at high iso & more shutter speed per second.. therefore i wont miss a shot!

 

[onedayillknowbetter]

It took me a while to get around to posting on here again, I've been a little busy. Thank goodness the woman I cook for is moving to Wisconsin, my photography is really taking off, and it would be difficult to maintain a day job and my photography both.
Either way, I finally got the photos chosen, edited, and posted on my website. What I ended up doing was using both the 10D, and the 40D. Someone said no flash, but then other people were using flash, so I ditched one, and kept the other. I put the 50mm 1.8 on the 10D and kept the 18-55 on the 40D (despite the higher quality glass on the 28-135, and the advice from previous posters, I can't sacrifice the wider focal length in tight areas) with the Speedlite on it.
I used the 50mm for the first shots of the models walking the runway, and then the 18-55 for when the models got to the middle of the runway and did their little turnie things. Like this:

Now that I look at this one above again, it looks kinda green. When going through so many and correcting the WB, it becomes difficult to tell when it's right.

On the 10D with the 50mm, the ISO stayed at 800, the aperture at 1.8 and the shutter speed at 1/125--the white balance was all wacky because of all the moving lights, so I'm pretty sure it was just on Auto, and then I corrected them in Lightroom. Of course, had I not shot in RAW, my pictures would look much much worse just because of that white balance. Here's one example of one I got on the 10D:

The ones on the 40D turned out well, a little overexposed/washed out in areas (because of my flash and small amount of distance between myself and the models), but I kind of like the added color and tone that it brought to the image overall. Typically, runway photos are so bland and the same thing over and over, but I like the tone I got with the 40D. Oh yeah, the settings I used on the 40D were ISO at 1600, aperture at 3.5, speed at 1/125. I swear before the show started that I grabbed my extra CF cards, but low and behold, halfway through the show when I realize how few pictures I have left, I realized that I didn't take the CF cards out. Well, that was lame. So, with the 23 pictures I had left in sRAW, I changed the remaining photos to be taken in like...the third lowest quality and managed to another 50 or so out of it, so I had to be extremely conservative.

Overall, I'm satisfied with my images from that night. I like the variation that I got with the 50mm 1.8 and no flash contrasted with the results of using a flash, high ISO, and wide angle lens. I look forward to shooting another show to get some more practice, but just doing it once makes me so much more prepared for the next one. if you're interested in viewing the rest of the images, please go to:
http://www.carolinedixey.com/051808/

Edit: Now that I think about it, someone is probably going to say "why didn't you use the 40D without a flash?--larger image size, better low light performance, etc." Well, that's a good question, and that's what I wanted to do, but for some reason, it wouldn't work! I have no idea why, but I could not get my 18-55mm lens on the 10D. It's just the dinky little stock lens that came with my Rebel in 2006, are they not compatible or something?? I don't know, but I do know that's why I used the 10D without a flash.

 

[RyanLilly]

Ah, yes, the 10D cannot use EF-S, lenses. It can only use plain old EF.

 

[onedayillknowbetter]

Ah, yes, the 10D cannot use EF-S, lenses. It can only use plain old EF.

Wait, so why can I use my 28-135 on it? Isn't that an EF-S? Either way, I should have looked it up ahead of time or bought that lot of EF lenses on craigslist for $50 to go with it.