First event

12sndsgood

No longer a newbie, moving up!
Joined
Sep 24, 2010
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Location
indianapolis
Website
www.square1photography.com
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Photos OK to edit
So I was going thru craigslist this week looking to see if there were any ads for second shooters and came upon a group that was needing a photographer for their event on Thursday, this was Monday. So I said what the heck, I'm not working and it was a non-profit so I responded to the add. They still needed someone to basically take photos of her during the seminar and the crowd for the newspaper and their website etc. No pay which I was fine with since for me this is another step closer to opening my doors so to speak. I have gone from shooting friends. to acquaintences and people i barely know. So this was another step. An event, coming in unknown and having to perform. Granted they weren't paying and probalby would have taken anyone. But I approached as a paying job and as a dry run to what I hope to be doing in the near future. Went over my gear the night before. made sure all my batteries were charged, I had what I needed, I had a map and was ready to go.

I awoke as planned and as i'm getting ready I kept thinking I should leave 15 minutes earlier then I had planned. I wasnt sure on traffic and wanted to arrive early. Instead I helped the wife get the kid ready for school and spent the next 45 minutes trying to rush thru rush hour traffic to get there. I missed my highway exit as they are completly redoing this part of town and arrived at the church 10 minutes before the event was to start. Lesson #1 of the day. leave earlier. I walked around the entire church (big church) tyring to find an unlocked door. Ended up being the last one I tried as I had gotten around the entire building. I found the Person I was to meet, introduced myself and rushed to get ready as they were about to start. Lesson #2 goes back to the first lesson. If I had gotten there sooner I would have had time to see the chair and table carts against the wall behind the speaker and could have easily moved them out of the way for a nice clean backgroung, Arriving late i was forced to deal with them. I was kicking myself for most of the event.

I was a bit apprehensive at first. walking in I thought okay a gymnasium. looks to have enought light. Five minutes later as I am dialing up the ISO to 5000 shooting in the 2.8-5 range at 1/60th a second to 1/300th a second I realise that it wasn't as much light as I thought i had. Realising though i don't really have much cash right now due to being unemployed picking up the D7000 and the tamron 70-200 F2.8 was money well spent. I would have failed without them. After awhile I got comfortable shooting. though i was worried about camera shake at such slow speeds. I did what I had to do. leaning back against walls to steady myself. or using the table racks to balance the lens on to help steady things. Using my envirement to my advantage. Then my lens stopped focusing. I'm not sure what was the cause. I did notice a few times my hand on the lens started creeping out farther to try and hold it steadier and hitting the focus slide on the lens. not sure if that was it. So after about 30 seconds of freaking out I just switched to manual focus and kept shooting. knowing this was just how it was going to be. during a short break i turned the camera off and back on and switched to autofocus and it worked, It did this a few more times so i'm not sure what is going on. but i was certain that if it did go out I could handle it on manual.

The event lasted 3 hours. I shot 300 or so photos and I think the promoter will be happy. For all of the things that cropped up my biggest issue was me showing up late which is something I can easily fix for the next time. Mechanical problems Didn't slow me down for that long and I realised i could still do the job. Overall I was really happy with how the day turned out and being able to work in a more real world envirement.

Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to write out the events of the day.
 
why don't you post some shots? ;)
 
Auto focus needs a minimum amount of light to work. It doesn't matter what ISO your camera is capable of, because that is about the image sensor, not the auto focus module in the bottom of the camera. The AF module only 'sees' 1/2 the light as it is, because the other half is directed up to the viewfinder.

However, you don't say if you had the D7000's auto focus assist light enabled, or not.

It's a good idea to scout a location you've never been to before, a day or more in advance.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
 
Well it wasn't like it was trying to focus. it literally wasn't moving. wasn't doing anything at all. it was as if it was just stuck there. locked in place. I have never had a camera or lens do that before.
 

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