Alphatracks

I shot this photo of Philip Dodds, one of BarCamp Charlotte's organizers, with my trusty Vivitar 135 M42 lens at an aperture of f/2.8. The ISO on the Sony A350 was 800.

BarCamp Charlotte returned to Area 15 in Charlotte’s NODA district, and I was on hand for the third edition. BarCampCLT just keeps getting better, and I really enjoyed my time at the “un-conference.”

I’ve posted galleries of the pervious Charlotte Bar Camps on Alphatracks. For the third edition, I choose to shoot everything with available light; no flash. I also wound up shooting the entire day without using a single A-mount lens. My lenses for this shoot were the Minolta Rokkor 58mm f/1.4, the Rokkor 16mm f/2.8 and the Vivitar 135mm f/2.8.

I chose these lenses over my comparable A-mount lenses because they were the fastest lenses I own for their particular focal length. Most of my A-mount zooms feature a maximum aperture of f/3.5 or f/4 and I needed more aperture. So I used my older lenses with an A-mount adapter and would up setting the exposure manually for everything.

I wasn’t trying to be cute by limiting myself to non-auto-focus A-mount glass, it simply worked out that my fastest lenses for the task proved to be manual-focus lenses attached to the Sony Alpha A350 with an adapter.

I did bring a couple of flash units, but I elected not to use them, in-part because I had gotten nice available results at Area 15 in the past. Since the last time I was at the facility, however, the main room was extensively refurbished.

In the past, the walls were cream painted cinderblock and the ceiling beams were natural wood. Over the winter the artists at Area 15 gave the room a complete makeover. The walls are now covered in dark green and purple hues, while a dark brown color covers the ceiling.

The darker colors required shooting at a higher ISO, even with fast glass. I’m not suggesting the room itself is dark, as it is well-lit and airy. But the dark tones absorbed all the stray light, requiring me to use a higher ISO to capture the feel I was looking for.

The essence of Bar Camp: participants vote to determine which pitches are presented. By shooting wide-open with the Rokkor 58mm f/1.4, I was able to use selective focus to capture someone marking their vote on paper hanging on the wall.

Higher ISO, of course, creates more noise. The images still look good, but I think the flash images I shot in the past were cleaner overall. Still, it was nice to shoot candids without the flash alerting my subjects they were being photographed.

If you look through the entire BarCamp Charlotte 3 gallery, you’ll note the ISO I used varied between 200 and 1600. I shot RAW and processed everything in Adobe Lightroom. I used Lightroom’s noise reduction settings to clean up the noise in the 800 and 1600 ISO images.

Overall, I was pleased with the available light images. For the next Bar Camp, however, I think I may return to bouncing electronic flash off the ceiling for certain images.

Here is the Bar Camp Charlotte 3 photo gallery

The official Bar Camp Charlotte website

The Area 15 Website

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We spent a couple of days in Winston-Salem (North Carolina) recently. One of the highlights was a visit to Old-Salem Village. Established by the Moravians in the 1700s, the village is an interesting mix of modern shops in a historical setting. Unlike most attractions of this type, the town is freely open to everyone, with no admission. A Ticket are required to enter some of the buildings, but you are free to wander about and enjoy the setting without paying an admission.

Old Salem Village Image Gallery.

We only had a couple of hours to spend in the village, but the light was grand for photography. I had the Sony Alpha A350 with me, and since there wasn’t much time I decided I didn’t want to lug around a camera bag. So I selected my Minolta 28-85mm lens, figuring it would provide the best combination of focal lengths for a quick tour.

There was no shortage of subjects to shoot, and even though it was late in the afternoon, I found the long autumn shadows were quite interesting.

I used between a half and one and half stops exposure compensation to open up the shadows many of the buildings. I shifted between aperture and shutter priority for most of the shots. Everything was shot in RAW.

The lens revealed the famous “Minolta Colors” in many of the images. All in all, I was pleased with what I shot. I was somewhat surprised, however that my favorite shot was the front of a couple of buildings lining a side street. There was nothing especially noteworthy about the buildings and I the resulting photo was pretty much a simple grab shot. When I first looked at the image on my Mac, I thought it was okay, with pleasing colors.

There is more to this building in Old Salem Village than meets the eye…

Then I looked closer and started to notice dozens of small, but interesting details. The architecture and construction drew me deeper and deeper into the photo. This has nothing to do with me as a photographer. Well, maybe a little..:). I did see the potential in the shot, but I never noticed the details while we were in Old Salem. My true appreciation of the building’s construction details didn’t come until several days later, sitting at my computer. An even then, it didn’t jump out at me as something special. It wasn’t until I went through the images in Lightroom a few times that I started to see the things that make the image special.

I’ve put together a small gallery images from my visit. You can view it here: Old Salem Village Image Gallery. As I said, all images were shot with the A350 and the Minolta 28-85mm lens.

As I said, we spent less than two hours at the village. My appetite has certainly been whetted to go back when I can spend more time. I am sure Christmas time would be an excellent time to return. I imagine tons of Moraivain stars everywhere, steaming cups of hot chocolate…and of course; Moravian cookies! Yes, Christmas time should be an excellent time to go back.

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